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I stand out in Thailand. A lot. And for odd reasons. I'm "Thai sized," but because I'm not Thai, I stand out as a particularly small westerner. I'm muscled, tattooed, speak Thai in a way that surprises a lot of the folks who I'm speaking to for the first time, etc. In almost any situation where I'm getting gawked at, smiling and saying "nakmuay" is the only explanation necessary for every single person to burst into a smile and nod with a kind of, "oh, that makes sense." I love it.

There is nothing near Banchamek, as far as I know, so you cannot book accommodation other than what they offer. Fairtex is in Northern Pattaya, so there's other accommodation nearby but you'll just have to find it when you've already arrived. I don't see any Thais training at Banchamek, and as far as I've heard (and these things change all the time), there's almost nobody training there regularly at all. So you might experience a more or less 1-1 training experience with whatever trainer you have, or you might feel like you're in a ghost town. Fairtex is quite busy, has Thais and westerners training all the time. You might get really good work with "the team" or you might be given very little individual attention because of capacity. It's really hard to know how any of that's going to go, but be prepared to figure out what you want to do in any of the possible scenarios.

I think thats a dead on assessment. I think thats exactly it. It looks good to view, maybe even from a morbid fascination, but to be on the recieving end is just a no. I think this is why its so important to market to hobbyists and make them really understand the safety. In my time around mma and bjj (over ten years) Ive seen way more serious injuries there than in muay Thai. Sure bumps and bruises, but not the limb and finger injury frequency from bjj/mma. Educating potentially interested but cautious hobbyists has to be a priority I think.

Anyone have some fun little stories to share that happened to them in or around Muay Thai? Here is one that happened to me: I filled up my car at a local gas station wearing a shirt from my gym with a big Muay Thai Label on the front and went inside to pay. The guy who runs the station is asian (from his looks he MIGHT actually be Thai, I really should have asked!) and very open and friendly to people. He looked at my shirt and beamed at me like "Aaaah Muay Thai! You have to loose lots of weight!" My answer (a little overwhelmed by the funny openness) was something like "haha yea I guess... I'm working on it" :P He went on the tell me about how he played some soccer when he was young and how they made shoes for that from cut up tires and that to play in the team you had to be tough like a fighter. He actually said when he asked to get into the team the leader body-punched him to see if he was tough enough. The best part was simply "Aaaah Muay Thai! You have to loose lots of weight!"

Wow, you've got a really nice game plan with tons of great reference to work from. Thanks for watching the content so closely! The thing about locks is that you want them to be resting positions, more or less. The frame is to control your opponent, to keep them from locking you, to move them and turn for a knee, but then you move into a lock position to kind of "slow down." Dieselnoi, when he has that horrible double lock and he's wrenching his opponent's heads around, he's resting. Slowing down a bit to catch his own breath while off-balancing his opponent and, through the discomfort and control, keep them from breathing. Yodkhunpon's hold, with the hand on the bicep, that's a waiting game. He's anticipating the knee so that he can elbow or turn. Also a kind of "slowed down" moment. So moving into locks, or between locks, you want to see them as like the stones in a river that you can hop onto for a moment to make a plan. You don't stay there. That's not your end game. It's transitional, although you don't have to move off your spot too fast. So, when you're working on those different locks, shoulders from Satanmuanglek and head from Tanadet's long clinch, work on them by getting into and out of them. Make it a "full range of motion" practice, instead of a drill. To feel the edges, how to move in and through them. I also advise you to take a look at Burklerk and Silapathai, who both love to snuff the clinch because they don't like to be in the clinch. If you're really into learning to clinch, learn how to get out of it, too. Because people will use those tricks against you, but it also allows you to move a lot more than if you only learn the dominant positions. In those two examples, Burklerk is showing how to stop someone from being able to grab you - nearly at all - with the way he locks out the shoulders; this also works great for killing punchers and elbows. And Silapathai's version is slithering out of the way with great turns - Karuhat does this, too - which allows you to change position quickly and get your own lock, if you're actually trying to clinch.

Hello, everyone! Welcome to Muay Thai Roundtable. This forum is Sylvie's brainchild, I am here to help moderate. For those of you who aren't familiar with either of us, I want to offer an introduction, so you know who we are, where we come from, what we're trying to do, and all that jazz. The quick, easy to digest version is in the picture below, which breaks it down pretty succinctly. You can scroll down to see a more detailed explanation. Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu This forum is a part of Sylvie's site and blog, 8limbs.us. She's been running the site for 3 years now, starting at the very beginning of her Muay Thai journey since moving to Thailand and sharing its most intricate details along the way. She's from Colorado, US and first discovered Muay Thai while living in New York after her husband, Kevin, urged her to watch Ong Bak with him. From there, she started training with Master K in 2008. She trained with him in his basement and started filming her private sessions with him as a way to study and track her progress as well as to preserve and share Master K's teaching. There, her Youtube channel was born, which now has more than 2,000 videos! The following year, she went to Thailand for the first time to train, with Kevin in tow. After returning, she went on to train at Chok Sabai gym and also with Kaensak while saving and planning to make her way back. The original plan was to be here for a year if possible, but hoping to stay long enough to have fifty fights, but she's still here, has been for three years now, has had more than one hundred fights and is planning to keep going for as long as she possibly can. Her and Kevin sustain their stay here with a combination of income from Kevin's work, personal savings and a Go Fund Me campaign, by which lots of generous supports donated money to help keep her here after following her journey. This allows her to maintain a full-time training schedule. You can see what a day of her training looks like in the video below: Sylvie spent the first part of her Thailand fight journey in Chiang Mai fighting out of Lanna gym, but now lives in Pattaya, training at two gyms, Petchrungruang and O. Meekun, which are both very Thai. O. Meekun is also the home of PhetJee Jaa, who is quite possibly the greatest female fighter on the planet. To say that Sylvie fights regularly would be a massive understatement. She not only takes fights whenever and wherever she can get them, but is constantly seeking opportunities to fight more, with the best competition she can face. She has already gone up against some of the best women in her weight class in the world, often with a big weight disadvantage. Her huge wealth of experience in fighting along with her insight into Thai culture and social dynamics and her desire to build and share as much as she possibly can makes her invaluable, and I'm grateful that she has created this forum as a way to share more of that. Emma Thomas I'm a 26-year-old Brit, who first dove into the world of Muay Thai at the age of 22 while on a solo backpacking trip through Thailand after graduating from university, having absolutely no previous athletic experience or knowledge of combat sports but a huge passion and desire to get into it, which emerged almost out of nowhere. I was hooked from the start, not only on the sport but on the country, and after a month of full-time training in Chiang Mai, immediately changed my plans, cancelling the last leg of my trip so that I could stay in Thailand long-term and commit to Muay Thai. I then took the steps to be able to work in Thailand as a teacher, getting qualified while training in Chiang Mai before being sent to Bangkok for work. There, I found Master Toddy, the man who turned me into a fighter. I stumbled upon his gym never having heard of him before (which shows how out of touch with the Muay Thai world I was at the time) and planning to leave after two weeks, but have now been living and training at his gym for three and a half years (living in Thailand for over four years in total so far) with no plans to leave as of yet. This is my home now. Meeting him was a huge turning point for me, as he instilled the confidence I needed in myself in order to believe that I could fight. Since then, he's continued to be a wonderful teacher to me and a driving force in my life. I had my first fight after eight weeks of training with him and have now had twenty. Halfway between those two places, I set up my blog, Under the Ropes, which was born as a way to create more Muay Thai content for women as well as to share my experiences. I continue to work as an English teacher, which is something that I really love as well as something that provides a visa and a continued source of income. It means that I constantly have to balance my training and fighting with my work schedule, but it's wonderful. Where our paths cross - Similarities and differences I met Sylvie for the first time via her blog in 2011 and later on, as mine started to grow and we both shared our stories, we noticed similarities. as well as the obvious factor of both being women carving our places out in a male-dominated space, we both have rather introverted personalities and are feminists who are passionate about sharing and creating as much as we can for the benefit of other women. Sylvie and I have rather different lifestyles, and for that reason, our collective stories and experiences here can give a broad view of what it's like here. We also have rather different training experiences, as I train in a very Western-friendly gym which is just generally a very different setting to the one she trains in. We have been able to meet up and train together a few times in the last year and intend to keep doing so. Our difference in schedules means that for the most part, we maintain our friendship and collaborations online (and what better way for a pair of introverts?) Here, we hope to make it possible for others to make similar connections as they continue to share and discover. We thank you all for signing up to the forum and look forward to meeting everyone in it.

Hi guys! So I am currently planning my trip to Thailand but it all depends on the gyms I choose. I want as much of a thai experience as I can get, being a UK foreigner (male, southpaw) that doesn't speak thai. I have some kickboxing experience so know my way around punches and kicks, knees and elbows less so, but consider myself a beginner at clinch and sweeps. I don't have any personal recommendations to go off, so I have only chosen gyms based off fighters I follow. I'm thinking of: 2 weeks at Fairtex 3 weeks at Banchamek. (And maybe a drop in session at Yokkao, or a 1 on 1 with Saenchai if I am lucky.) Does anyone have experience in training at these gyms? My questions are: 1. Should I book the gym accommodation or look for nearby hotels? 2. How are the shared rooms vs single person rooms? 3. These gyms seem expensive due to how famous they are. Would you recommend anywhere else? Thanks so much for your help!

These are some of the most tourist-oriented or at least non-Thai oriented gyms in Thailand (outside of Phuket). There is nothing wrong with that, they give positive experiences to westerners all the time, but what do you mean by "a Thai experience"? How you imagine a Thai experience is really important because it will probably determine how satisfied you feel by your time there.

Here is Kru Kimyu in Bank's corner. He also made itnover there at the same time Dieselnoi was screaming in Bank's corner about 2 months ago - 2 incredible men with VERY different energies in the same tiny area.

Very good catch! He, amazingly, also was Pi Nu's trainer (Sylvie's Kru in Pattaya). He used to travel in a circuit back in the day and would come and train the Petchrungruang boys regularly when he would be in Pattaya. Sounds as if he was a kind of traveling Arjan. He was training one of the greatest fighters of the generation (Kaensak in Bangkok), and also some boys in a small, family gym in Pattya? And how many others? As a side note, so out of sheer coincidence Sylvie's ended up training under two of his students, both Kaesak who was her trainer in NJ before she moved to Thailand, and Kru Nu now, which is such an unexpected, accidental lineage. What is interesting, if I have the story right, when Kru Nu's son Bank was starting to make waves last year at Lumpinee Kru Kimyu offered to come and help train him for an upcoming fight, if he could make it, but it never came to fruition because of his health/age. So we are really on the cusp of Kru Kimyu ending his influence on fighters. Sylvie says though that he's come over to Bank's corner in two recent important Lumpinee fights, so he's hanging out at Lumpinee. (Edit to add: It's also kind of beautiful and amazing to see this subterrainian connection between two gyms, Dejrat Gym and Petchrungruang Gym, two gyms you would never from the outside connect. There is a thin teaching line in Kru Kimyu, and also now in Sylvie there is a student line as well, as Arjan Surat has been a heavy influence on her. It's in the fabric of relationships.)

Kaensak's trainer (Kru Kimyu) still comes through Dejrat on occasion. It's been a while since I've seen him though. He can barely walk but will prop himself on the ropes and hold pads for fighters. He has to have 20 years on Ajarn Surat.

I don't even know what else to say, other than that I love this. Thanks, Emma.