Leaderboard

Interesting post. I'm curious to see what others post. I think the main thing I have seen is the constant competition and pressure to "make the grade" (be good enough to be accepted). Being "tough" is something that is ingrained in a lot of us from a very young age and most of us have no support network. Most women I know have a good support network if they have a bad day or something goes wrong in their life; men are left to struggle through on their own. We don't help each other out or support each other when something goes wrong. Instead the answer is to simply learn to deal with it and do better. That's a lot of pressure, especially if you are having a tough time and already feeling down.

I just got absorbed by it. It's like this destructive super-passionate relationship I keep coming back to even though I keep getting hurt and the guy is a dick but all other sports I ever loved are friendzoned forever. Mainly I love being in the gym. Or having a gym to go to. It gives me a purpose and feeling of improvement even though work might suck or other stuff in life might suck. Muay thai allows me to get out of my head and into my body. I like the feeling of being sweaty. The sounds of someone kicking pads. I love the feeling of pushing through exhaustion. Of always hurting a little bit. The constant presence of pain makes me feel alive. I like the physical closeness in the gym, with other students, with the trainer. To discover movements and skills I practiced suddenly becoming available to me. I learn so much and I discover so many things about me and others that I could never have understood in any other way than physically experience it. I learn patience. I learn how good things and beautiful things are parallel to pain and frustration. I get the physical experience of hard work pays off. I learn about violence and I discover my own violence. And I really like gym when people don't talk much. When bodies do the talking.

Thanks for sharing this is really interesting. To be accepted, meaning be accepted by the other guys right? Or if it's a mixed gym, does it matter what the women think at all? Or you want to seem impressive to the girls to be respected by the guys? Because as a woman, most of the time all you want is for the guys to accept you as well. Much more so than other girls accepting you. Re the support system, I think most of us simply think it's a chosen thing. That you don't need people. But of course we all need people. I guess this is why they say men are usually worse off after a divorce than women, simply because the woman did all the relationship building and maintenance with their common friends and without her the man suddenly finds himself alone.

For me it's simply relaxing. It's healthy (from a fitness perspective), and it just makes me happy. In a weird way its like a physical form of painting. I get to express myself through my movement and style. I also love the challenge of trying to perfect different movements and make things fluid.

I grew up with a guy as my best friend and hanging out with him and his friends was sometimes just about taking the piss out of one guy until he lost his temper or started crying. It was so insanely brutal and I never wanted to be part of it. In retrospect though I wished I had been hardened like that would've helped me a lot, especially in the gym. Regarding sparring with girls yeah we know. And we use it to our advantage all the time. We know the guy can't go too hard without looking bad. However I've sparred with a guy I knew was angry with me and it's pretty uncomfortable knowing he can kill you if he wants. But nothing is worse than the heavy tall dude who has no control. Thanks for your post.

Hmmmm....... I love it because of the freedom it allows. You don't get that freedom from Karate, etc. That's my opinion. The freedom one gets from expressing their muay. It becomes integral to your state of being, of who you are. Once someone discovers the difference of feeling of training, teaching muay thai as opposed to kickboxing, I believe their lives change. I might be rambling, as this is just coming straight from the heart. I enjoyed my Karate, Kickboxing etc, but I love muay thai. At least as I understand muay thai. My understanding is my own, and will be totally different to anyone else's. They say this feeling can be achieved in other martial arts, but I never experienced that feeling. That's why I gave away karate. When I go to sleep I dream muay thai, I think continually about muay thai and how it can benefit everyone. If I was the all,powerful emperor Ming, I would decree that it should be in every school's phys. ed. programme.

This is something that keeps popping up for me. Why do you do muay thai? Whether you are just training for fun or fitness or if you are career fighter, i wanna understand why muay thai? I find myself asking if its "right" or of "net benefit" training and fighting, I'm coaching and i see loads of positives. Fitness, friendships, motivation to eat well and take care of your body. Challenging mental and physical to another level. I also see negatives from severe weight cutting, to deaths in the sport, head trauma, long term injuries. I wonder if influencing kids in the west to train or compete in muay thai is a net benefit, as well as adults. Hearing your experiences is what I'm hoping for. Good or bad. This is what i do for a living, and Ive been doing some soul searching lately.

There's a female only section on this forum which is very helpful for women training muay thai. But for a long time I've been wondering about issues men face in the gym. Where I train there are mainly guys. Young boys up to very experienced fighters. I watch them train and spar and bond. I see escalated aggression. Frustration. Inexperienced boys being pushed around learning to control the temper. I see bromance. I see all this touching (is this a thai or universal thing stroking each other's butts?). I see language confusion. Dominance. I see guys being laughed at for being chubby. I see guys not knowing how to clinch with a girl or whether to go hard when sparring. I see westerners trying to seek approval from thai trainers. I would be very interested to hear about common struggles men face in the gym.

Like women, men do face a lot of pressure. I don't want to sound old, however back in the day, if you weren't supreme alpha in your attitude and full of testosterone you were really behind the eight ball. This wasn't at every gym/stable but it was pretty prevalent. Now days, I feel the pressure is still on men to perform as men, ie. stereotypes. As a man you're expected to be able to fight to some degree. You can see this phenomenon mainly in new comers. Plus they want to fit in. They will fit in over time, but the bromance thing you speak of, is a bond made from blood, sweat, and spew. Men in general aren't that hard to work out. We generally take the piss out of each other as a way of cementing our friendship. We say things to one another that to a woman may seem incongruous with deep seated friendship. As a rule of thumb the more piss you take out of someone, the more you like them. When it comes to training with women, some men do find it hard. Not because of any bias, it's just because you know if you get stuck with a dickhead bloke, (especially in sparring), you can always belt him. Now, if that dickhead is a woman, that presents a conundrum. As well, if you are training with a woman and she gets hurt, automatically the man is looked at as an arsehole. I can only comment on the things I've seen over the years and general observations.

At least part of what keeps me coming back is the way that the fear/adrenaline/exertion of training do wonders to stave off anxiety and depression. It also give my life a certain continuity in that I have something that I can feel like I've improved at every day.

Amazing guys, thank you for the tip. I will check out FA Group as well, and report my experience back to you all. The ‘vibe’ thing is an interesting situation in Thailand... It seems to me that usually when the ‘head coach’ or gym manager is not around, the trainers can be a little different.... Thank you so much for your input!

Agreeing with this, you could take the MRT to Chatuchak. I tried FA group and the trainers, especially Kru Diesel, are great. They also usually have girls training of various sizes. Lots of clinching. They have a photographer coming each afternoon so it's easy to follow current clientele on Facebook. I went to a different gym as their training schedule didn't match mine. I must say I felt the vibe was a bit off when I was there but could've been my own projection or just the people training there at that time.

I brought one of my dogs with me (I intend to bring the other eventually). The biggest thing is making sure you can get them back to your home country in case something unexpected happens. It can be really expensive, but there are a few services here that will help out with information and transport. You definitely need to be careful about soi dogs here. I've gotten into it with the ones in my neighborhood a few times, but luckily they haven't been able to take any bites out of my dog. Socializing dogs here can also be a problem as most of the city isn't really dog friendly. This means most people don't like dogs, and the dogs you will run into aren't used to being around other dogs. I've gotten really lucky with the apartment I live in (there are a lot of dogs here and all the owners seem to be relatively well educated and open to socializing their dogs). That definitely is not the norm though.