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Nah. Biggest difference between the two? Actually the hardest thing to spot at first glance in my early days when just starting out. But when you see it you can't unsee it. It's the rhythm. And that rhythm at the fighter's core bleeds into everything produced by his Thai style. The rhythm of the little footsteps, weight distribution, the silkiness of his defence, the nuanced pliancy of the whole thing. The guard is totally different, the stance is totally different. There's almost a musicality to the whole thing - similar to how a good musician has a rock solid internal chronometer, he always knows exactly where he is relative to the beat, and that's the level of being a badass - where he can play against his own time, which is why syncopation works so effectively, and he can always seemlessly return to sender. The feel or sensibilities are what make Thai unique among striking sports. Most kickboxers are like musicians with an over emphasis on melody and underemphasis on rhythm. Again no disrespect to kickboxers, it's also an enjoyable sport to watch, and those guys work very hard.

Hi everyone, Just wanted to share my finished at home gym! all second hand gear that I’ve picked up in different places. now, just to use this space anyone else wanna share their home gyms? Or fave place to train

I'm reading a really informative and well-written study of the Maechi (or Mae Chii) of Thailand, MAKING FIELDS OF MERIT Buddhist Female Ascetics and Gendered Orders in Thailand, you can download it here (300+ pages): MAKING_FIELDS_OF_MERIT.pdf It details the field study of a class of women in Thailand who have devoted themselves to religious pursuits, vowing celibacy, taking on the ascetic life. They are often referred to as "nuns" in rough cultural approximation, and exist in a kind of no-mans-land of social status. Women cannot ordain as monks (Bhikkhunī) in Thailand, even though historically Bhikkhunī existed for centuries after Buddha established the order, largely due to a much argued over technicality in the laws of ordination. I'm not hear to discuss that dispute, but rather draw an compelling parallel between the struggles of religiously devoted women in Thailand, the female fighters as well. I am not making these equal ambitions, but suggesting that this study draws out facts about the Maechi struggle that shed light into the nature of Muay Thai and the deeper social significance it plays in Thailand's culture. In making the Maechai situation clear, some aspects of gendered Muay Thai also become clear. I'm going to try and cut to the chase a bit, and not build out too much context. Maybe more context can be added in responses, or in a coming Muay Thai Bones podcast where it might be great to discuss this with Sylvie. I'm going to focus my thoughts on just two short passages. The first describes the "Ideal Male" in Thai culture, in the context of expected short terms stays in monk hood by most males in the society. And the second speaks of the dismissive position Maechi find themselves in, having renounced worldly attachments and devoted themselves to religiosity. On the Ideal Male The key sentence for me is the last sentence of the first paragraph. The "ideal male is an ex-monk who is an householder". In the flow of society, the ideal male proves his ability to abstain, to have self-control --- for a short period of time --- than then assumes the householder position having proven, or graduated into adulthood. It is important that the author is making a kind of discrimination of what "ideal" means. In the stronger sense of ideality, monks in their life long self-control, form the ideal, but in a more connotative, practical sense, it is the process of touching upon that ideal, and then taking your place running a household, that is the ideal. On the Non-Ideal Female Here is where it gets really interesting, and indeed painful. While striving toward what one would assume is a genderless Buddhistic ideal, non-attachment and religious devotion, Maechi are actually downgraded and cast as social failures. They are, by a stereotype, heartbroken or destitute in some way, falling out of their gendered role, and simply taking the refuge of Buddhism (ironically enough, in the pledge you make to convert to Buddhism in Thailand you are asked to take the Sangha,the "Church" so to speak, as your refuge). While men are lauded for their self-control, even for a short period of time, Thai women can be doubted and even side-glanced. The Maechi and Nakmuay Ying This double standard as to devotion to self-control commitments, and assuming social roles plays out in very suggestive way when we shine the same light onto Muay Thai, not just as a sport, but as a social art of self-cultivation and individuation. To understand more on how the Nak Muay personifies some of the same values and experiences of monkhood for Thai boys and men, read: Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail. It's enough to say that one of the main fabrics of Muay Thai, not only in it's aesthetic, but also in it's core coming of age experience, of boys becoming men, is the hypermasculine way it asks a fighter to embody self-control. This falls directly in line with the ideal of masculinity expressed in the passage into monkhood by Thai men. (And this is one reason why international kickboxing inspired "beast mode" fighting aesthetics being projected onto Muay Thai in Thailand are so painfully tearing at the very meaning of what Muay Thai is.) In any Muay Thai gym in Thailand that is raising young Thai fighters you are witnessing the same self-control project that is expressed through monk hood. In monk hood this self-control is perhaps quite widely stereotyped as sexual desire (though it is much more than this, of course), in the Nak Muay it is controlling the extremes of emotion (anger, tears at loss or physical pain, overt pride). These are both projects of control. Control yourself, then become a man. Young teen Thai fighters are also often denied girlfriends, and one of the reasons why females were kept out of traditional gyms is likely related to this same "self-control" project of personal transformation. The question I'm opening up is found in the rough parallel between the fact that the same self-control project when taken up by Maechi (Thai female religious devotees) is not taken up as admired, or in some important sense of even having a home in society. Often the Maechi are seen as a kind of celibate "wife" of monks, cooking and cleaning at the temple. Her devotion to one of the highest, and theoretically genderless aims of human existence (which at the face of it will be admired in the abstract), becomes in a sense, unreadable. Part of this is there is no place for it. Women cannot become Bhikkhunīs (monks). They cannot take the place of recognition and institutional support that would make their devotion readable to the people. And, I hope this does not appear as too much a stretch, but Thai Nakmuay ying cannot fight in (or even touch) the National Stadia of Thailand. Thai female fighters can devote themselves to not only acquiring the skills and experiences that make them the best fighters in the world, but also steeping themselves in the same social conditioning, submitting to the same "self-control" inculcation that turns Thai boys into men, as Nak Muay - but, their accomplishments ultimately become unreadable against the backdrop of gender role expectations, in the family. The values of self-control that make up a great Muay Thai fighter in Thailand indeed become esteemed and admired, whether they appear in a young male fighter or a young female fighter, just as a devoted female meditation-ist, or a male meditation-ist would be esteemed and admired, but for each vocation there is no readable place for the female devotee to graduate to. There is no Lumpinee, there is no monk hood. And the reason for this, ultimately, is found in the way that Thai women are asked to relate to their desire, and the role it plays in society at large.

Fella don't take a risk. If you're not sure of something go to a doctor.

Whatever it is, it's infected and inflamed. Keep putting antiseptic cream on it, but if it doesn't improve or starts getting worse then better to get yourself to a doctor (if that's possible at the moment). Probably worth pointing out I have no medical training by the way, beyond some first aid courses

Mmmm. And on top of that Western gyms are in a bind they can't get out of - they can't afford to pay salaries for 5 different trainers, who are also seasoned ex fighters, working in every session holding pad rounds for everyone. Maybe America is better I dunno, but in Europe it's usually 1 guy and then 40 people on the mat. Now in BJJ this actually works, and champions are made through that training method. Because improvement relies so heavily on sparring, and a couple of technique drills at the start with a partner, and that's it. Walk into Roger Gracie's gym in London and it's basically the same deal as training in Rio. Am told you need a Portuguese dictionary in that place to understand what going on. The culture as well as the knowledge base got successfully transposed from Brazil to parts of the UK and US. Can that happen with Muay Thai? Would love someone to convince me. Would love to be wrong.

I'm very torn on this. I am 100% opposed to drill based fighting teaching, I think it's a cop out. Yes, there is a place for drills to be sure, and Thais indeed drill basics in the very young, but there is no expressive sport in the world where the elite, poetic fighters became that way primarily through drills. I say this though fully knowing that the west HAS to drill. It's in the very fabric of the business model of teaching. Drills are essentially mechanical abstractions of a living art, exported from that art, and put into an assembly line of a kind. Yes, the assembly line can and does produce working models of something, just like it can produce cars, or widgets, but the very act of abstraction, of mechanization for the purposes of duplicaiton, is killing the art of what Muay Thai is...in my opinion. As I say though, the west simply has no choice. It's like having to teach people how to play baseball in a land where no baseball fields exist. You can learn all kinds of "things" done on a baseball field, but if you don't have baseball fields you'll never really know what baseball is, or really have ever played it.

Correct. Mayweather actually got in trouble for racism a while back talking about white Europeans. He said the best boxers in the world are predominantly African American and Hispanic. People jumped on him for talking race, without realising he was actually talking poverty.

I like the way you put that. But...it should be thrown in there, often pretty huge weight advantages. Giving a power puncher 15 lbs or more in the ring is kind of what helped lead to that exaggeration. Give him a 10 lb disadvantage regularly and all those memorized combos would become fluff. I totally agree though that there is a serious challenge in teaching in the western context for Muay Thai coaches, and their gyms. The funny thing is though...it doesn't seem to have prevented the western world from producing some of the greatest fighters ever in terms of boxing. I really think that the problem is one of class. Boxing took its roots in the lower classes, and widely so, where fighting and its processes means something very different from the more usual middle class and even upper middle class targets of many western Muay Thai teaching scenarios.

That's the struggle with K1 rules. I recall a while ago someone asking on Sherdog where they could learn K1 because the only things close to them were a kickboxing gym and a muay thai gym. The kickboxing gym was a PKA style gym with no kicks below the waist kind of deal. And there comes a point where you have to say 'honestly, just do muay thai because you're learning K1 rules via doing it. K1 and Muay Thai are very similar whereas that American Kickboxing style is nothing like either of them. Muay Thai has had such a big influence on K1 that you can go back and forth between them and not really be too lose. Hell the limited clinching of K1 only happened about 10 years ago. They're not the same thing but their close enough that it's easier to confuse people into thinking they're doing one, when they might be doing the other - which makes it easy for someone to market themselves as coaching Muay Thai, when it's only a half truth at best, outright lie at worst. -- Ramble on western authenticity in coming--- Even among Western coaches who actually do KNOW muay thai, I think there are still issues that hold back their progress. The trouble is, and I learned this fully when I started coaching, the Thai approach to training simply doesn't work with a western lifestyle. You can't live on a gym, you have to learn new ways of coaching and teaching and that means you're going to have to do things differently to how it's done in Thailand. The reason dutch kickboxers are so ridiculously good compared to the rest of the world, is because they focus so much of their training on heavy partner based drills, that keep their training as realistic and close to sparring as possible. So when they learn a technique or combination they have often learned and practised it on a person before they've ever done it on a bag, and as such that removes the element of having to adapt something from bag/padwork to a person. While the efficiency of the dutch in stadium muay thai is greatly exaggerated, Ramon Dekkers was competitive against fighters with far more in ring experience and training experience thanks to that method of learning. My coach adapted his training from growing up on a camp in Thailand, and implemented a heavy focus on partner based drills to teach techniques that would normally learned or honed through a lot of sparring, similar to what the dutch do. I ultimately ended up doing the same thing. A lot of stuff that a coach in Thailand may teach you via padwork, I ultimately opted to teach in a more drill/spar like setting (similar to Karuhat) and remove that element of the pads. Then when the time comes to actually do 5 rounds of padwork they can focus on repeating on the pads with power, as opposed to learning it with power on the pads, then having to figure out how to do it on a person in sparring. When you don't have the ability to train twice a day, six days a week - you have to find more concise ways to learn in order to get as quality an instruction as possible, without fully living that life in the gym that allow Thais to become so very good at what they do. The western approach (outside of Holland) seems to be: Step 1: Learn combination or technique in shadow Step 2: Blast it hard on the pad repeatedly Step 3: Work it into sparring. My approach is: Step 1: Learn the combination or technique in a partner drill, taking turns with each other Step 2 or 3 : Work it on the pads or bags Step 2 or 3: Work it into sparring You can work it into sparring before working it onto pads, but you will already have more freedom and understanding from doing in that way. My approach to TEACHING the techniques (outside of clinch) are more influenced by dutch kickboxing and russian boxing - but the actual approach to technique I teach is a traditional Thai way Is it inauthentic? Maybe? I'm not sure it matters. You have to adapt in order to keep practising the sport you love.

JWP says that the title 'kru' is for Thais. Being called 'coach' or 'teacher' in a foreign language doesn't make sense to me. It just seems to me like a way of floating ego. I've been called Kru before, but I prefer people just to use my name. I have a similar opinion of the insistence of 'sensei' or 'shifu' being used in japanese and chinese martial arts. It's just weird to me to throw in a substitute word in a different language

Hey that's really awesome, I am going to take inspiration from your setup. I have a nice open space that I'm working on as well but I just need the equipment. I will post a picture of my open space and maybe you can give me some tips or suggestions.