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Before I ventured into the Muaythai world in Thailand, I did extensive research and decided that I would like to spend almost a month training. Sylvies videos about the expanded web of gyms and their preferences turned my attention to Kem Muaythai gym in Khao Yai simply because of her notion that Kem gives lots of attention to basics and clinching. Also, the other part of me leaned towards gyms in Pukhet since this was my holiday, so the combined environment with beaches and nightlife looked attractive simply because I needed rest. I have contacted Kems gym and asked about conditions, etc., but my first ticket was to Pukhet, and while I was looking to book some arbnb and looked at the gyms there, my question was: do you want to train or do you want to have vaccation? There is no mix... Love towards Muaythai screamed training, and in the last few days I changed my ticket to Bangkok and acknowledged Kems gym that I was coming. And boy, that was the right decision to make. I arrived well past midnight, and I was escorted to my room by a young Thai trainer. He just said welcome; running starts at 6.30. I slept a bit and woke up on time for my first running session, exploring steep roads and buggy jungle roads for the morning run. It was beautiful. The first training session started afterwards, and then we had breakfast made by Kem's wife, Mo, and her mother. The food was delicious. But I didn't expect an afternoon training session of 2–3 hours (the same duration as the morning ones), and after it I had dinner and went to sleep. After a few days of pain, my body adjusted, and after 20 days of training, I felt and looked as if never before. Training is tailored to your level, and Kem sees everything, even when he is sparring. From conditioning, basic stance, kicks, and elbows and knees, clinching and streching every day at some point was a fight to survive. And I liked it. Kem will correct every small detail, and when he sees your progress, he will add more. I must mention the other few trainers there who were excellent in every aspect. Pad work was extensive, and they all showed patience and the will to teach if you are willing to put in the effort. Also, the gym is spacious and open, so the mountain breeze and sunset while doing the post-training situps impressed and left a deep impression. With a few people there at that time (Anna, Jay, Yassin, Cloie, and Luke), slowly we became bonded, day by day, supporting each other. It is a family gym, and you are treated as such, and everything is done outside of training so that your stay is memorable. Kem and Mo took us to various venues around Khao Yai National Park, restaurants, shops, and sometimes I even felt he was overly concerned about your well-being. But that is how the real hosts behave. His wife Mo who is managing the place, when I mentioned that Sylvie reccommended the place smiled and said she is a friend. The smile and joy bursting from here naturally make you happy just to see her. Also, I met some other people who got there following Sylvie's review. As my departure was approaching, a few of the guys had scheduled fights (Luke and Jay), and I was so sorry that I had to go. I found out they both won. What a month it has been. Kem and Mo took me to a train station, and we performed good buys. I said Kem I will be back. And I will.

Hi everyone. What do you think about dedicating a part of the training to western boxing? When I train on my own muay thai skills on the heavy bag I always split every type of shot. For example I do 20 minutes only roundhouse kicks, 20 minutes teeps, 20 minutes knees and elbows. I prefer to do like that due to a better focus on every single shot. I think Boxing is usually underrated and undertrained in muay thai. So do you think that making some boxing lessons would be good? Of course you can't do everything you do in a boxing fight like weaving, but I think punches would become better right?

Hi everyone, After going to Thailand and learning privately with Yodkhunpon for many sessions, I have really improved a lot in the field of elbow and knee fighting, and have really dominated the close range fighting zone in my gym. (Thanks for Sylvie) But lately, there came a new fighter who has really good Boxing skills. His punches are so fast, hard and accurate, that even though he has little experience in inside fighting, I had really tough times just getting close enough to make use of my elbows and knees during our sparring. Turns out this guy was a professional Boxer and won WBC fights, no wonder lol. So I come here to ask, if there is any effective way to close the gap between myself (a Muay Sok/muay Khao) and a heavy puncher (a Muay Mat)? I'd appreciate it very much

You just need to learn how to feel your way through movements with balance, it comes over time. But knowing where to "check" for your own self-correction is helpful in the meantime: distance between your feet in a comfortable stance, wide but not splayed; make sure your weight is on the balls of your feet and not too far on the heels or the blades of the feet (the outside or inside edge, meaning pronating or supinating (you can look that up on running forums)). Make sure your head is over your hips and feet, not too far forward or back. Keep your strikes reasonably within the "frame" of your body, not swinging too much out from your core and generating power and movement mainly from the legs and torso for everything.

Recent review of Kem's Muay Thai Gym in Khao Yai Tiang: "The training is mind blowing. All three Krus are different but they’re not jusy chasing your endorphin high for you by letting you smash pads and feel the rush. There is so much technique work. I haven’t spent much time in classes in other gyms just mainly one on Ones as I’ve torn my ACL and didn’t fancy big classes injured but we are just a handful here so I know if he’s not training me Kem is watching me all the time. And so hands on in terms of the accommodation and other care eg he’s driving a student to Cambodia today for a visa run. Such lovely people. I’m humbled. And I can hear the call to prayer which is important to me. Thanks again for the recco." Naadia

I’ve been using the gallop more thanks to Sylvia’s amazing video content. It works incredibly for me but I have a technical question. I notice Yodkhunpon will start his gallop from further away to cut people off and land kicks or elbows to close the distance. I also see that Namsaknoi does a similar one but he sort of switches his stance more going towards the outside of his attacker on either side. However every time I watch Namsaknoi fight he doesn’t seem to do it much until he’s close or it’s very subtle. But in his video with Sylvie he shows a much more gliding stance switching version. Is there a reason you can’t sort of enter this way from further away switching stances and cutting angles or is this only something to do when you’re already pretty close? I’ve used it both ways to great success but only against moderate to low level competitors. I’m not sure if it’s application changes as well with skill and circumstance. thank you for reading -Mike (photos below aren’t the best screen grabs but I wanted to show the one she shows switching stance gallop from further away. This is the one I like the most)

Hi, Yodkhunpon uses the gallop to cut off the ring and corral the opponent; what Namsaknoi is doing is getting outside the opponent's guard, which is why it's used from so close. He moves the opponent's guard with his own arms and kind of "ladder climbs" their guard to slip to the outside, where he has a pretty open shot and they have virtually no defense. This can only happen from very close; if you do it from far away, the opponent just adjusts their feet and they are facing you again.

I've always admired those with a beautiful strong shadow boxing kicks. The ones that cut through the air with complete focus and balance. The one that comes from the hip and snaps like a whip. I've tried to find a good example, you can see something similar here: I've been trying to improve my own kicks like this but can't get the hip movement right (kick on pad/bag no issue). I was given two pieces of advice, one (very funny) is to twirl like Cinderella to get used to the full twisting movement. One was to kick and then midway in: grab my ankle, pull it towards my thigh/buttock and balance on the ball of my foot while connecting with my hip power. Still, it's just hard to get it right. It's way easier to hit a target than kick through the air. Anyone having some kind of advice? Just a matter of iteration plus repetition? It's a bit of an ego thing of mine to get it right...but of course also, learning to kick through the target than just hit it.

Muay Khao fighters depend on their knees to do most of the damage. While not all Muay Khao fighters have full control over their middles or elbows, all are knee specialists. A good Muay Khao fighter uses his knees not only to attack but to counter as well. Yodwicha is a perfect example of a high-level Muay Khao fighter who was good at grinding his rivals with his knees. Some of the most entertaining fights happen when Muay Khao fighters are faced by Muay Mat. This is because punchers love to catch knee fighters with their hands down.

For me the trickiest part of shadow kicks is that a target actually interrupts the overall trajectory, so not hitting anything kind of makes the balance difficult. If your kicks on pads and the bag are fine, I recommend kicking a few times, then just back up so you "miss" the target and try to throw your kick exactly the same as when you hit the target and see what that looks/feels like. Then you can recreate it and do it a gazillian times.

I’m considering an amateur fight in the next year. I’ve done a point sparring thing but it was a no knock out event and I only prepared for it for maybe 3 weeks. If you have fought as an amateur, what does “fight camp” look like? How much do you run? How many hours are you training? What other activities do you do to prepare? In a perfect world, we would all be able to stay fight ready all the time but that not always realistic, lol. I’m training maybe 10-12 hours a week currently without running, which I would add in as soon as I make a decision if this is going to happen. I’m planning on speaking to my coaches about this too but I wanted hear about different ranges of experiences about what it took to be fight ready.

This is such an interesting topic. Personally I feel that if you have a decent level of conditioning you can get fight ready quite easily. But if you go from nothing it will take so much longer. We have a great fighter in my gym who is not actively fighting atm. But he joins clinching everyday to teach the others (he is one of the guys in Sylvies slomo video of Saranmuenglek clinching). He drinks a beer every evening and is as mentioned not training for fighting. But now he has an upcoming fight and he told me he needs a week to get ready. Most likely due to years and years of hard training giving him the basic conditioning needed. At fight camps in Thailand you usually train 2 2-3 hour sessions a day, 6 days/week. Morning session starting with a run and being a bit softer than afternoon sessions. Mix of bag work and pad rounds. At my gym I only join Saturday morning sessions due to my work and those are very soft. Run and then people working on their own stuff. 3 pad rounds. No clinching. Afternoon sessions start at 4pm with run or skipping depending on weather (30-40 min). Then 30 minutes clinch ending with man in the middle. Then it's either sparring usually 3-5 rounds of 3 min rounds. Or padrounds where you do your own work waiting to be called for 3 rounds of pads with 1-2 minutes in between. I often get three extra rounds of only teeps or elbows because apparently I need this . Once everyone got their pad rounds there is usually some technique drills followed by 200 jumping knees in the ring, pushups, 200 situps (but only a third of us actually doing any situps) and stretching. Done by 7pm. If any of the thai fighters have upcoming fights they will be given a lot of extra work and driven to the point of exhaustion by the trainers. The thing is people can say things like yeah we did skipping rope for 30 minutes and I did 5 rounds on the bag. But in reality they didn't skip for 30 minutes there were several breaks and the bag rounds were not efficient work. They pretend time spent in gyms is time spent training. But they just goofed around half the time not engaging in efficient training. So I feel it's difficult to get a true answer to how much time you need to prep. People are way lazier than they think. Personally (and I'm not very experienced in terms of muay thai but I've competed in other sports and have a decent understanding of how my body works) I want to keep a decent level of conditioning to always being able to train and learn. If I'm exhausted on the pads I will learn less and my movements will be sloppy. I train to train. What I find important is to drive yourself to and beyond point of exhaustion. This because I feel it increases my level of fitness, but it also teaches me that I have much more to give when I feel I'm dying. So it's both for mental training and for body conditioning. I love metcon workouts to do this. Sylvie has tonnes of very helpful articles on this topic on her blog. Perhaps look at articles tagged "overtraining". But also keep in mind that she is constantly fighting and she has done so for years. And I'm also pretty sure she might be a cyborg .

Continuing on those thoughts a bit: I find when I'm having a bad day at work, feeling tired, whatever, and I have the thought, "training is going to suck tonight," that it always does. ALWAYS. If I can instead focus on what I enjoy about training, pick something to focus on that night that's achievable, and look forward to training as a way to turn the day around, I nearly always enjoy the session and perform at least moderately well. I very rarely enter the gym thinking positive and leaving with only negative energy. If I'm tired or stressed, I may not smash 1,000 combos during each round like I might on a good night, but I take my time and do the ones I can manage with precision and focus while keeping my gaurs strong. Mental energy can totally affect how you train.

Im back haha not been on in ages and good topic so i tell ya with me it was extreme without me even knowing for ages!!! I trained with the older pad man of the gym who is awesome etc but on days where he wasnt there or say the gym was busy etc as i was a long term foreigner id sometimes go last on pads but i could never understand that non of the other pad men would ask me to go with them! Even if they were free they wouldn't and i was kinda like wtf like im good! Im stronger than most of the guys here whats the problem??? Turns out they were scared to hold for me cos my trainer would give out to them or shout out in the middle of my pads what to do and how to hold for me so i was like aaahhh ok!! I ended up asking to change to a different trainer eventually and after that id go with different ones But they get very personal about it id make jokes with him keep it light but again i dunno how but ive always been able to talk straight with my trainers if they were acting the maggot or giving me half arsed pads id be like eeh i have fight i want serious ok!! And it be grand Now im in a new gym so im probably going to go through all different experiences but so far my trainer is cool (mad as a brush) but cool

My situation is completely different than yours, Tyler, as I train at two different gyms with two different trainers who don't come in contact with each other. Although I know that my trainers both know/had known each other, but I'm not quite sure as what the circumstances were - I only know they both trained at the same gym at some point in their life (like, 10 years ago or even more?), but their career paths went waaaay different. Both have a strong opinion about the other one and both also kind of look down on the other one. Both know I train at two gyms with the other trainer ;) So....I try not to mention what I did in training with the other one. It's hard sometimes, when I had a great training at one gym and want to talk about this great feeling or techniques, but...I can't/shouldn't. I still try to work out a balance... it's tricky. This situation is still kind of new to me - like, 3-4 months old, so for now I stick to observing if my training changes anyhow. For now it hasn't, so it's okay. I still feel like I'm "betraying" my trainer with whom I've trained for the last year and a half, even though I get the vibe from him (or it's just my wishful thinking) that he accepts my need to learn the Muay Thai I want to learn, even if it's learning from another trainer. (the longer I think about it, the more I think it's my wishful thinking).

Wow great topic. This is such a big one, and so hard to negotiate. Hopefully Sylvie jumps in, but these are my thoughts based on what I witnessed, and a little how we tried to use these kinds of internal politics to our advantage. At the heart of it though is that there are two "gyms" in Thailand, when farang are a focus. There is the "Thai" gym where questions of hierarchy and respect are central, and there is the commercial "farang" gym which operates as a business, with money paid and services given. Westerners tend to live in the commercial gym, in terms of expectation, but the trainers actually live in the Thai gym. And when you stay long enough as a farang you come to realize that you are in both gyms. At Lanna Sylvie was originally "given" to a particular trainer, one who usually trained women (for obvious reasons - loved women, didn't want to work hard). Pretty much a bad match for Sylvie, though technically very sound. It took her a while to work her way off of this trainer. Once she did this she became basically the student of Den, the head trainer, who was excellent, but who also got frustrated with Sylvie (not fighting how she trained, etc). This resulted in Sylvie trying to get supplementary training from Daeng (a very fight oriented trainer) and also boxing training from Neung (a socially "low" trainer who happened also to be a former WBC western boxing champion, in private lessons). So, so complicated. It was a daily ballroom dance trying to keep all these trainers feeling good about the work that was happening. Luckily Lanna trainers were not very competitive, and generally got along. They even collaborated on how to bring out better performance, but it doesn't mean that there were not question of face saving all the time. Sylvie did great in a fight, who gets credit? Sylvie did bad in a fight, whose fault is it? There was always a push and pull. I think Sylvie did best when, aware of it all, did what she could to make sure she connected to whichever trainer was being left out at any one period of time. She kind of had 3 at a time. As long as she kept everyone involved, asking for padwork (not easy for her, she's quiet) from particular trainers, or asking for technical advice, it seemed pretty good. Also when winning fights it helped. Complicating to all this was that she was paying one for private lessons. Add money to any "respect" issue and it really is too much. I think in the end that fact that Sylvie felt loyal and genuinely cared for all 3 trainers, and worked her butt off trying to adopt what each was teaching, made everything okay. At her current gyms it works the same way, across gyms. O. Meekhun is the most sensitive. If you don't win, or if it feels like Petchrungruang is getting too much credit they can really sour on the relationship. They are the small gym. It's really about going out of your way to pay respect to whomever feels like they might be offended, constantly working to repair relationships that become eroded. As much as it would be great if "commercial" gym Muay Thai mapped perfectly onto traditional Thai relationships, it really seldom does. Money and monetary exchange mean very different things to the west and in traditional Thailand. In fact in many ways they mean the opposite. In the west if you give money to someone in exchange for something it basically means: We are even, I don't owe you anything. In Thailand it means: I'm invested in you, our bonds should grow more dependent (and hierarchical) - we owe each other.

This was my answer to someone on Reddit who messaged me and asked what I do for mental training. I'm posting it here in case others have had success or experience, or if there are questions people have an would like to raise. This is what I said: Thanks for listening to the whole interview and I’m happy it resonated with you. I’m still working a lot of this out myself and there’s a LOT of trial and error, just like with physical training. It’s also so much easier to slack off of mental training than it is getting physical work in. So whatever routine you figure out for yourself, really set a schedule and stick to it. Break it up into a 5-20 minutes various times throughout the day. Hey, not selling this, it’s expensive. But it was an investment and it worked for me I used this program for myself and found it really helpful: 14 Steps to Mental Toughness. He walks you through some visualizations, using imaginary waves to match rhythms to your breathing for relaxation. Something my brother taught me, also, is that you can practice and teach yourself how to visualize using more mundane things than your training or fight. I found it SO HARD to visualize fighting in a concrete way. So John asked me to describe in strong detail just walking around my apartment. Picking things up, where everything is, how it smells, the lighting, etc. Stuff I see literally every day. That way I see how to visualize with all that detail and can slowly start applying it to being in the ring. A fight is an “event,” but what you’re visualizing isn’t. You’re kind of exploring a space and possibilities – like playing GTA in your brain. Something that really helped me from the tapes was writing down my thoughts before, during and after training, every day. So I’d get to the gym and immediately sit down and just write whatever I was feeling: “tired,” “sleepy,” “unmotivated but ready to work,” “strong,” “I”m going to kill my trainer on the pads,” etc. Then I’d check in and do some more mid-training, then again after everything but before going home. It showed me a few things: 1) My thoughts were really negative a lot of the time, for really no reason. I actually ended up naturally adjusting for this by writing the negative feeling but immediately countering it with “but…” and whatever good could come of it. I wasn’t forcing myself to be positive, I actually just started feeling like “I’m tired but I can focus on being relaxed in my movements” was better at driving me. 2) It showed me that my thoughts change over time in practice. I can come in feeling negative and end up feeling great at the end. Or I can come in rearing to go and then something that happens in training gets me down. Which leads to 3) I have control over how I respond to things. I just have to be aware of it – mindful of what I’m thinking and whether or not I want to keep thinking those things. More recently I’m working on connecting relaxing breaths to active movements. So instead of holding my breath when I’m being hit or blocking or striking, I pay attention to breathe out and in with a rhythm to my movements. The point is to get my heart rate down under pressure, but it’s conditioning myself to do it automatically through movements I’m going to be using without being able to think about breathing. If you breathe while trying to drink water you choke. But you don’t think about “don’t breathe” in order to drink water – you do it automatically. So I’m trying to get my body to do those automatic things to stay relaxed under pressure. As for a schedule, figure out where you need to focus your attention: how you talk to yourself, how you respond under pressure, visualizing, etc. and work out a plan to work on these things several times every day. I visualize when I lie down for a nap or sleep. I write when I’m at the gym. I breathe when I’m actually training.

So much the same for me. It's hard to realize - like, really accept - that I have to keep working on the mental all the time, not just when it's been a hard time and I want something to make me feel better. You would never expect to just do 10 pushups a week before the fight and be stronger. You have to keep doing it, and then do 20, then more, etc. My most recent fight I worked really hard on the mental practice. I'd lost 9 days prior and had no time to make physical changes, so I knew it was all mental. I worked and was very dedicated to the mental training. And while I lost again, I performed really well - same as you describe above. And I feel good, ready to learn and improve. But the physical side is so easy to design for yourself - watch some videos, read some routines off of athletes you like, make up your own circuit. But the mental isn't as intuitive. I think it's actually embarrassing to work on confidence and being kind to yourself - it feels narcissistic or something. I asked my brother in my interview with him, "what is the 'couch to 5-K' of Mental Toughness?" Just the most bare-bones starter program. He talked about breathing and relaxation, recommended some books. If I were to ask myself that same question and have the gall to offer an authoritative answer, I'd say this: start with "act as if." Think about the kind of confident, strong, calm and collected athlete you aspire to be and then act as if you are that athlete. Confidence is an action before it's a feeling, not vice versa. That's something I believe wholesale. Being consistent with training and kind on days when my mind is weak (just as the body can be) is hard, but I've seen how worth it the effort is.

I find this post really really helpful. Over 3 distinct fights I found that mental training was a huge contributing factor to my success and failure. First time I had any suggestion to address the mental aspects of my training was from my strength coach last year who recommended I read "Relentless" . At that time my fight that immediately followed that read was my best performance to date and I was not at my best physically but overcame with effective strikes, not gased, just overall feeling of accomplishment (unanimous decision WIN). However, I left the book alone and did not follow up with anything following. I had a surgery, took some time to recover and wanted back in, following a pretty 'meh' demo I took a fight against an opponent that for the most part I was expected to outperform just from power. I had the worst performance EVER, I was so nervous after the first round I was so exhausted, just completely depleted. I felt that I completely defeated myself before I even stepped foot in that ring (unanimous decision LOSS).... fast forward a couple months later to Muay Thai Classic and I began reading "Mind Gym" shortly before and again I had what was an amazing performance to me (Unanimous decision LOSS) I was relaxed, focused. It was a clinch battle and I executed to the best my ability in the circumstance.... I'm looking for any suggestions to make a serious commitment to mental training.

I love this about Muay Thai in Thailand - like fighting fish. Float, float, float, explosion of movement and then float, float float. So beautiful. My first ever teacher, who is Thai, wanted me to be very agile and hop around a lot, mostly because I'm small but also some older styles sometimes have more movement like this (SOME); but I really love this stand-in-your-space aesthetic. It's the baddest-ass pissing contest in the world!

you don't need to change it, it's just that you get advantages and disadvantages when you change it. The stance to punch combinations optimally is different from the stance to punch optimally combined with kicks and defending kicks. Petrosyan is a bit different as he's a southpaw so he can get away with a longer stance more so than someone who stands orthodox. Masato is another great example, soundedly outboxed Buakaw in their second fight, but also ate a lot of low kicks. It's often a trade off that some are willing to take.

A bit late to this, but my coach definitely tries to add a large part of western boxing to our training sessions every now and then, specifically with boxing combos and head movement as well as when working with angles. He says that the very traditional Thai style is to just stand directly in front of each other and sort of just trade back and forth rather than trying to cut and make angles.

I know that Penake Sitnumnoi, lumpinee champion, ch7 champion, fighter of the year, lost his first 7 fights when he was a child and now he teachs at Evolve MMA in Singapore... I'm sure that when you'll win your first fight will be an huge satisfaction and a wave of confidence.. what if you do 100 or more fights... do you REALLY think you will lose ALL of them? Personally, I don't really like sport psychology, mental training strategies although they have scientific foundations. I'm sure that Muhammad Ali never studied how to be more confident. He just was Confident... He CHOSE to be confident... that's the beauty of sport, that's what make a champion... I think psychology ruins this kind of magic... if you stop fighting for a couple of losses then you have to live with yourself and your regrets forever... I guarantee that... Maybe you can think that you have lost the first 5 rounds of a longer, endless fight (your fighting career) and the positive thing is that you can decide how many rounds to do :) "You can lose without being defeated" is the best way to deal with a loss, but isn't a good way to head a fight... personally, in my last fights I was the underdog, I started the fight with that sentence in mind... as a result I kept walking forward, get punched and kicked, get knocked down, get up, keep walking forward, get kneed and elbowed etc.... I didn't really believe in my strikes... you have to want that win, not just not being defeated.. maybe you have to change your fighting style... at first I was a technical, strategichal fighter and won often, then I just wanted to show my heart and courage, but I had not muscle and strenght and lost often... you have to chose your style... if you want to be a technichal fighter then you have to be "cold" and really concentrated, if you want to be an aggressive fighter I think you have to be a bit sadistic too... " I try to catch them right on the tip of his nose, because I try to punch the bone into brain" said mike tyson.. you have to want him down and hit him as hard as you can, not just walking forward to show your heart! Good luck my friend! :)

Thanks everyone for replies!! My boxing coach don't know anything about muay thai but he was a great boxing champ, soo technichal... he saw Giorgio Petrosyan fighting and told that when he wants to do a boxing action he becomes a perfect boxer, his elbows protect his body, legs are bent (or flexed, I don't know the right term lol) and he moves like a boxer... of course in k1/kickboxing you don't get kneed or elbowed as much as in Muay Thai but do you think he's right? So if you want to do a boxing action you have to change your style temporarily?

Hey S / "Fish" :) See all this support and wisdom? Carry on with its strength and you'll break through that plateau.

The ranges and timing for hands change when used in the two arts! Knowing when you're vulnerable to being kicked is an important step to learning how to punch in kb/mt. Even the great Sagat was often disrupted when he goes into punching mode -- of course though, he was facing some of the greatest kickers in history.

I've done some boxing training and it has always been beneficial for me. There are some major differences between western boxing and Muay Thai, but it's mainly in hip position and the boxer's "crouch" versus the Muay Thai "c" shape. You can't check kicks with your legs from a full-boxer position and you can't sit down in your punches the same way boxers do when you're in a Muay Thai stance. But as long as you can figure out how to switch between them for what you're working on, it should all be very good.

Western boxing has been influencing Muay Thai from the modern beginning. We tend to think of Muay Thai as "pure", but the very first permanent ring in Bangkok in the early 1900s featured western boxing, and there has been western boxing in Rajadamnern and Lumpinee stadia from the start. They are of course two different arts, but Thais don't seem to see them as contradictory. Samart Payakaroon, who some consider the best Muay Thai fighter of recent eras, was also a WBC boxing champion. But there are schools and styles of boxing, and some may be less conducive to Muay Thai than others.

Absolutely. The ability to hide your kicks behind punches gives you a huge advantage in my opinion. Especially if you can get your opponent worried specifically about your hands, then you can start just smashing kicks in :)

Ask yourself two questions: 1) did you fall in love with Muay Thai because you could eventually write some numbers down on a piece of paper and have the left column outnumber the right column? 2) if your friend, who loves Muay Thai, fights with heart and trains as hard and with as much dedication as you do was considering quitting because of his record, would you advise him to do it? (Note: if the answer is "yes," you're a shitty friend.) I've bee through some really rough losing streaks. I lost 6 in a row in the US, which was over a year of losing every single fight I went into. I always came out thinking I could have done more, I never was injured, and I always thought I'd let everyone down. It feels like shit. But I kept fighting anyway because I love to fight and every single thing I do in the gym is toward the aim and joy of fighting. I never throw a kick and think "I ought to turn my leg over better because that's how I win." I change the kick because that's how it's done right, because that's what feels good. I wrote about that year-long losing streak in a blog post, "I'm a Loser Baby." And I've had losing streaks again since then. Above is a graphic of another 6 fight losing streak here in Thailand in 2013 - same number of losses, same disappointment, but because of my fight rate in only took me a month and a half to rack up those 6. It feels less bad now, but I reckon that's because of two things: 1) I have more practice at losing now; I've lost so many times (34 times, as of right now) that I know how to handle it. Muhammad Ali famously put it this way, "I never thought of losing, but now that it's happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life." And 2) I realized that nobody cares as much as I do whether I win or lose. My victories don't define me and neither do my losses. What defines me to me, to the people who train me, to people who pay any mind to my blog and my path out here, is that I keep going. You can lose without being defeated, you know what I mean? It's a pity to think that all the love you put into what you do, all the pain and fatigue and hours, is reduced down to a record that means fuck all about you. I talked about how I feel about records in this video: And Emma wrote a great blog post "Does your Record Really Matter?" Pi Nu, my trainer at Petchrungruang, points out some of the champions at the gym and tells me, "he lost for one year, cry every day." Or, "Before, nobody want him, gamblers hate him." He's talking about champions, fighters who I see every afternoon at training and can watch on TV, read about in the fight magazines, etc. You wouldn't know it now because they grew out of these hard times - sure, they still lose sometimes, but they just kept going through those very long losing streaks. And I reckon it made them stronger. If they'd quit because they were losing, then that's all there would be. What a damn shame. And I'll tell you something that nobody's going to tell you: you won't feel satisfied after winning, either. You can always do better, always do more, always have put more in. There's no, "well, that was perfect because I did everything right." Winning just feels better, so you can gloss over the mistakes more easily. You win and nobody has anything to say other than "great job" or "congratulations," or "badass." Wins make you look better than you are and losses make you look worse than you are - none of it is a full picture; none of it is an assessment of who you are or what you're worth. But you do have to get your mind right. You do have to believe in yourself, and at the times that you don't (and there are always going to be those times; I have those times) you have to trust the people who believe in you for you. If you go on Wikipedia and look up Dekkers or Buakaw... those dudes lost a lot. It doesn't matter. It just gets pushed to the side so the work can get done. You're not a bad fighter, you're a work in progress. And that goes for all of us, really.

I am travelling to Thailand in one week to train and fight and have increased my conditioning for months in preparation, but am wondering if there is anything I can do in the next week to make the transition to full time training smoother? Things to focus on? Anything that I should avoid?

You're so clever to have trained yourself in preparation for training! With only one week there's not much conditioning of your feet you can do, but if you can walk around barefoot to build up callouses, that's always helpful. Your feet get jacked at pretty much any gym. And get your miles up with running. The heat is intense and takes a while to get used to, so being used to the miles themselves makes the transition smoother. This sounds kinda lame and hippie-ville, but focus on your breathing during runs and bagwork-type spurts. Training is tiring any way you cut it, but not breathing due to the discomfort of working with new trainers (not knowing what they're asking for and the totally normal "getting to know you" period of working together) can cause you to hold your breath and you will get way more tired than you think you should, given your conditioning. I have to remind myself of this all the time.