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I just want to say, as someone who has supported Sylvie, and has been blown away by everything she is and does, my number 1 thing is, just commit, just dive in, just push every line. I'm serious. Every fight is precious, congrats on 30, but even well past 200 we savor every single one. Once fighting is done every one will be a gem in your mind, something taught in a way that nothing else can teach. I say - knowing nothing else - stop teaching, just push your training, save up, come to Thailand for 3 months, 6 months, a year. There is just nothing like it in the world. The country lives and breathes the art. It soaks into everyone. Motorcycle taxi drivers know more about Muay Thai than most western krus (no offense, it's just part of their fluency, their literacy). We overcame a lot to get here. We lived hours away from training. I recall us back in NY on one particularly bad winter's day driving literally 4 hours through the snow to get to a sparring session that lasted 15 minutes, and then 4 hours back. That's 8 hours of travel for 15 minutes of training. It was that bad. I just say you gotta take the jump, throw yourself at your passion. Go on a thin, thin budget, take extra work, and just get the hell to Thailand. Don't go to a bullshit camp, go to a living camp, and feel it. Kill yourself on the bags, the pads, get some fights. Stop training others. You are part way up a huge, huge mountain. When looking down at those below you you forget just how high you want to climb. Put your eyes up, up, up. 30 fights outside of Thailand is no joke. You're heart is in this. note: the above is complete bullshit in the sense I don't know your life, and all the things that may feel very "complicated" to you, but it's my natural response to the feeling I get off of your post...so not bullshit at all.

He's actually really shy about the camera, and we've hardly filmed him because of it. We definitely want him in the archive, because it's a historic record, but it would have to be done differently than any other entry, simply because he works so much with Sylvie, and 99% of it is just grinding, very slow cook But, thank you for the suggestion, it's good to be reminded. Maybe instead of one hour session, we could maybe film small segments over time and put them all together.

Dude, if wanna fight..... then fight. Put all the effort you possibly can into living your dream. Don't make the mistake as many of us make and look back over the years and say.... if only. Once your fighting days are over, then teach. Go hard while you can.

For me, it's especially all the show act surrounding the actual fighting that really pisses me off by now. I didn't ever closely follow the UFC but nowadays I hardly ever watch anything UFC. I remember someone posting this press conference that happened before the Mc Greggor vs Nurmagomedov fight on a martial arts forum I sometimes visit and I just couldn't take it.... then I found a video of 3 hours of circus music on youtube and tried again with that playing in the background. Finally I was able to watch it... I think that kind of sums up my opinion on this topic and I didn't really say anything about the actual fights. Watching Muay Thai (and also Kickboxing) has actually become much more interesting to me. That might have to do with actually having more insight from personal practice of course.

I hate wearing shinguards. I don't wear them anymore at my gyms or when I just train with my coach outside. I don't like wearing any kind of protective gear anymore to be honest, not even gloves. It just feels unnecessary bulky and in the way like swimming with all your clothes on. I also happen to have grown fond of both the pain I feel and the pain I inflict when bones hit bones. It's so satisfying to see your partner wince from the contact while you barely felt anything. Or you actually felt something big time and you loved it! Getting more exalted as a result. In both instances your partner usually freaks out/back down. Besides it really does help better with learning control and distance not to wear anything. When I kick kinda too hard at the wrong distance and the part of myself that lands on the other's bone isn't my shin but my foot, I can assure you I feel like screaming and will remember it. If I do the same with shinguards, I will probably not feel the sting at all. My body and mind might not learn the lesson. Might get longer to sink in. Really, protective gears annoy me so much now. I don't even wear bands anymore. I'm no expert at all so I'm not saying I'm right. I just find them useless for the kind of person I would like to become, and the kind of enjoyment I get out of not wearing anything. I even envy men who can train in pants barechested. You're not as free to be that naked when you're a woman, for several (kinda obvious) reasons I can't be bother to list out.

Eyes change when you spend a ton of time looking at a particular fighting aesthetic. You see things you would never have before, and you ignore things that otherwise would have been interesting. I don't know what happened, but the UFC just got very, very boring to watch. A lot of it has to do with MMA spacing, which involves lots of circling out, some of it has to do with the relentless hyping of every fighter as the greatest, or the baddest, or whatever. Ugh. It's exhausting. And, then some of it is what Sylvie said. I know people have enthusiasm for hybrid rules, and a whole new fighting style, but in some ways it feels like someone made up a sport called "basket-baseball-foot" mashing together basketball, Baseball and football. Yeah, putting the skills of each into one sport definitely makes you have to compromise and modify, but what I really miss are acme performances seen in the reflected history of decades and decades of development. It also is a little disappointing that the UFC hasn't really see a single high level, elite Muay Thai fighter, ever. The picture most fans have of Muay Thai in the UFC is basically just versions of western kickboxing, which isn't Muay Thai at all. I wish I enjoyed it more. I miss the good ol' days of the WEC, when we were just falling in love with Muay Thai.

I watch my trainers let someone be "wrong" for a really, really long time with no correction. Then they'll make a small correction, enforce it, and then let it go. Kevin's reference to the Inner Game of Tennis is really good because it's about the learning process, and correction, critique, and commentating really don't help that at all. Very often, people are already over-thinking and not feeling, so over-verbalizing is counter-productive. But in terms of where the line is, to me the most important aspect was raised by LengLeng: did this person ask? If you offer a small point, unsolicited, did they then ask for more?

I don't mean to imply that ALL of Muay Thai is not aggressive. The point I try to make is that aggressiveness is not in and of itself a positive quality, but dominance always is. Sometimes that looks aggressive. Dieselnoi was aggressive; violent, even. I love him. Rotdang is fun to watch, he's very "aggressive," but also unaffected when he's hit back. Kevin and I used to follow the UFC, we don't anymore. The fights just aren't as good, as far as my eyes go nowdays. That's fine, it's just not interesting to me anymore. Even when I was watching it pretty regularly, the problem with MMA in general to me was the caliber of knowledge from each fighter was pretty low. It's like being able to ask where the bathroom is in 5 different languages, but can't hold a conversation in any of them. But there are some fighters who had depth of knowledge in one martial art, like Lyoto Machida. He was interesting to watch. Rousey, before she tried to become more "well rounded" with shitty boxing, she was interesting to watch as Judo player against very different skills.

Greetings all, This is my first post on the forum. So id like to take the time to say hello! I am looking for the groups opinion and advice to a little problem/situation I have run into over the last few years. In the first handful of years training/fighting I spend the early mornings before my 8-5 office job for a jog/bag work/ solo training. Then its off to work then anther 1-3 hours of training with my teammates. I about 30 or so fights later I spend most of my time teaching classes and training the more greener and novice fighters. Lately I have been trying to find a balance to make my own training more of priory. The last 4 months I have been commuting into Chicago 2-3 days a week which is about a 1.5 hour commute both ways after work. That has become very exhausting task with many late nights. Lately its been hard to find a balance between teaching/training in my hometown and making a commute to try and upgrade my game. At times it steals the passion and true love I have for Muay Thai and Kickboxing away from me. I have taken a brief trip to Thailand after college about 3 years ago for a handful of weeks I often dream about return for a longer period of time but life always seems to get in the way. Well there is my sob story. LOL Can anyone share any common experiences and have any advice or uplifting words of encouragement? Best!

Highlights.... Ok.... maybe not boxing vids but Bas at his finest lol.

The grandiosity of the spectacle gets to me. The real or imagined animosity between fighters gets to me. The lack of humbleness some of the fighter have about them gets to me. Basically everything about it gets to me.

this was an amazing read thank you so much

That's actually an expression I have used myself as well, "too American". I'm not saying "American" is a bad thing in and off itself, its just this kind of.... totally overdone, over the top "Americanism" that I hate. I do actually sometimes watch MMA on different promotions where for me it feels more like ... I don't know... more like a martial arts event instead of a circus show. This "style" of presentation seems to be wanted by the powers that be in the UFC, people like Connor play into this kinda thing very well of course and Dana White seems to totally be in support of stuff like that so I don't see it changing anytime soon. Like in this press conference I mentioned, Dana wasn't even TRYING to look unbiased or serious but instead totally played into and supported Connor's clowning around. I mean it's ok to still be a funny guy even if you're in charge of some kind of event. Like my boss ( a few levels up, not direct boss) at work who will sometimes crack a joke when asked something during a presentation before he gets back to serious and actually answers but that kinda stuff happening in the UFC I just can't stand and can't take seriously.

To all my American friends on here, I apologise fro what is about to come out of my fingers. The UFC and all it's hype and associated bullshit is just way too American for me. It reminds me of WWF, which was okay when I was ten. Plus, I honestly think it lacks a certain kind of purity.

What are Bas Rutten's boxing tapes like, what did they give you?

Is there a reason you can’t reduce your teaching and increase your own training? If your job demand increased ( ie commuting to Chicago) then it makes sense you need to reduce the teaching.

I haven't seen a lot of drilling without shinguards in my gym here in Germany but my experience is certainly limited. We never used shinguards when training Kali though. Of course we also kicked less than you do in Muay Thai. It does help with control though. I think a good way to go might be a rule our Kali-trainer gave us for drills that involved taking direct hits that could potentially be damaging or cause long time bruising. An example was front kicks to the stomach-area where one partner would practice the kick and the other would just take it on the stomach to practice breathing and flexing the stomach muscles with good timing. The rule was: start low intensity and the one on the receiving end gives the commands. The only two commands allowed are "good" if intensity is fine or "harder" if intensity is too low. The idea is that this way it should be possible to train well and increase intensity without it ever getting TOO hard. Remember: you'll do this taking turns so the next kick will be yours to take!

Ramsey Dewey said recently that corrections are the lowest form of coaching, and to an extent I agree. If you go to a muay thai class and look at the guys sparring, you see them sweeping kicks, teeping, countering well and it's not like those techniques are specifically drilled again and again (especially when it comes to sweeps) with meticulous corrections to perfect it. Unless you're doing something quite wrong, everything falls into place with practise and time!

I think it's good that you ask about these stuff. Some people are hungry for advice, some people learn better without too much interference. So I guess it's about feeling your way forward. My husband is a crossfit coach and I join his classes now and then. Some time back in one of his classes I saw a woman doing squats with a weird form. Since I think I know everything about squat depth I tried to get the attention of my husband and sort of whispered that he should check on her form. He just brushed me off. And afterwards he told me she squats like this because she has this injury she is struggling with. And I realised it was definitely not my place to think I could have any educated opinion on how she should move just from joining one class with her and that I shouldn't think I know my husband's work better than him.

Glad to hear it’s not uncommon ( I sometime practice footwork in my kitchen )

@guyver4 there is a thread I started on this called Unsolicited advice during training which might give you some views. Is your gym a place where people give each other feedback a lot? If it is I guess you just need to "feel" where the line is. Otherwise I would let these questions guide me: 1. Am I a teacher with a mandate to teach instructions? 2. Did this person ask for my advice? 3. Am I really experienced enough to know how to teach this particular movement/technique? 4. Why do I have this urge to give feedback to this person? Do I really want to help or does it originate from my own desire to seem knowledgeable? Learning is an individual thing. Gyms are full with people who overestimate their own knowledge and enthusiastically share their knowledge with others in a way that is not constructive.

Hey! I stayed there at the end of last year for about two months. I wrote about my personnal experience which was nothing short of wonderful in the following thread. Check it out:

There's a reason that boxing has been dominated by Black and Latin Americans in the states, and it's the same reason it was dominated by Jewish Americans in the 30s-40s. Same goes for the best Japanese fighters in karate/judo come from run down parts of Tokyo and Osaka. The rougher a neighbourhood you grow up in, the more likely getting into fights doesn't scare you, especially if you were the sort of kid who looked for trouble or hung with a bad crowd. The best example of this I can think of is Dagestan, which is probably the most dominant area in sports. This tiny part of Russia of 3 million people have not only dominated wrestling and sambo at the olympics and other international competition while representing Russia, but plenty of countries have Dagestani's who medalled for them. Which is insane, they are still a minority in terms of participants in wrestling, but have probably the biggest amount of medals proportionate to their size. I don't think it's a coincidence that they are also in one of the roughest, parts of the world, where every day has the threat of terrorism and/or war. While there are probably some, I can't really think off the top of my head any Muay Thai, MMA or boxing fighters in the UK who have come from an affluent area like Central or West London, Brighton etc. There are some, I'm sure, but I can name many from East and South London, Manchester, Leeds, etc. You generally don't take up getting hit in the face as your career unless it seems like a great opportunity for you, and if you come from a wealthier background, or have more job opportunity surrounding you, you're going to go for that.

Taught my first class, post heart attack, today. Struggled a bit with the breathing but all things considered, I reckon I pulled up ok.