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Footwork is a very good place to start, as it's what allows literally everything else to function. For me, being able to "see" is the main difference between being overwhelmed and being able to wait out an combination and fire back. Everyone has patterns - ever single person - so generally you can start to read or see where those are and know when to counter in the middle of or after a flurry. There are different ways of being able to "see," but 100% it requires you to be calmer, which means focusing on your breathing and knowing literally what you're looking at (where are you looking when you spar? The face, the chest, the hips, the legs?). Trying different areas of focus is a place to start. Focusing on your breathing is a great start. Working on only one thing, like a hook or a kick and seeing when it lands and when it doesn't. All of this depends on you not being overwhelmed though, so step one is just focusing on how to bring your heart rate and stress down. I decide on some days that I'm just going to let myself get hit in the guard, so that I can find the holes in it, feel secure in it, learn to see out of it, etc. There's this guy I spar who hits too hard, so I practice this with him because I don't want to get clipped with his power if I'm open. And there's a guy I spar who is too fast for me, so I also use this approach with him, to find momentary openings.

How is that going? Is it an annual show? Are there potential sponsors in Thailand? What about abroad? Any massive Western brands trying to get a foothold? I am thinking about this for myself as well since I am throwing one ladies show but bleeding money; will need sponsor to do it again. Can Masters apply leverage to stadia? Systematization rather than blunt favors? You must be making such a great (huge) cultural rupture by forging these connections through the library.

The short answer to this is yes. In fact, not training. Training and fighting. These fighters are ultra elite because they fought, and fought a lot when young. I don't know enough about the sidebet sub-system that feeds and grows this top tier talent pool to know if something is fundamentally wrong, and it's not producing the same level of experience and talent. Maybe Muay Thai is just decaying countrywide at that level. I'm not sure. But the solution is just the kinds of female promotions we are trying to create in Chiang Mai. The sport has a still large amount of female participation, well above anywhere else in the world, but it is desperately in need of a secondary financial tier, the chance for Thai female fighters to raise their level. That's behind our efforts in Queens of the North for instance, which we are still working on, a regular, lucrative monthly promotion raising an entire fight scene like that if Chiang Mai, which does not rely as heavily on side bets. The other dramatic change would be to open the National Stadia to women. Fighters like Phetjee Jaa, Loma, Lommanee, Sawsing are absolutely capable of fighting at that level, and would dream of fighting there. Female Muay Thai in Thailand, for women, is decapitated in almost every way by this prohibition. Sylvie is also working to change this. There is almost no connection to the masters, though we have thought about doing something systematically, in Queens of the North can be put into action.

I assume there is no comparable rise of young adult fighters in the bourgeois class... Does everything depend on this early training? I would answer the question ‘yes’ (I cannot bear watching swimmers who learned as adults, having started competing at 4). But if change must happen, how do you see it occurring? Just the death of the sport for women? Watering down? A big avenue for women’s improvement is clearly you guys recording the Masters & interacting with them such that a female fighter is modeled to be as serious, no, more serious than the young men (Sylvie). This is having a global impact of course with people coming to the summit from all around and studying your archive. What is the relation of young Thai female fighters to the Masters (male), and to global fighters coming in? Do you see any future through this synthesis?

Some folks have asked for an update on Phetjee Jaa. There's not much to say, other than that she's now training with the Thai National Boxing Team, travels occasionally for amateur tournaments and generally takes Silver or Bronze in those competitions at 51kg. (She won Silver a few days ago in Japan). So, she's living in Bangkok, training with the National Team. Muay Thai is more or less in her past now. She'll be 18 at the turn of the year this year, I believe.

The Loss of Greatness? As an addendum, there really is a kind of possible harbinger to the future of female Muay Thai in Thailand, it could be argued that of the 8 great female Muay Thai fighters in the list, only 2 of these are currently fighting top talent AND had become part of the "unfightable" through the sidebet process of producing the countries elite fighters. Stamp, for instance, was not one of the top fighters at her weight in the country before moving to Fairtex, and despite ONE's hype, even today is likely not near the best in Thailand. She would very likely lose in a full rules match to Loma, Lommanee, Phetjee Jaa and Amp, and Thanonchanok would be interesting. Of the rest only Sawsing and Thanonchanok are fairly regularly training, and facing somewhat stiff competition. Lommanee hasn't fought an elite opponent in full rules for maybe 5 years (that I know of). Loma has moved on from full rules Muay Thai, as has Amp. Chommanee hasn't trained regularly at a high level for several years, and is not at her peak. Phetjee Jaa has left full rules Muay Thai for boxing. The best female Muay Thai fighters of Thailand are not really fighting in Muay Thai. Further, aside from Stamp who wasn't part of the pattern of development, all these fighters were elite when they were 16 or 17, that was when they reached "unbeatable" in the sidebet sense, when they were fighting the most frequently and training most regularly. What is a little worrisome is that despite seemingly better opportunities for Thai female fighters in the country there does not seem to be a current crop of elite Thai female fighters now at 16 years of age. The only one I can think of is Nong Biew who came out of nowhere to take World Titles when she was 15. She became something of a star in the country. But almost everyone on this list is in their 20s. They are beyond their peak Muay Thai years, in terms of the regular Thai development. It could be that the process that developed the brilliance of Loma's clinch or of Chommanee's herky-jerk switching has been disrupted, and that Thailand is moving to an different era. I hope this is not the case, but who are the "unfightable" ones of Thailand now, the 16 to 17 year olds who cannot be beat? There is a very good young fighter that Dejrat gym was training who fought at the larger weight classes on Thai Fight, I've forgotten her name [I'll edit it in when Sylvie gets home - Mongonkaw 《《 edit in]. But I can only think of her and Nong Biew. It means that the next generation of greatness, the next group of 20-24 year olds who then will be no longer at their peak may be greatly reduced. Where is the next Sawsing?

Hey. I have a question regarding sparring. What is the best way to progress in sparring? Sometimes I feel overwelhmed when an aggressive fighter is coming towards me. I try to step to the side but then I kinda get stuck in my guard taking shots and when i try to answer back they dodge my punches . I feel like my footwork might not be good enough or too slow.

Ill add that it might be good to find a partner of the same level both mentally and physically as you. If youre not hyper aggressive then sparring with one who is might be more of a challenge than you can handle right now. What Sylvie said about footwork and being able to see is dead on. Maybe find a partner you can do some live drills with before sparring. Drill mobing outve the way footwork at a slower speed to get the timing down then speed it up. Practice being at your optimal range instead of stuck inside where you have to shell. Then practice shelling and giving (shell up as partner throws a whatever number combo-2-3 then return fire). You can also spar with limitations like jab only or lead side weapons only. That helps keep things lighter and gets you to think during the exercise. The way I set up sparring is designed to create a level of comfort with it. We usually start with dutch style 3 on 3 and 4 on 4 (the shell and go type drill) to get them accustomed to the hit (make it less concerning) then we move to limited sparring like jab only, lead side etc. I start adding weapons until they are going full bore. By then theyve calmed down and they can really explore. A lot of the stress of sparring is gone. And we try and spar every class, at least twice a week. Its not for everyone but Ive had a lot of success with it especially for hobbyists. The fighters have claimed its made them less jittery before competition too.

For me it is like this: modernity will run roughshod over and through traditions. It's just going to steamroll it all. If we who love Muay Thai aren't careful we will be like someone running out of a burning house grabbing only a few things to save. What do we want to save...because it's probably only going to be a few things that will last 20 or 30 years from now. Is what we save going to be the prohibition of women touching the ring (itself a modern invention), or is it going to be the marvelous men and techniques of an era that everyone agrees is the height of the sport. We are close to choosing the wrong thing to save. I believe women, and Thai female fighters in particular, and play instrumental roles in saving some of the most valued, most cherished parts of Muay Thai tradition. In the west we don't understand, nobody really cares or follows the reasoning of the bottom rope. Kaensak, a legend of the sport, thought Sylvie was joking when she told him to hold her mongkol in Thailand, so she could go under the bottom rope. We are saving the wrong things, and losing the important things. As to female fighting in the country, I take an ecological view. The female fighters of Thailand are the best there have ever been. It's a martial art, fighting art resource. We need to think ecologically about how to protect, and even grow that resource. If we do it can be a Ganges to female fighting all over the world.

It is going well. There are several levels to this. On one level we are just looking for sponsors for a year long monthly show. The sponsorship is important because the whole point is to infuse an already existing scene with structured financial incentive. At another level those there are more comprehensive plans that I believe can change the fate of female Muay Thai in Thailand, and possibly the world. Because we are looking for biggest impact this would require greater cooperation and just getting a few sponsors together. I have a plan that really could radically change things. At that level I think we really need a single, far visioned sponsor, rather than a handful. So I really looking for the right fit. There have been several businesses and people who have said they want to be involved, but not at the visionary level we need. So, right now we're holding out for the ideas that really might change everything. I really believe this could alter the fate of female Muay Thai, and maybe Muay Thai itself. I think this is the answer. The buy in to this would be a drop in the bucket for most advertising budgets of international brands, and the incentives huge. But getting these facts to the right ears is pretty hard to do. These are visionary ideas. Not leverage, but they are important parts of a growing narrative.

An easy question sometimes doesn't have an easy answer. Relax a bit more. Stored tension doesn't allow freedom of movement. Breathe, if you're not breathing it'll lead to tension. Improvement also depends experience. Become more familiar with what works for your body type e.g. are you long and lithe? Or are short and stocky? Nimble and quick or slow and ponderous?

Don't be afraid to ask your partner to calm down during sparring. It's a mutual exchange. If your partner is giving you no ground then there might be a problem somewhere.

Not to get too much into this, but this is something that happened to Stamp in her last fight, vs Janet Todd, in the 5th round. She was kind of broken by Janet, but she already had too big of a lead in that fight, so survived it. You could see it in the ring when they were waiting for the decision - Stamp looked defeated, Janet not - I discussed it on the Muay Thai Bones podcast. But in this fight it happened in the 4th round, and it was way, way more apparent. It was very evident. I give her credit, she didn't completely collapse, she stood resilient in the 5th throwing get-off-me counters (but hey, that didn't make up for what happened in the 4th. not by a mile for me). This is just an emotional flaw she has as a fighter, and the pressure of fights is bringing it out. All fighters have them, when they come out you can work on them, I hope she will! I've written elsewhere, I think Stamps clinch has been somewhat overrated, I've even overrated her. I think in the media it's maybe because of Loma's incredible skills in the clinch. Stamp is nowhere near Loma, like not even in the same world, in terms of clinch, and truthfully almost zero women, Thai or otherwise, are either. Maybe it's just fashionable to ascribe Loma-like qualities to Thai female fighters? Or, the way the highlights looked from Stamp's first fight for a title in ONE, when she faced someone who looked like they had never clinched in their life, maybe that's where it took root? (When you are ok in clinch, and you face a novice you can look like a magician.) In any case, Janet Todd who doesn't count clinch as a strength (I believe) completely neutralized Stamp, and then Alma did the something close to same, also someone who isn't a big fan of the clinch. That's two moderately skilled clinch fighters who stood up to her in the clinch. I will say that this neutralization, especially in the Alma fight, was GREATLY aided by incredibly fast clinch breaks by the ref. It was K1 style, nearly. The fight was basically kickboxing with elbows. If Alma had been forced to defend in the clinch for longer periods of time as she would have to in a normal Muay Thai fight in Thailand she probably would have gotten into some pretty big trouble. She was taking positions (partially turning herself to her opponent) that are serious no-nos in clinch. (Humorously, the announcers were praising Alma for this.) This alone showed that Stamp is really not an elite clinch fighter in that she was not able to take advantage of this, it's a very bad position. I do believe though that with extended clinch time, without the breaks, it would have eventually have spelled doom for Alma.

It seems that I am the odd man out on this topic. I have and still do practice the split personality. I am a practitioner of several martial arts but I was not in competition fighting so that may make the difference. I spent many years in law enforcement and executive protection. I learned the hard way after the first time a female managed to cut me that I had to change my attitude. I learned quickly to flip the switch. I can instantly go into a neutral mode to deal with situations. I no longer view people as male, female, friend, foe, young or old. You are just something to be dealt with without emotion or remorse. This does not mean without thinking though. I have been told that people could tell the exact moment when I went into this mode just by the way I look and present myself. I will say that sometimes it was hard to come out of this mode but with practice it just became like flipping a light switch. For me this is better than walking around being a asshat all of the time. I just don’t see how it could work any different for my position but I am sure as a fighter this is how I would operate. But that is the difference in the occupations I guess.

Wow, your answer was really thorough and insightful for me. I am getting more sparring now at my gym than I ever have in my 7 years in Thailand. I consider myself only moderately experienced in sparring, given that I've had access to it so infrequently. That said, I have also experienced more significant injuries from sparring than I have in fights, with the exception of cuts. My nose was broken in a fight only once, but in training 3 times. Sometimes shit happens and it's that we spend way more time training than we do in the ring, so the probability is a factor, but in every single case of my nose being broken, it was my sparring partner getting emotional. I'll take some responsibility for the last one, I got pretty emotional, too. But I couldn't do that kind of damage to him. Your point about it not transferring to the ring is so important. That's, for me, the whole question about hard versus light sparring - or really whatever it is that you're working on in sparring. If you need to be "tough" and that makes it into the ring, great. That's one of the things about watching Arjan Surat at Dejrat and how fucking hard he is on some of those fighters, is that you see them handle themselves in the ring and you're like, "oh, I know where he learned that." If it was just the hardness and the guys folded in the ring or were bullies in the ring, the exact same "great training" that I see would be shit training... for them.

@Kaitlin Rose Young Thanks for your perspective and congrats on your recent win. I apologize for my delayed response. I was quite at odds with your response, not because I disagree with it, but because I had a hard time thinking what that means for me and putting that into words. That was the path I was heading towards. I am usually the smallest and shortest in the room and I feel like I was spending the larger part of an one-hour class just covering my head, seldom actually on offense. I hated the experience and even get emotional from it. The thing I'm at odds with is that I still think I am with a good team and at a good place for training. It's just that I am too small, too easily breakable, and fear that I am going to be "discarded" when I do become broken (injured). I had been taking a break from sparring at my home gym (while still training there) and have been sparring at another gym every 2nd saturday. It helped a lot in terms of not being emotional about sparring. I am thinking of adding back sparring at my home gym into the mix. There has been 1 concussion (that I know of) so far this year. But I think some of the people that go especially hard has cycled out. So hope things get better.

Hi! I need some advice on how to handle my shame after losing my first fight. So, the fight was yesterday. I’ve had the date to work towards maybe six or seven weeks and I’ve trained like a freakin’ mothereffer. I’ve sparred at least four days a week with a lot of hard sparring with guys much better and bigger. My gym is quite big with several pros and national champs so I’ve really had the best possible chance to get good at this. Or at least good enough for a first fight. Leading up the fight I’ve been reading up on mental training and Sylvie and Kevin’s discussions on shame and fear and all of that. I haven’t been afraid and I’m tough physically. I’m tall and heavy and the guys go pretty hard at me so I’m pretty conditioned like that. The nerves have been manageable, every other day wondering if I’ve lost my mind for doing this and the next feeling like yeay this will be fun!! The goal was to breath have fun (and then of course win). Not to stand there with the shame. Anyhow, the bell rang and I leaved the room. Not really, my body was still in the ring and the other woman was punching and kicking and kneeing but I heard nothing and felt nothing. I vaguely heard kick and I kicked. Like in slow motion and without power. I so totally lost control of myself and my body and the whole situation. None of the sparring, NONE, has been anything near this experience. The closest situation I’ve been in where I’ve so totally lost control of my body was delivering my two children. But by the end of that I had a baby in my arms. And I did not have an audience seeing me lose my head. I picked up in the third and final round with a fuck it attitude since I’d already lost but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t totally dominate me. I’m not at all bruised today apart from my shins from kicking. Today I’m just leaved with such shame! I’m so ashamed. Not really for losing the fight but for not being in control of myself and the situation in front of all those people. I’m used to being super in control of things and myself and I can’t see how one ever could do anything rational or conscious in the state I was in. The fight was filmed but I can’t bare to watch it. Sorry about the essay. What are your experiences of your first fights and adrenaline rushes and losing your head? Thank you!

We were talking to Chatchai Sasakul, a fighter who fought so many of the greats in the Golden Age in Muay Thai, and then came into fame winning the WBC World Championship western boxing belt. He's in the Library here, and we are about to add another session with him. We were asking him why in his fight style back in the day he wasn't doing many of the things that he was advocating now. He said, "back then I didn't know". He looked at us like we were crazy, like "what do you think I've been doing for 20 years since I retired" or "of course I didn't know, I was young". It brought home for me one of the most special things about the Library. We talk about it as if it is preserving the literal techniques of the Golden Age, but it is much more than that. It's preserving those techniques AS they have undergone a period of reflection and refinement. If you talked to an active fighter you may very well get some very noteworthy pointers on how to fight. But if you talk to that fighter 15 or 20 years later you get something very different. You get those elements having passed through a very long stage of reflection. You get to see those elements, very often, taken up as craft. Sometimes, if that fighter has fallen out from the fight game entirely, like maybe someone like Samson Isaan (in the Library here), and who is a taxi driver, this is mostly the craft of recollection, of memory. What he knows and thinks about are all the things that worked for him, and probably some of the things that didn't work for him, things that had success against him. The whole thing goes into a process of memory's slow boil, low and slow, and what you get is a condensed essence of fight knowledge, his style, under refinement. Even if he isn't actively working on improving on or conveying his fighting style, it has been worked on by memory and reflection. It is the art of his style, his knowledge. On the other hand when you have someone like Sagat - you can find him in the Library here - this is someone who has been teaching Muay Thai for probably three decades. Not only is he bringing his fight style, the one he once had, but he has become a craftman about it. What he is teaching is a rarified, purified form of his fighting style, something that has been honed and polished over decades of communication and thought. What he is showing you in the ring today is very different than what he would have showed you 30 years ago. It is enhanced, has been worked on endlessly. Not in the "I've got to be a better teacher" way, but rather that each time you try to convey something you touch it a little, you change it, you add reflection on it. Sagat teaches a great deal of precision and correction on his strikes, as does Chatchai, who also has been teaching for years. Chatchai as a fighter would drift away on his jab. Today he insists, do not do this, this is stupid. I've seen Sagat incorporate things into his teaching that I know he recently has experienced - for instance he has been helping General Tunwakom teach Muay Lertrit lately. These internal elbows are now in his mind, as he teaches movements. Sagat is 60 years old, and his Muay is still evolving. I've watch Karuhat come up with brilliant throws, things he is simply inventing on the spot, feeling his way on, things I've never seen before, because Karuhat when he was a fighter in his gym would always be experimenting, stealing things from others, dreaming up new wrinkles. When we look back in time, through our telescope of the Library it isn't like how starlight is reaching us from far away, how it was years ago. It's instead coming to us with immediacy, having passed through the reflections of these men, as they have become craftsmen, working on the raw materials of their fight days, lifting it to art. Perhaps nobody is more like this than Master K, Sylvie's first instructor back in America. He's 80 years old now, and his Muay Thai is this incredible time capsule of Muay Thai before the Golden Age, the Muay Thai of the late 1960s 1970s. But...it also is filtered and hand sanded by the mind of a Thai man who was no longer in Thailand, reflected on, improved and dreamed up through watching the great boxers of the decades, long ruminations in his own basement kicking the bag until 2 AM, the result of a craft-work of elaboration and self-creation. I think that is what a lot of us miss. These men, all of these men, are producing the work of their mind, as artists, as creators, bringing to life and carrying forward a new thing. It isn't just their techniques, or even their fighting styles. It's the fecundity of the years since they stopped fighting. It is their meditation. What is also kind of incredible is that these ruminations, these craft-works, have been documented and continue to be documented. And that Sylvie has first hand seen them. You can see the full library here.

Of course and I have no contacts. Glad you see a way forward. I’m a fan of how Nike is handling themselves in the US (Colin K Jersey etc). Someone there has an advanced vision. Will watch how you do this happily.

Yeah Danger is an off brand made in Thailand (Id never heard of em either). The top king are actually made more for foreigners now (as opposed to Thais) so the sizes fit well. Those are mediums and they cover perfectly. Lol when I was a skater I used to put stickers on everything. Hard to steal something that personalised.

http://manufacturingmap.nikeinc.com/#

I agree. Alma had broken Stamp. I'm not saying this just because she's from my town. I was worried Stamp would clinch her up. Alma doesn't like that. But she nullified Stamp's attempts really well. I'm a fan of both women. Unusual decisions do indeed happen.

Yolanda is seriously underrated, she's beaten both Chommanee and Saifaa 2x. The problem is, these fighters are nowhere near their peak shape or skill-set. I don't think Chommanee trains much at all, to be honest. It's one of the big problems trying to assess the skills of the Thais, they are usually far removed from their best, most focused fighting years when they were much younger, and are not in life situations where they are motivated to get back to them. It's a great accomplishment to beat Chommanee, but she also isn't really "Chommanee" any longer, I fear.

That was a very painful fight to watch, at a personal level, because I do pull for Stamp and cheer for her. You can make all sorts of technical arguments for who added up the most rounds (points) for either fighter, but a fighter should not win a close fight with the kind of emotional performance Stamp had in that 4th round. She was not gassed, she was defeated and showed it, not even returning to her corner. That was a serious dis-qualifier to me, not her best performance. Hopefully it makes her stronger and she grew from it. Alma won that fight in my book, mostly due to that 4th round, and I suspect that Stamp also felt that in her heart as well. But, unusual decisions is kind of par for the course in the world of fighting. What can you say.

I think the shame you feel comes from your expectation of how you would perform, given that you had been able to perform well sparring with the guys at your gym. You know, I felt shame even when I won. Because there were things that I thought I should be able to do but couldn't. When I told that to my coach, he said that you will always feel that (having things you should be able to do/do better) unless you have a 1 second KO. In contrast, I had lost in an open tournament against an opponent with 10 fights when I had only 1 fight at the time. I was outmatched and got dominated the whole time. It was a tough beating to take. But I didn't feel shame. While I didn't go in expecting to lose, I didn't actually hold any expectation to win OR lose. It might be rare situation to never have expectations of yourself. What makes fighting beautiful is perhaps that dignity is on the line. But maybe while you feel shame, you may also remember pride at the same time. A CBT technique I have used is that I save screenshots of the fight of moments that made me feel proud, and whenever that feeling of shame rises up, I look at those screenshots to teach myself to recognize pride as well. Not to override shame, but to have both shame and pride at the same time (if you've watched cartoon movie "inside out", it's kinda at the end when Joy and Sadness both touch the memory ball). Kudos for having your first fight

Top King are super nice. Closer to the shin than my poofy ones. I’d love to try them but I wonder about my leg length; they look short & I’m long (plus I just dropped $ on the Yokkao’s so obviously cannot). Can’t see the gloves too well. “Danger”? Gloves nice & banged up. The best. Shin guards are, sorry to be an artist about it, but they’re kind of beautiful.

There is! The Karuhat Intensive was it's own project. It was made possible by Patreon support, but it is not part of the Muay Thai Library. Instead, because we wanted to find a way to raise money in direct support of legends themselves we created the Sylvie Study On Demand Page on Vimeo. 100% of the net profits flow to the legends in the project. The 30+ hours of commentary work with Karuhat is all there. You can purchase or rent access to individual videos, or you can subscribe to the entire series by the month, and have access to all of them. It's kind of incredible. Karuhat had one of the most subtle and almost undefineable styles as a fighter, and the entire style philosophy and its techniques are laid out in these videos. No fighter's style has ever been so well documented, ever. Not only that, there are 6 hours of Yodkhunpon The Elbow Hunter also included in the same series. As a patron you get a discount on these series videos (see at bottom here). We also put up an entire website as home to more intensive projects and Muay Thai study, you can see that here: Sylvie Study. I'm not sure if you've already watched all the Karuhat videos in the Patreon Muay Thai Library itself, which you can see as a patron. Karuhat is the most archived legend in the Library. You can find all of the archive videos here in the Table of Contents. A control F page search can help you find content on that page. But for convenience here are the Karuhat Library entries: Bonus Session 1: Karuhat Sor. Supawan | Advanced Switching Footwork | 60 min - watch it here This is a beautiful session in which Karuhat expands on his switching style, having moved me from standard to southpaw in a previous session. #7 Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Be Like Sand (62 min) watch it here 2x Golden Age Lumpinee Champion (112 lb and 122 lbs), Karuhat is considered elite among the elites. Mixing an explosive style with constant off-balances, angling, and melting aways, he was nicknamed the Ultimate Wizard. I can only describe the things he's teaching here as: Be like sand. This is very subtle, advanced stuff, far above combo techniques or specific defenses. It may take a few viewings to absorb what he is teaching. Everytime I watch this I learn something new. #11 Karuhat Sor. Supawan Session 2 - Float and Shock (82 min) watch it here In this session one of the greatest fighters who ever lived really digs into what must lie beneath techniques, a general state of relaxation and rhythm, the thing that made him one of the most dynamic fighters Lumpinee has ever seen. #20 Karuhat Sor Supawan - Switching To Southpaw (144 min) watch it here 2x Lumpinee Champion Karuhat Sor. Supawan in this epic video posts installs a limited Southpaw core which leads to developing high level ideas found in his switching style: tracking and attacking the open side, watching for and dictating weight transfer. This is the blueprint of a legend's acclaimed fighting style. #27 Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Tension & Kicking Dynamics (104 min) watch it here Karuhat, a fighter with perhaps the slickest style of any Golden Age great, shows the importance of tension, and patiently goes through correcting the kick, making it quicker and much harder to read. #50 Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Serpentine Knees & Flow (62 min) watch it here The legendary Karuhat teaches his winding, advancing style, a culmination of many, many hours of our training together. You get a glimpse into his advanced movements, and his philosophy on reading opponents. #109 The Karuhat Rosetta Stone - The Secrets of the Matador (83 min) This session is somethign of a rosetta stone for all the other sessions. A few years past since we filmed with him, Sylvie still training with him periodically, so we took this session as an opportunity to cover the past techniques, using Sylvie's years long study of them as a way to open them up, and make them more undestandable. Bonus Session 7: Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Forward Check | 39 min - watch it here In this session Karuhat teaches his beautiful and unique Forward Check, and the system of attacks that flow out of it in his fighting style. You can read my detailed post in the Forward Check here. This check, aggressively from Southpaw, versus Orthodox fighters eats up space closes distance, effectively deal with one of the primary weaknesses of Southpaw attack. That makes 40 hours of Karuhat instruction available between both the Muay Thai Library and the Sylvie Study project. Insane. You can find the promocodes for the Karuhat Intensive down below: Patreon Promocodes: As a patron, depending on your tier you can be eligible for discounts on these purchases. $5 patrons get 15% (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17837199 ) of these purchases, and $15 patrons get 50% (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17837342 ) of of these purchases. The intensive series is supported by patrons.

I had my first sparring tournament a little over a week ago and lost. She was a good bit smaller than me so I’ve taken a bit of ribbing from my coaches. I’m not sure if I feel shame but I do feel a little bit of frustration and maybe some embarrassment for not using the tools I know I have. Im chalking it up to first time jitters and hoping next time my nerves calm down a bit. I’ve only been training for a year so I guess I can hardly expect my first experience with someone outside my gym to be a stellar performance. Lol I’m any case, I’m telling myself that many people who train Muay Thai or other combat sports never step in to any sort of competition. I won a different kind of battle by being incredibly nervous and doing it anyway. Good on you for doing the same. The hardest one is behind you and now you know what to expect a bit more.

Hi and thanks for your reply and encourageing words! (And also sorry for the enormous font of my text. At least that’s what it looks like on my phone. Not sure how that happened. Don’t mean to be screaming at you:)) Two days later I’ve calmed down. I’ve been agonising and hiding and trying to put it in perspective. Last night I managed to watch the fight and it wasn’t at all bad. Well it wasn’t what I know I can do in training and I can se how my waiting for openings looks like I’m passive etc etc but it wasn’t at all in relation to the shame I felt. She did not humiliate me. I was just too passive at times. As you say ones feelings about something doesn’t make that something true. And my feelings said that I hadn’t landed anything, that going blank had leaved me with absolutely no skills or weapons what so ever. But seeing the fight showed that that wasn’t true. And I can almost feel a bit proud of fighting my first fight. I read your reply Sunday, still so sore I couldn’t really take it to heart. Reading it again today it all rings true. My hard work hasn’t been in vain and this doesn’t mean I can’t ever control myself. The whole situation also makes me think of something you’ve written about that failures aren’t necessarily your true self. Which it feels like when they happen. Thank you!! So, good news! I can go back to my gym haha!

Lisa... this never goes away. It changes, like you have only a moment of shame, or glimpses of shame, or rounds of shame, or you feel it like an echo... but it never fully goes away. And there are times you don't have it, when fights go great and you feel awesome, and then it appears again and your thoughts are "what the f***, I thought I was over this." It's okay. Firstly, the fact that you fought yesterday and are already trying to get over your shame is a really good sign. The thoughts and emotions are still fresh, so it's a bit raw feeling, but lots of folks try to hold on to those shitty feelings for a long, long time because they feel like they SHOULD be ashamed, even when it's time to let those feelings go. It's good to feel them for a short time, I think. They have meaning. But the feelings and the fight are not necessarily a 1+1 equation. Consider this: when you're sparring in your gym, you know everybody. You know the space. You know that you're training, even really hard sparring has a slightly different intention and emotion to it. "Doing well," or whatever you tell yourself in training is under conditions that are not as similar to a fight as we think they are. We think creating the physical conditions, like getting hit a lot, will prepare us. But the emotional unknowns are a big deal. It's incredibly hard to recreate those in familiar spaces. So the fact that you blanked in your fight is not unusual at all. The way I see it, if you hadn't put in the work and then blanked in the fight, that's shameful. Folks who don't put in the work, that's a shame. But you get to keep all the hard work you put in in the gym beforehand. Losing a fight doesn't change any of that. Kevin and I call it "shitting the bed," when a fight just goes totally the wrong direction from what you know you're capable of. If you wake up and you've shit the bed, you're embarrassed and ashamed, don't want anyone to see it are afraid they will, etc. But it doesn't mean you don't know how to control yourself. It means the conditions for that situation to take place were all in line. There's nothing wrong with you to have performed the way you did. There's nothing wrong with you to feel the way you do. But don't hold either of those as permanent states. Just wash the sheets and move on.

Sounds like a lot of injuries there, both of you! I would imagine that the occasional concussion/injury would occur in training simply by a bit of bad luck - but I agree with Kaitlinerose - 5 in a short time sounds like something is Not Right, unless there has been a run of genuine mistakes and bad luck (just as in any vigorous sport, however well regulated, there's always going to be the occasional statistical blip where there is a run of people getting hurt). Take care.

Yes, that is way too much in my opinion. There is no need for that. It sounds like the culture in that particular practice probably values "winning," and using physical attributes to do so, rather than skill development. I'm all for the occasional hard spar, but it needs to be between two people of similar size and experience. Sparring in a manner that creates concussions with such frequency is both unnecessarily AND it trains people to be fearful strikers. If we need to survive in our home gym, we will only ever work our A game and defense. We will not be able to risk the costs of potentially being hit while we develop our B and C game. If you are a smaller person in a room like that, it is a good way to never really develop striking and potentially receive career ending injuries. It would be like trying to learn by only taking tests, with no actual lessons. Now, it's important to take tests here or there (fights) but if that's all we do, we stunt our growth. The team I spent many years with prior to working with a Thai trainer was exactly like that. I suffered multiple broken noses, several cuts, separated ribs, a separated shoulder, a broken hand, and a couple of popped MCLs. I was injured in that room more than I ever was in a fight. Since leaving that group, my injuries have been incredibly rare and my performances have been better than ever. Here's the crazy thing, almost none of the guys in that room were finishing people with strikes. It wasn't transfering to the ring. The big guys had become accustomed to using their power on smaller people that they did not have on their opponents, and the smaller guys would give opponents too much respect as they were used to being hit harder than an opponent their size ever could. The team I work with now does primarily timing sparring, with harder rounds here or there against similar size/experience teammates. Our results are WAY more consistent, and even the big guys have a very high KO ratio. It's not just safer training, it's more effective.