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Earlier this week I was asked if I wanted to spar with a trainer I haven't sparred with before. I haven't really worked with him much but I respect him as a trainer and asks him technique questions when I can. He was also featured in the Lethwei episode of Fight World on Netflix and I sort of respect him as an authority. He is around my weight, a bit shorter and now not very fit but clearly has his strength and all his movements intact. It is always weird sparring with a teacher, I don't want to go too hard. But I was cheered on and told to go harder and use more combinations. Clearly he was better (obviously) and he let me feel his punches. I kicked him pretty hard and at one point I didn't hold back but attacked with some punches. And then he just had a go at me. Let the punches rain on my nose and forehead and my jaw started hurting and I felt overwhelmed. I could feel he got angry and that sort of shocked me. I respect teachers a lot and it's a shitty feeling having a teacher angry at you. And I dropped my guard, I lost my posture and he came at me until I got scared (had a recent head injury and I felt panic and thought that maybe this is really bad for my head I need to stop). It's not like he used 100% power but suddenly it went white, I fell backwards and I started sobbing. He sort of apologized went away. I gathered myself. Went to him apologized and thanked him. But obviously if felt shitty. The trainer I usually work with took me to another room and practiced my very recently displayed obvious weaknesses with me on the pads while I kept sobbing feeling embarrassed and just tired. Since then I've been training. And the trainer has not acknowledged that this was any issue at all. And I don't really know what to make of the situation. On the one hand I feel shitty like I was put in my place. And on the other I just feel this is fighting. Some people be like that. Opportunity to learn and mature emotionally.

Thanks man!

Double vision after a knock down was the weirdest / scariest experience of mine during afternoon sparring. The Ajarn immediately made me sit out for the rest of the rounds. For sure, it's embarrassing and you don't want to look shit in front of everyone. Feel better.

Right. Please feel free to join me for sparring at one of my lethwei gyms in Yangon and we see who gets emotional .

I never been KOd but as it has been described to me it's basically "lights out and you wake up on the floor". But white I've seen a couple of times. Never in Thailand where you sometimes get hard sparring and the punches hurt and give you a bit of a shock wave. This white is is more from getting punched directly in your face. It's only for a fraction of a second but it's like looking into a snow blizzard. This case I lost my posture dropped my hands while 5-6 punches rained on my face after already having taken some hard blows on my jaw. And when I saw white I just got panicked a bit and disconnected and fell backwards and sparring ended. I don't feel it caused any damage though. It was a bit humiliating but ok. And thanks yeah, might be good in general to do a check up. As soon as I can get to a country with proper healthcare .

When you say you saw white and fell backwards, like, your vision got screwed up from a heavy headshot? You see flashes? And this was a knockdown? Maybe get checked up Leng Leng.

I don't know...ego issue because I got a lot of punches in and he wanted to put me in my place or I got it wrong and this is his way of teaching. Another trainer told me to not worry, he angry when he spars with him too but he way better so he uses his anger to trick him to make mistakes. When I train with that trainer and I get heated he interrupts the sparring and tells me to kick bag "because you cannot fight when angry you lose easy". From this experience I realize I really need to work on my mental game and not let my emotions weaken me. I'm usually not this sensitive bit the last months, well I feel it affects me. Which I guess is so great with martial arts, you cannot hide from your inner turmoil. It will show.

Yes, this can be true, too, I am sorry you had to go through this, and it sounds like you have a good perspective about what happened. I wish you the best of luck; be well, happy and peaceful in your training and life in Yangon.

Hi. I'm not in BKK anymore, I'm in Yangon (forgot to update my profile). I know what you are referring to, I've seen it many times, and this was not the case in my situation. It was a dude losing his temper (which is definitely very un-Thai an un-fighting in general). I don't believe we shall exotify everything that happens in foreign gyms, sometimes people are jerks. In this case I'm not gonna do a big deal about it but I'll probably not sparring with this trainer again as he has an ego issue.

I am in this as I am training to be an official, and not a fighter, but it may be that as you are in BKK, you are receiving what seems to be the Thai approach to training. I watched some months ago the training and the competition for novice farang fighters at Tiger Muay Thai, and many of the khrus were relentless in their beat downs of the competitors seeking a place on the Tiger team. This approach suggested that the khrus are trying to teach/reveal "heart," and trying to determine who has the heart of a fighter by seeing how they respond to being brutalized or emotionally overwhelmed. Many of the great Golden khrus have said that it is not enough to have technique or conditioning; one must have the heart of a true nak muay in order to be successful. So, try to see this khru in that light, and remind yourself that you are on a magnificent path that few will ever realize, and that it is a path that demands heart. I feel that just by asking the question that you asked in your post, you have the heart of a fighter and just keep this determination in your heart as you train going forward.

I just wanted to relate to everyone part of a conversation we were having with Sifu McInnes in Pattaya when filming with him for the Library. I think the conversation will make the session cut, but I'm not sure. We were talking about the loss of the Golden Age techniques, something Sylvie and I talk about frequently. The part that she and I emphasize is that the great fighters of the Golden Age are no longer in the fight game. They find themselves outside of gyms, many of them no longer involved in Muay Thai at all. Not only are the techniques being lost, but the men of that age, their personalities, their knowledge depth, also are being lost. Sifu though had a different point. He has the perspective of someone who was super active in Lumpinee fighting in the Golden Age. He was close to Arjan Yodthong of Sityodtong, in fact Sifu says that he built his house next to the gym at the time, so close was their working relationship. He said for a decade he traveled the road to Lumpinee with Arjan Yodthong, week after week. His point though was not that the great fighters are no longer in Muay Thai, but that its the great coaches who made those fighters are no longer in Muay Thai. Of course Arjan Yodthong who made an incredible number of champions sadly passed away, but Sifu said that many others have died as well. In fact he challenged us to name a single legendary Muay Thai teacher who is still strongly connected to producing stadium fighters. We thought for a minute and could only come up with Arjan Surat of Dejrat Gym. But Sifu objected. Arjan Surat was a young man then, when the Golden Age was happening. That is not the generation he was referring to. It's the generation that was before. That was the generation which actually produced the legends of the Golden Age. And, as we both agreed, it is irrevocably lost because the entire system that made those great instructors, the Yodthongs of Thailand, is gone, the entire feeding system to Bangkok is heavily altered, radically changed. The quality of instruction, even at top Thai gyms, is no longer what it was in those days, Sifu claimed. He said that he would sit in Lumpinee with legendary coaches and they would just make money hand over fist following their bets. They could see which fighter was going, and in what round. He said that kind of knowledge, all the infinite perceptions are gone. It's a great session, so much in it technically, but that conversation will stay with me. With the Library we are trying to save the techniques, the Muay, and something of the men who fought so brilliantly in those decades, but Sifu reminded me that the ecological loss is even more than that. It's of the generation before them, the men of Muay Thai who were shapers of that greatness we all look back on. Some stills from the session (you can follow my photography on Instagram)

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.

Yeah, I don't think Karuhat considers himself a teacher, even though he definitely takes pride in his students. I think his approach is very much like being a senior in a gym, who can raise the younger fighters up but doesn't necessarily assume a formal role. This might be a part of how modern gyms are different from back in his day though. You'd have a single superstar come out of a gym, like Karuhat, Sakmongkol, Santiennoi, etc. These guys weren't from gyms with tons of champions. But then there were a few gyms with lots of them, like Sityodthong, Nongkeepahuyut, Hapalang, just to name a few. Nowdays you have gyms that buy up ALL the stars and they all train together, pulling them out of their smaller gyms where they could be raising others up. But they do carve each other, in these "show horse stables," I guess.

You are completely right! His teaching style is almost entirely through sparring, and correction in sparring. He described to Sylvie how when he was in the gym as a fighter he would always be working on moves or deceptions that would catch his sparring partners off guard. He thought to himself that if he could fool someone who knew him well he could easily fool or mistime an opponent. It led to him developing one of the most unique fighting styles of the Golden Age. When he is teaching sylvie in all those sessions he is still doing this. We see him regularly invent throws, for instance, that we've never seen before, ever. And as he's showing the throw if you pay attention you'll see that he's working on it, inventing it right there before your eyes, just as he would do as a fighter. Now, this is the really interesting thing as to the topic. We have to admit that the entire ecosystem that produced these coaches, and all these fighters, it's gone, like the Amazon rain forest might one day be gone, but new ways of teaching and creating techniques are growing now. Fighters are communication their experiences. Rambaa just the other day was literally teaching Sylvie Karuhat's switching style, impersonating Karuhat, asking her if she knew who Karuhat was (???!), something he had stolen and made his own from videos. And...he's teaching this stuff to the Thai boys who are dreaming of becoming stadium fighters! So there is creativity!

I think how and who we blame shows our focus. Id probably focus on the coaches and teachers too since thats my focus. Whats interesting to me is who Karuhat blames considering he is now a teacher, you can see his focus. Hes still a fighter at heart.

It's interesting to me that when you talk to fighters of that era, they blame gambling. Or Karuhat blaming the lack of charisma in modern fighters, no personality to be superstars. He's a fighter, blaming fighters. And Sifu, he's a teacher blaming teachers - or a loss of teachers, really. It's interesting to me that these men are putting the blame in their own wheelhouses. When we suggested to General Tunwakom and Sirimongkol (both in their 70s) that the Golden Era displayed some very old techniques - IN THE RING - both of them said that the trainers of those fighters were too old to have really done much teaching. But, I can attest that sitting in a chair and waving a stick at a distance, you can learn a lot of technique. Sifu made a brilliant point when he suggested that the loss of Arjan - of the men with the real technical knowledge and skillset to disseminate it - had resulted in padmen replacing them as teachers. Padmen were labor; they still are, but now they're also the krus.