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I started late, 25 yrs old. I have recently found Sylvie's videos interviewing Angie and while that is a huge inspiration for me as someone now a few months into training, I have found the real hook that kept me coming back to class religiously is the impact of Muay Thai on my relationship to my body. I pass fairly well when I am conforming to western femininity but I actually gravitate towards tom/butch expression (undercut, little makeup, "men's" cloths) despite being MTF. For my whole life, and especially the last few years during transition I have had basically hypervigilance/hyper fixation surrounding my body and how its being perceived/gendered and how I exist in space. Surrendering to the grind/burn of Muay Thai has been one of the biggest non-medical transition tool for reframing my relationship to my body from one centered on the perceptions of others, to one centered around learning how to assert myself in space and exercise balance and autonomy over my body. I have a lifetime of sharpening ahead of me but I have found a great deal of relief and reward in the distance I have come so far. As I become more at home in my body I am able to understand how my natural tendencies match up to the various subdisciplines/systems of Muay Thai and serves as a salient anchor for these parts of myself I want to develop in my regular life, and for getting past traumas. Making this post to share this experience, as after the fact I thought it was very ironic that this thing that is so good for specifically trans mental health (in my opinion) is socially and sometimes legally off limits to us. How does my experience compare to yours? Do you know any trans fighters that have had similar or different experiences?

I will be sharing your words with Angie, as I'm sure they mean as much to her as they do to me. For me, personally, what drew me to Muay Thai was the performance of masculinity, with these simultaneous soft and fluid expressions. I've written on my blog about how masculinity does not belong to men; men "wear" it just as much as women can, it's not intrinsic or "natural" or inherent. Bev Francis, one of the most famous female Body Builders in the 70s and 80s pushed past the "acceptable" limit of muscles that "feminine" bodies into muscles that were heavily criticized as being "too much" for a woman. But Bev loved muscles and being strong for the exact same reasons males with those bodies love them: because it feels good. A pleasure not "belonging" to a gender, even if socially it is flagged or coded to the binary. As a cis woman, this is how I've navigated the very complex experiences of Muay. The parts that are masculine feel good for the same reasons they feel good to men, but I do get offended when folks comment that I "look like a man," or am "strong like a man." As a Cis woman, I have a more relaxed privilege to those offenses because I don't worry about "passing," but I do, at times, fret that I can never be unaware of being NOT A MAN in a man's arena. But vacillating in the in-between is where the real beauty is and, if Muay Thai allows you to explore and express your gender in a more nuanced way, then that's a wonder I have greatly appreciated as well. If you can find Superbank's stunningly beautiful Ram Muay, wherein he is pouring out feminine grace and at the exact same moment filling himself with masculine prowess...it's that. That's the perfect example.

As an older guy coming back to Muay Thai after Western boxing, I can sympathise. There's lots of good stuff on Youtube, I'll post a couple of my favourites below. Would be great if anyone else has some tips... This is a really good one: These guys are interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg5ltVL3fok&t=14s&ab_channel=StrengthSide

Thanks for responding and wow, what a beautiful ram muay. I think I really resonate with what you said about allowing yourself to occupy and utilize masculine and feminine energies without it having any bearing on your actual gendered existence. Being able to "go back" into masculine territory with Muay Thai has really let me take ownership over the parts of myself that I was running from and contextualize them into my post-transition persona. You and Angie are literally who I think of when I am overwhelmed and pessimistic about fighting. You both made room for me in the sport in your own ways and I am very grateful. PS, Bev Francis is so dope.

One of the interesting things in Michael Chaney treatment is that he specifically would like to erase the highland/lowland distinction that a lot of historians focus on. This, for instance, in Thai-Siam studies can be quite emphasized. Part of this may be that highland cultures may have had more of a penchant for aggression or violence in combat - for instance headhunting seems to have persisted in the highland regions much longer than elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, and in Siam-Thai ideology these peoples have been positioned as "savage", opposed to the high culture of the Capital and its halo of authority out to the foothills of the North. I don't really know the distribution of ethnicity, but have you noticed an cultural connection between highland (or lowland) Burmese and present day Lethwei? That is a very nice data point. My own intuition is that I have doubts about Muay Boran (or Lethwei) directly coming from combat itself, at least large scale combat tracing back to the 17th century, for example. My main reason for this is that practically every piece of evidence I've seen is that this kind of combat is not weaponless at all. Everyone is armed with blades, spear/lance and/or shield. I'm sure every rice farmer was very adept at using a blade for work. If there WAS a direct development of a fighting art for or from military actions it most certainly would have been a weaponed fighting art, and the shield would probably be a significant aspect of that fighting. We can make conceptual connections to how Muay Thai, Muay Boran or (I guess) Lethwei may be related to weaponed fighting...but that fact that it isn't weaponed fighting seriously undermines some of that historical picture. I could though see subduing an opponent being part of much smaller scale raiding, which would be largely focused on slave capture. I think this makes perfect sense. I think trends in culture and expression really change and can change fast, in a decade or two, and not necessarily reach back centuries. A big part of the ideological picture Thailand presents about Muay Thai is that it is the reason the Thais were never in historical fact colonized (the story that is told). Instead it is presented that a series of Kings through strategy were able to find ways to absorb Western influence & control, and retain a sense of ideological identity. [sorry, I wrote all this before I saw that you brought it up! But I'll leave it in nonetheless] In the Thai telling they "won" because they were smart and pliant before a formidable force, something they navigated with great sagacity. You can see how the two mythologies diverge (not making judgements on either). The brief (allied) Japanese occupation left a mark on Thailand, but largely there has been seldom a sense that a foreign invader had to be fought off (since the Burmese defeat of Ayutthaya, with possible exceptions of some of the 19th century slave capture revolts in the Northeast, and the fight against Communism in the 1960s-1970s, and today's insurgence in the South). Largely, Thailand has painted itself as "whole". Maybe this makes a big difference in terms of what fighting means to a culture. Much further up in the thread this is discussed in broad SEA historical view by Anthony Reid. He suggests that even the way in which SEAians thought about property, identity, wealth, was shaped by the transience of wooden houses. This flows into the idea of the perpetual possibility of retreat. Houses were not valuable. The land in a certain sense is not valuable (because fertile land is not scare, as say it is in Europe). Speaking very broadly, invaders or raiders would come, villagers would run to the forest and take all their valuables with them (wealth had to be transportable), and the village would be burned. He presents this as nearly a pan SEA pattern lasting centuries. When the Dutch came and established trading posts in, I think Jakarta?, they were forbidden from building anything with stone. Everything had to be made from wood, with the exception of the palace (and perhaps wats). In the sense or warfare and conflict, if Anthony Reid is right, then raid (and maybe burning) were a regular part of the life cycle, as was fleeing to the forest or mountains, and relocating one's village. The main point was not to be captured, and to escape with one's relative wealth (rice, valuables). Personally, I see in this transience of the abode something even of the foundations of the Buddhist conceptions of the transience of the Self. As the palace and the wat were made of stone, you have the contrastive permanence of spiritual and political authority. This is quite different than in the West where one's home/land helps constitute one's more individual identity much more. The "castle" of the Self, to which Western religions are more focused on. In any case, an interesting speculation.

Yes, understood. It resonates a lot with evasive muay thai comparing it to that kind of warfare. What caught my attention is the stark contrast to lethwei which is very aggressive and forward moving. I have a limited view not speaking the language properly and lethwei teachers or students who do are very few. And Burmese people who do speak English but not too invested in martial arts have a hard time translating for me as the Burmese words used for various strikes and techniques are not self-explanatory. In addition, the sport is dominated by Karen, Mon and Kachin people with different languages. My teachers are Karen and their words for specific techniques are different than Bamar people's for example. But having trained with very traditional teachers and shared some clips with Sylvie, seems like traditional techniques I'm being taught are very similar to muay boran. So even though the sport today might seem brutal and aggressive there is something beneath what it has become known as "most brutal sports on the planet" (and promoted as by western fighters). I've been taught techniques that would pacify my opponent like stomping their foot with my heel, push my thumb into the neck of my opponent, heel kick back of opponents knee in the clinch. Things that are effective but doesn't cause too much damage. Which would resonate with your reflections on capture not kill. One thing though is that retreating is not viewed beautifully in traditional lethwei. And caused a bit of drama recently when two champions met in a title fight scored on points and one of the up and coming champions Thway Thit used a retreating style making champion Tun Tun Min chase him. Thway Thit won (very fairly he scored more) but his backing up caused debate. I wonder if it has to do with more recent history. Myanmar was colonised by Britain, occupied by Japan and since independence oppressed by the Myanmar armed forces with around 26 Ethnic Armed Organisations fighting for their independence (Karen being very successful example). During the recent coup people fought back. They wouldn't have it. They won't give up. Myanmar culture has a lot of stubbornness in it. Which I see reflected in lethwei. I might simplify your theories here by seeing how Thailand avoided colonisation, it evaded it very cleverly. I saw something you wrote about burning villages by the way, this is of course pre-Tatmadaw (Myanmar armed forces established in 1940s), but scorching earth policy is a permanent strategy of the Tatmadaw (they just keep burning down villages as im writing this). I wonder if there's a cultural root in that depicted in the illustrations? Above views are really just my own reflections and very anecdotal. I just find this region very interesting and I'm wondering how Khun Khmer and Lao martial arts fit in.

Yes I believe you are right. Leg tattoos are also associated with the Shan people (one of the hundreds of ethnic groups in Myanmar) so the illustrations could depict that. Face tattoos for example are closely related to the Chin people, and the Naga ppl have their distinctive tattoos. And since the leg tattoos are a sign of masculinity/becoming a man lethwei fighters might have picked it up since you see it among lethwei fighters of various ethnicities. .

Importantly, the most substantial sources on this would point to this being a mode of Southeast Asian mode warfare, and not particular to Thailand. I'm just drawing on these wider observations and applying them to what we know of Thailand's Muay Thai.

I wonder if what is being depicted is (easily) identifiable ethnic differences, rather than just a practice. I'm feeling that the tattoos, at least at this time (late 1800s) indicated a people. I believe Burma had several warring, or at least conflicting ethnicities. Thank you for following along. It is a difficult thread, as some of this is just dropping article reference, and some posts are concept building posts. What is interesting is that all of this is very likely the kind of work that just is never attempted in relationship to Muay Thai or even combat sports/arts. The story of the development of Muay Thai is often a very simple one, with very little specific anchorage in history. And in English this story just gets repeated. But, because there is very little substantive scholarship on Muay Thai, one has to bring together diverse scholarship from other fields, and attempt to piece together a picture, create a new, richer, more complex story.

I've been following this thread (very very interesting but takes time to understand) and have some reflections to come on myay thai fighting as avoidance of conflict. But first thing I noted of the Burmese warriors were the leg tattoos (as you point out) known as Htoe Kwin, deeply associated with lethwei. Mainly older lethwei fighters will wear them but some younger fighters have adopted the practice as well. There's a Wikipedia page on this, but the sources on htoe kwin I'm not too sure about, lots of misinterpreted, simplified info spread by Westerners due to lack of Burmese translation.

Just keep stretching and you should notice an improvement. If you're still struggling after about 6 months then maybe go and see a physio or a chiropractor. I got some acupuncture done on my back and right leg (my right leg was always tighter than my left) and it's made a huge difference. They'll give you some good stretches to add to your routine as well.

An important historical context to discussions of a possible spirituality of Thailand's Muay Thai is the way in which warfare likely developed in the region, and the principles of fighting that came out of that. This article thread on why Thailand's Muay Thai expresses emphasis on defensive fighting excellence gives some of that context. This context involves very important differences with many Western martial concepts, such as the preference of domination and control over outright defeat and killing (related to the relative scarcity of land or labor), notions of representative (King) charisma in battle, and an overall difference in the use of violence.

Here is a provisional graphic sketch of 6 logics of the spirituality of Soul Stuff, as expressed in Thai culture and Muay Thai. These logics, by my thinking, lie beneath or within the Buddhistic nature of the culture.

In small circles I've been noted as a critic of ONE Championship, and Entertainment Muay Thai in general, mostly on the grounds that I have real concerns that the market forces at play are going to erase some very hard-won qualities of Thailand's Muay Thai, and the fighters of Thailand, that made it and them unlike any fighters in the world. In fact, the best fighters in the world. As market forces come to bear - whether it be the declining demographics of stadium Muay Thai enthusiasm within the country (crushed by the popularity of football/soccer for instance, or the pressing need for new modes of fight entertainment content, throughout the world - it may very well be that all the things that made the "magical", "untouchable" Thai fighter possible, will fade and eventually be extinguished. The market may make Thai fighters like all the other fighters in the world. And, in the longterm...the longterm, this may undercut not only the specialness of Thailand's Muay Thai, but also its real economic value. That uniqueness is the thing that brings tourists from all over the world...to Thailand. Thais train like nobody else, they fight like nobody else, they perform like nobody else. That's my general position of concern. But in this piece I'd like to offer arguments on why ONE actually deserves recognition. In part I want to do this because I see this question as complex, and some see my thinking on this as simplistic. As maybe nostalgic. Or idealistic. The problems of Thailand's traditional, stadium Muay Thai have felt intractable, and in some sense doomed to gradual decline that cannot be slowed. In many respects ONE's entrance into Thailand is perhaps the only thing that could have interrupted this erosion. It may have negative unintended consequences, but the insertion of big, organized, global-eyed investment is very significant. Big Bosses Part of how I come to see this is just in regards to how power is organized in Thailand, in a systematic sense. What follows is just very broad brush, and not meant to be a reduction of sociability in Thailand. It's a kind of internal logic though, I believe. From street corners, to neighborhoods, to local industries up to governance there is a Big Boss structure to things. A Big Boss is someone who has social alliance formed of a network of people, often tied by deep cultural custom or more, a person with social gravity, but who also takes care of those below him (her). A Big Boss can show his affluence and his blessedness (his due position) through his generosity, or at the very least his capacity to create stability and opportunity. Within their field or sphere Big Bosses are respected by culture. Big Bosses stack all the way down. There are bosses below bosses, and bosses above bosses, and there is a kind agonistic struggle over social territory between bosses, which holds the whole thing together, but also generates innovation or activity. In this sense, the various Big Bosses of Thailand's stadium Muay Thai, as it presently was constituted, as they struggled over the decreasing scraps of Thailand's Muay Thai - with a shrinking demographic and talent pool of fighters - were never going to actually solve the problem of erosion. They instead were going to struggle for position over a declining resource. It was only from outside this agonism that any possibility would come. And that meant the insertion of a VERY Big Boss. That's what ONE has done. It's entered the Big Boss arena with a very big economic stick. Not only did ONE wrap itself with the signatures of Big Boss-ism (important value declarations: we are just trying to take care of poor, neglected fighters; we are just trying to save Muay Thai) it came with an open checkbook. It could pay enormous bonuses, inflated fight pay, and hook fighters up to an already matured advertisement hype machine. It was a very Big boss. It's much more complicated that this, as the State (the military) already had made moves to change Muay Thai by extracting Lumpinee Stadium from Muay Thai promotional culture, with visions of it becoming an international sports venue, and because the State has a powerful mission to develop the "soft power" of Thailand through the celebration of its national sport, I'm leaving that aside. At a certain level what is happening in just an International Big Boss has entered into the local Big Boss fray, and we are seeing an enormous social and political reaction to this. But my view is, it had to happen in this way. The Bosses of Muay Thai would never have been motivated enough to bring the kinds of changes that were necessary to more or less "save" a dwindling resource. A big, deep pockets Boss had to make a splash. Small Screens But, there is a much more significant thing happening with ONE that Thailand's Muay Thai was going to have a hard time dealing with, no matter its possible future. And this regards Muay Thai consumption itself. One of the big struggles with trying to preserve Thailand's Muay Thai excellence, its peak beauty (and rarity) is that Muay Thai essentially, is an in-person theatrical event. If you want to create an analogy, historically like a "play" and not like a movie or a tv show. The excellence of the sport, the very high skill-levels that Thai fighters have reached, in particular of the Golden Age, came out of its "theatrical play" nature. And the audience of this play is deeply invested in what the actors of the play are doing because they are betting. And betting, in the history of the culture, goes beyond just trying to get money. It has expressed social bonds and commitments, can have karmic interpretations, can be used to display social power, or personal gravity. It, at least historically, is a rich bond. So, when festival fights are going on, and betters/audience is pressing up against the apron and shouting, this is a full and powerful social dynamic. And the fight itself is an in-person theatrical performance (of skill, qualities, knowledge). A play is going on. Muay Thai excellence, all of its techniques and qualities grew out of this matrix of live (bet-on) performance, from the smallest ring in Isaan all the way up to Lumpinee Stadium in the 1990s. It's all live theatre. Thais were fans of Dieselnoi in the 1980s having never seen him fight, and only having read about him. Everything was a theatrical play you had to come to see. And the fighters developed advanced skills and qualities for that live audience. Like in theatrical acting you needed to be visually distinct, you needed to project and reach the back row with dramatic expression. Principles of ruup, the development of a fighter's silhouette (see Sylvie on the Silhouette Test), a narrative control over oneself and the fight, all of it exacted certain demands upon the skill of the fighter which actually produced excellence. The very theatrical form, in the tug and sway of in-person betters with communal stakes in the polities of the ring produced fighters of immense technique and persona, rich in diversity and uniqueness, the best fighters in the world. Let's skip through the rise of television, and people in villages gathering to watch fights on a single TV, through the expanding broadcast reach, and to the arrival of the mobile phone. In broadcast Muay Thai, what we are dealing with, is taking a theatrical form and turning it into a tv show...but not only that. It's a show that people no longer sit in front of, they watch it on their mobile phones on screens, maybe jumping in and out of tabs. Something that once was in front of you, and part of a knit sea of betters now is something in your palm, and even as its going on is competing with Facebook messages, or a cat meme. The visual fragmentation of its consumption is radical and profound. Traditional ring Muay Thai is not just rulesets. It was (is?) the actual stage, consumption and participation of performance. So, when new promotions promote endless clashes between fighters (speaking broadly) and pressing for knockouts, it is producing content for the palm of the hand. In a certain sense, it HAS to. It may not even be for people who watch the fight, but who see a clip while they are scrolling. This is just a massive recontextualization of what fighting is. Yes, passionate, knowledgeable but niche followers may still watch a fight in a theatrical performance way, noting how it unfolds, like a play, but the market, the actual meat and potatoes of its consumption is in the palm of the hand, between screens. And, live audience, is no longer socially bonded betters, but rather ir's tourists, who themselves are probably looking down on their own phones as they sit there at the event. It has become a performance for foreigners, something which has significant importance because of tourism's place in Thailand's economy. This is to say, in the paragraph above, ONE directly has answered the consumption problem, at least at the level of reach and more casual audience. (Mobile phone online betting in traditional stadium fighting solves the consumption problem another way.) At the very least, Muay Thai is going to be torn away from its theatrical play roots, the very thing that gave its form of excellence to begin with. It's going to be pushed through smaller and smaller screens, smaller and smaller attention spans. And ONE has a vision for how to do that. In this sense it should praised. So Muay Thai has an origin problem. What was once a sport that passed through numerous layers of live performance ascension, performance that grow out of betting and in-person, extremely knowledgeable investment, until it reached the 6,000 better's arena of Lumpinee stadium, and grand live displays of fighting excellence were put on, now will economically be for the casual phone scroller, or perhaps an audience largely made up of bussed-in Chinese tourists (this is a model that has worked very well in Pattaya, for instance, entire stadiums of tour-groups). The reasons for the performance, and the content it is producing are just radically different. So in a certain sense all that quality that was produced, year upon year, decade upon decade, is at risk. Right now Muay Thai is in a suspended state. We can take fighters who have developed more or less in the in-person bettor's "play" culture, and still have very unusual, even elite skills that have come from it, and we can put them into these other kinds of performances, for other kinds of content and consumption...but the very fabric of Muay Thai as a rich, fighting art and sport is strained and is tearing under these market pressures.

Recent review of Kem's Muay Thai Gym in Khao Yai Tiang: "The training is mind blowing. All three Krus are different but they’re not jusy chasing your endorphin high for you by letting you smash pads and feel the rush. There is so much technique work. I haven’t spent much time in classes in other gyms just mainly one on Ones as I’ve torn my ACL and didn’t fancy big classes injured but we are just a handful here so I know if he’s not training me Kem is watching me all the time. And so hands on in terms of the accommodation and other care eg he’s driving a student to Cambodia today for a visa run. Such lovely people. I’m humbled. And I can hear the call to prayer which is important to me. Thanks again for the recco." Naadia

Hey just wanted to say some stuff about the thread. First of all, it took me about a year and a half to two years plus several discussions with you Kevin before I even began to understand what Muay Thai (was) about. But I had a desire to actually understand it. I wanted to know how the fighters were moving and why the fighters were doing exactly what they were doing. The average Western fight fan watches fighting to see someone get hurt or knocked out. They have zero desire to even attempt to understand how Muay Thai was done and scored. Second of all, I see the general trend of what’s happening with Muay Thai now as a direct response to Muay Thai techniques being adapted to MMA and specifically in the UFC. You had guys like Joe Rogan talking about how brutal the sport is (which it can be) but I think Rogan+the UFC are more or less directly responsible for Entertainment Muay Thai. It’s sad to see it go, I have zero hope that it will survive. The value system of Western Countries just directly contrasts with how the Thais viewed fighting in Muay Thai. In the end, I think skills of all combat sports is on a downward trajectory. More and more, I think coaches look for superior athletes and don’t want to invest the time in t takes to grow a truly high skilled individual. Thus all the old knowledge and wisdom gets lost as coaches attempt to simply make bulls that can succeed on pure aggression and physicality. To be fair there will be some exceptions but by and large I see us worldwide going into a sort of “dark age” of combat sports across the board. The only exception to this seems to be sport BJJ but that will always be hindered by the fact that it’s objectively boring as a spectator sport. And even that is straying far and away from its roots of actual combat effectiveness as you’ll notice in MMA high level BJJ is becoming more and more rare because the sport version isn’t applicable anymore to MMA.

If both gyms offer a trial class then give both of them a try. Every Muay Thai gym I've been to has been friendly and welcoming, so definitely look for that. As a beginner you should be getting plenty of correction, so that's something else to look for. Class should consist of stretching, cardio, shadow boxing, pad work and bag work. Hope you enjoy it mate, let us know how you get on

Was browsing this thread and in response to Samkor's whereabouts, he is at an upscale boxing gym located in the financial district of Hong Kong, https://www.southpawhk.com/about/. The place does small group class trainings and PTs, but is quite expensive. I checked prices back in Aug 2022. They did have a buy a PT trial session, get a second session free promotion back then. However the standard list price PT sessions were around USD115 and that was from purchasing a 12 class package. As I've only started MT a year ago recreationally, I will get a bit better first before doing PTs with him! @Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu @Mick Moody

While I can't give any Muay-Thai-specific info on this, there are some resources and communities in Thailand that might be useful for you. There's a Facebook page for trans men in Thailand that you might want to reach out to, TRAns Man Peers - TRAMP เพื่อนทรานส์แมน. The content is mostly in Thai, but I'm sure they'd be happy to help if you sent them some questions in English. I'd also recommend contacting Young Pride Club, either on Facebook or IG. It's run by student activists who have been putting on lots of community events in Thailand. There's also the TEAK - Trans Empowerment page. ILGAAsia is also a good resource for information on trans rights here. I hope this helps!

I love this post!!! This is going to be added to my list of gyms to visit in the future (glad Hongthong is a part of this list!) Perhaps I can also add on about my 1 month experience training there :)