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It really is a bottomless archive. Many of these sessions, as they come from absolute legends of the sport who developed in kaimuay and circumstances that no longer exist, are just stuff with details. Some can be watched 10s of times, as each fighter has their muay, and things are being show and communicated beyond even what is being instructed. I'm glad you are getting so much out of the documentation.

Damn, just looking at his record now. Very impressive. Some serious heavy hitters. Does he come and go as a trainer there?

FYI I’m now a $10/month Patreon member. In my search for different bits of Muay Thai information/advice online, I realized there probably isn’t a better archive to learn from than what Sylvie and Kevin have compiled. No need for me to reinvent the wheel or bounce around from site to site when there’s a enough information inside the Patreon to chew on for a lifetime. Kevin- Thank you for the nice words and for continuing to follow along. I'm having a lot of fun as the line between work and play becomes blurred and the environment pulls me in more and more. I really like everyone at the gym. There's nothing negative I can say about the cast of characters there. They're warm, humble, passionate, hilarious, and playful. I read about Isaan people being friendly, but you don't really get it until you're on the IRL receiving end of it. The system they have for scheduling and training for fights is really neat. Each fighter appears to average one fight per month. They will fight, take 5-10 days away from the gym to recover, come back to gym for three-weeks of training, fight again, repeat. Right now, the gym is in full swing with the energy feeling very positive. As I mentioned in previous post, 6-7 fighters have matches in March, so they are training hard. Depending on weigh-in date/time before fight, head kru and fighter will either take an 8-hour overnight train from Udon to Bangkok Don Mueng or fly one-hour, hangout, fight, then return to Udon to repeat process. All of them are fighting to support their families in different capacities. It is not recreation for them, this is a job. After they fight and money is received, their family is taken care of for at least one more month. Take a breathe Nak Muay. There's a few teenage fighers boys and girls who go to school full-time along side their full-time training. Watching him pull up to the gym (where he also lives) in his school uniform, then quickly do homework by himself on the table off to the side before dressing down to get to his real work. This sort of stuff really inspires me. It shows me I have the capacity to do more, like document this experience. I found my apartment on book.com, after staying at a different place during my first week in town while I was getting my bearings. I've been at my current place for one month, having booked it on book.com for a few days at first, I then arranged a weekly/monthly deal with the hotel directely. It's a good fit for me. I don't feel comfortable sharing my specific location on the forum, but if anyone wants to private message me here or on instagram: 'audio.visual' i will happily share that info. I can say that monthly rent is ~$350usd all-in. My cost of living/training here is quite cheap while still comfortable. I will post pictures of my unit and motorbike tomorrow when sun is back in the sky. Today's training was a bit frustrating for me as my kicks are not improving. kru ornono says i'm too stiff; my hips and shoulders too rigid during roundhouse. He's being patient with me, but also stern. Hitting me with pad, grunting, and looking disapprovingly when i do something wrong right after he showed me how to do the move properly. But he gets it, he's trained a lot of people. i'm not the first to have these technique problems, won't be the last. Being whacked in the head by a guy who has defeated Buakaw and Saenchai is now off my bucket list. To be training with such a legend is a real treat and I'm extremely grateful; trying not to waste the opportunity. However, the 7 of us did a lot of cardio today. Begining the session with tire jumping while 1 person pedaled on the stationary bike. Kru Gig was in one of his not uncommon funny moods and was sitting in the seat with his timer whacking the back of the person on the bike. Kind of like they were a horse. It was funny, but also painful. The whipping effect from slight flick of his wrist stung the back. I prefer to believe there's a practical reason to this punishment beyond his personal enjoyment haha. After 25 minutes of that we wrapped hands, shadowboxed, hit pads, heavy bags, sparred (I didn't), Clinch (I didn't); while they were doing the latter two I was working on punch/kick technique. Drilling on the basics. This sessions started at 16:00 and ended 19:15, so 3.25 hours as we ran 3km to the lake and back again tonight. My running continues to feel strong. Lastly, this morning I listed to #42 Mental Training: How I Prepared For My Championship Fight - Sylvie's Technique Vlog (45 min) on the Patreon page. I picked this one as the first to dive into as I feel like my mental game needs ALOT of work. My main takeaways were: Mental Training is a Technique! Have mental training be part of your training all of the time, not just when you have a fight scheduled. Mental Training is not fun, it’s like doing cardio, it sucks but the more you do it, the further you can push yourself before gassing or psyching yourself out. It’s a vague concept, assign colors, tools, mental association- Grab a crayon with your mind and draw a tree with the green, draw a bench with the brown..etc. Perfection robs you of flexibility and is not a good thing. When you become tired brain becomes lazy, over generalizes, negativity appears. Confidence: It’s cultivated, it’s an act before it’s a feeling. Act confident first, then you’ll feel it. It’s something you can do without thinking much about it. Visualization is key. Walk through a familiar place like childhood home and visualize the sights, sounds, smells, feelings of the environment… put yourself there. Can do anywhere anytime, the closest thing to teleportation. Most visualizations don’t come true and that’s okay. Make personal Affirmations, ex: “I am Confident Under Pressure”, “I win Tough Exchanges”, “I always Bring Intensity to Every Training Session and Every Fight”. Act like you’ve been here before, you are always performing. Pressure and Stress are not the same thing. Nervous is good, flow it out, don’t bottle it in, keep it circulating. If this, then that… the world moves on. If the pressure is too big, make it small. No questions, only statements. Under pressure you will never do as good as you do in training. An Octopus can see good enough for what they need to sustain life... and so much more! Thank you Sylvie, the $10 has already paid off after one video haha. There's a lot to thin about here, and I actually cried a bit when you suggested visualizing your grandmothers house... well I grew up in my grandmothers house and she jut died a few months ago while I was in Thailand just beginning my Muay Thai journey in Pai. In a way I feel like I'm training for here. With all of my senses I can visualize and experience my grandmothers house and my youth. I know I'm not one of the rare few that doesn't have the ability to create images in my mind, so I will begin applying this to boxing.

btw, I ran into this very good podcast on the Khmer Empire which had a significant influence on the Siam Kingdoms that followed, and Thai practices to this day. Highly recommended for giving background on what is discussed by me above. And, for those interested in a deeper analysis of the possible reasons for post-Khmer change in the region, this is a very good blog post summation of a hard to find article by Richard A. O'Conner arguing that it was the wet-rice irrigation cultural complex, coming upland from the valleys, that supplanted the farming garden and flood management society of the lowlands, somewhat in line with the podcast's account of the drought and flood patternings that may have brought the Khmer Empire down. Arguments go that wet-rice irrigation creates more communal, shared-space social bonds, which may have bearing on discussions of any fundamental social/spiritual logic of Siam/Thailand.

One of the first things to appreciate when thinking about how Thailand's Muay Thai fighting itself expresses, or involves spiritual values is that in the history of Southeast Asian warfare war was seen as a cosmic battle. And the King in battle was regarded as possessing not only physical prowess, but also spiritual prowess. Cosmic forces, "soul stuff" was in conflict on the battle field, and the King, or which ever champion of a martial force was the acme of that side's soul-power. Historians Michael Charney and Anthony Reid tell it that the fall of the leader could end the conflict altogether. First Charney on Southeast Asian warfare: And Reid in his study of Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce: Just as the kings of mainland southeast Asia held "soul power" charisma due their martial prowess and their earned spiritual prowess, and used that charisma to create far reaching alliances, strengthening his mandala of power, battle itself was lead by the charismatic leader who melded physical prowess and spiritual prowess together, and brought them to what was a battle of cosmic (read "soul stuff") forces. This singular champion logic of charisma is not only found in Southeast Asia, for instance we see it in Homer's Iliad in various figures, but especially in Achilles, who was not only a formidable martial force, but also was a poet, musician and elegant speaker, not to mention spiritually half divine due to his mother. citation for previous comparison photo Above King Narsuan's famous elephant duel and Achilles' duel vs Hector. (As a note, these were both trade-oriented maritime cultures whose wealth was depended on a slave economy. There may be a socio-economic relationship.) In any case, because battle was seen as expressive of spiritual prowess it is simply wrong to put fighting in the category of physical prowess, in some kind of antithesis to the spiritual. It can be argued to be fundamentally the meeting of charimatically imbued champions, who posses both physical and spiritual prowess, the results of which lie with forces beyond the ring (battle field) itself. And, these charismatic figures represent and express the "soul stuff" of their affiliations and attachments. When they win, something much larger wins. When Karuhat tells us that 2 busloads of fans and supporters would drive down from his hometown Khon Kaen in Isaan for each fight of his, loaded with gambling interests, monies pulled together from communities, he in a certain sense spiritually (at least in terms of "soul stuff") represented them in the ring. His soul stuff was added to by their presence, and his victories flowed down threw and into them. We can see this very same logic of representation in the West, for instance in Nationalism in combat sports, or in terms of race or ethnicity, or other subset groups, but in Thailand it becomes much more sharpened, and pervasive, because of how they regard power relations themselves, in a world of "unequal souls" and of transmittable "soul stuff". We start though with the notion in Thailand that fighting is necessarily to some degree spiritual. And thus, training for fighting involves spiritual training. Not only are there magico-religious practices that surround and structure training (& fighting), the training itself focuses on the disciplining of many affects & dispositions which have qualities which are in concert with more overt traditional spiritual training by monks & holy men in the culture. However small a fight may be in Thailand, one's training consists of rigorously learning how to properly take that place of spiritual (soul stuff) champion. What differs from similar imperatives in other fight cultures elsewhere in the world is the degree to watch this still is thought of in spiritual (even if unconsciously spiritual) terms.