LengLeng
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Posts posted by LengLeng
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This is a great post on importance of running and hard training regimens in Thailand:
https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/paul-banasiak-sponsored-fighter-harsh-training-realities
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5 hours ago, Xestaro said:
To clarify a bit, I was talking about this man: http://www.ajarngae.com/
Somehow he got pretty well known when some pretty hardcore pad-sessions with him went viral online. He seems to be a man who deeply mourned the loss of his ability to fight in the ring and now tries to help other people do that. Pushes his students very hard but because he really wants them to improve and be well prepared and at least to my eyes he also has a lot to offer. He seems to somehow have managed to take the spirit of a fighter he still has into being a trainer.
I would be very interested to learn more about him and his style and see what he and Sylvie can do together.I'm gonna jump on this one because I'm curious. Ajarn Gae is well known and so is Elite Fight Club. It comes up as suggestion in many discussions on muay thai gym, but mainly from westerners with limited experience of training in Thailand. And people with more experience will sort of not be too enthusiastic in their response. I've never tried it out because of this reason. I've seen one of the trainers (not Gae but also known) a couple of times on the BTS as I pass by EFC daily.
Anyhow now I see the same non-enthusiastic response and I'm curious. Is it because Gae and EFC are a bit touristy?
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40 minutes ago, Oliver said:
We know you know.
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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.
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8 hours ago, Tyler Byers said:
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.
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.
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On 8/31/2019 at 6:53 PM, Oliver said:
On 8/31/2019 at 12:30 PM, Jeremy Stewart said: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.
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.
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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.
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23 hours ago, 515 said:
If Mochit BTS station is in your range you could give FA Group a try, especially because you want to improve your clinching game.
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.
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16 hours ago, guyver4 said:
Thank you for the feedback guys. It's much appreciated.
@LengLeng I'll definitely keep your pointers in mind going forward.
@MadelineGrace I completely understand what you're saying. I've just passed the year mark with Muay Thai, and as much or as hard as I train, I still think of myself as relatively "new".
Our Muay Thai classes are only run twice a week at our gym, but there are guys there who train K1 5-6 times a week and do Muay Thai on top, but I only do the Muay Thai classes so always feel a level below if that makes sense.
I think where I've watched almost 100 hours watching the Patreon videos though, there are small things I can contribute which they may not have thought or seen before and in most cases they havent, especially in the clinch.
I think I will just try to keep myself more grounded going forward, and apply what I know, and just throw the nuggets if someone has me in a dominant position and doesn't know where to go, or vice versa.
I think it's good that you ask about these stuff. Some people are hungry for advice, some people learn better without too much interference. So I guess it's about feeling your way forward.
My husband is a crossfit coach and I join his classes now and then. Some time back in one of his classes I saw a woman doing squats with a weird form. Since I think I know everything about squat depth I tried to get the attention of my husband and sort of whispered that he should check on her form. He just brushed me off. And afterwards he told me she squats like this because she has this injury she is struggling with. And I realised it was definitely not my place to think I could have any educated opinion on how she should move just from joining one class with her and that I shouldn't think I know my husband's work better than him.
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8 hours ago, CatherineS said:
The mental thing is a bit tougher to wrap my head around. I’m really starting to grasp just how significant the mental and emotional aspects are when it comes to making the decision to fight. I’m a pretty tough person but I worry about crumbling in the ring. I keep waiting to feel closer to ready and anywhere near confident but it hasn’t happened yet. I worry that that part won’t ever come. That part has me more nervous than being physically ready.
I never even considered fighting, I thought I would try the sport when it was decided I would move to Thailand but I never even considered doing anything serious with it. I had never even seen a fight first time I tried and I did not know how to stand or what a guard is or anything. I was also incredibly shitty. Like the one everyone in the gym tries to help out because she cannot keep her limbs together.
But after some months I suddenly had this vision in my head. Super scary. And about ten months in of proper training (starting 2/week to 6-10/week but no clinching, almost no sparring at all) I decided I really wanted to fight. And then it took a while to even get a fight and I only discovered how much I really wanted it when what was supposed to be my first fight got cancelled. And in the end I was smoking a cigarette having a beer when I was offered a fight five days later. So not ideal prep but it went well anyway. And nothing can beat that feeling of fighting for the first time.
Everyone told me it would be just like sparring no worries and you won't feel pain. I felt a lot of pain. And it was nothing like sparring. So, even if I had done much more sparring and harder sparring I do not think I could have known before how I would react in the ring.
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@guyver4 there is a thread I started on this called Unsolicited advice during training which might give you some views.
Is your gym a place where people give each other feedback a lot? If it is I guess you just need to "feel" where the line is.
Otherwise I would let these questions guide me:
1. Am I a teacher with a mandate to teach instructions?
2. Did this person ask for my advice?
3. Am I really experienced enough to know how to teach this particular movement/technique?
4. Why do I have this urge to give feedback to this person? Do I really want to help or does it originate from my own desire to seem knowledgeable?
Learning is an individual thing. Gyms are full with people who overestimate their own knowledge and enthusiastically share their knowledge with others in a way that is not constructive.
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.....oh and proper recovery stuff like nutrition sleep and body work (massage etc) is to me key to increase fitness level quicker. If I'm sloppy with that my training and endurance suffers a lot.
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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
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2 hours ago, Kero Tide said:
I'm also still going back and forth in my mind between how much of the holding out from clinch directly comes from the men at the gym and how much it comes from my own anxious mind seeing too much rejection where there is not as much and as a result rejecting myself before they could even get the chance to reject me. Like I'd rather take my own life than having someone take it from me. Which in itself sounds like a nasty effect of the patriarchy... You're conditioned to segregate yourself to save men from having to perform this chore. They can stay sit on the couch slacking while you self sabotage for their sake. I'm getting worked up here all of a sudden.
Love your review in general. But also especially this
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5 hours ago, Malik said:
And I could even know them for a long time without knowing their first name?...
If you meet someone on the street they would give you their nickname. If you want to adress them formally you use Khun and then their nickname. But if you add them on social media you most likely will get to know their other names. Or if you exchange emails as Emma points out above.
A lot of thai people use their first name as facebook name which has the negative consequence that I keep forgetting people's nicknames which is what I generally use when talking to them. Some people use both first name and nickname on facebook which makes everything much easier. Many of them use thai letters (obviously) which makes it extremely difficult if you cannot read and write thai, especially if you want to tag them in a post
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At work we have a funny system, non-thais go by their first name (no Mr or Ms) and their emails are surname@domainname. Thai staff we address using their nicknames, even our most senior colleagues and their emails are firstname@domainname. When they are new and introduce themselves they send out an email giving us their full name and then usually an apology for their name being so long and difficult to remember followed by "...but you can call me [nickname]". So I know the first name and surname of all my colleagues but refer to them and address them by their nickname.
My younger thai colleagues I am casual with call me Pi. People I deal with for example companies delivering services call me Khun. I always address people more senior with me Khun, when writing an email usually you shorten it as in Dear K. Nickname (or P. ) However, in many cases with people I only deal with via email, I only know their first name and surname and not their nickname if they have not added it to their email signature. In that case, I use their first name. I never ever use their surnames. The few Muslim thais I know go by their Muslim names.
I never had a thai trainer refer to themselves as a Kru, it has been other people who use it when referring to them in 3rd person. I usually use their nicknames or whatever they told me their name was when introducing themselves to me. Sometimes their fight name. At my gym we have two headtrainers, I would not think they are Arjans, they are in their early 40s, but even the thai guys refer to them as Arjan so I do too. I think it is a bit of a joke but I have no clue.
However, I would not worry about this too much. Just ask how they want to be addressed. Thai people are tolerant people and understand foreigners are different and that their own system can be tricky for us. And if you in the US, I would go by local culture.
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3 hours ago, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu said:
Karuhat is also old enough that I could call him "Lung Sian," but he'd be offended by that, like I was calling him old, so even though the age difference makes that appropriate, I use "Pi" for his ego, hahaha.
One of my former (and favorite) trainers met Karuhat recently at Rompo gym and proudly posted a photo of them both on Facebook with the caption "my idol". And others would comment and refer to Karuhat as Pi Sian. I'm pretty sure they don't know him at all so I took it as a sign that they used Pi just as dudes will use "my bro". Sort of to indicate closeness and "I know this dude he my bro"?
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3 hours ago, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu said:
Teep always works nicely against "short range" and short stature opponents. I'm a shorty and I feckin' hate the teep. It also sets up for almost anything else, like the jab does.
But, honestly your approach to this opponent in your fight was very good anyway. She landed some heavy punches that could have been complicated by a teep, but a good guard is just as good.
Oh yes, teep is probably best counter, but I feel it takes a lot of experience and practice and balance to react like this if the opponent is very fast. But I guess being tall I really would benefit from focused teep practising. Funnily enough my first session back at the gym I had to do a never ending teep session.
I heard your comment in your fight video that apparently you were teeped out of breath, but I really saw nothing of it didn't seem to bother you.
And thanks a lot
. I've been picked apart by one of my trainers for the way I reacted to lowkicks (and everything else) and although a good thing for someone to care, it's hard.
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On 8/1/2019 at 4:02 PM, Xestaro said:
As another option (surely this won't work EVERY time but its another thing to probably practice and add to the arsenal) I've seen my trainer advise to just take a step back on a low kick (bringing your left leg back if you're in orthodox stance) since they can't kick what isn't there anymore of course.
I like this because it makes your opponent look a bit stupid.
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3 hours ago, Tyler Byers said:
Cross checking might be easier (this gives you much more surface area to work with instead of only the point of the knee), especially with a shorter opponent. Just make sure your guard is tight and you balance is good. I'm in the same boat as you, I get low kicked a lot
Yeah that is good advice, that movement comes a bit more natural for me anyways.
Either way, back to learning lab...
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On 7/14/2019 at 9:18 PM, LengLeng said:
Thanks @Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu @Tyler Byers for all these pointers and advice. I'm in absorption mode here hehe. And the low kick destroyer is brilliant how could I have forgotten about it?
Much appreciated.
Update. Low kick destroyer was a complete fail for me. It was raining low kicks, but I didnt have enough time before the fight to practice to have the destroyer movement "in my body" enough to use it. I hate low-kicks. I think they such an ugly, low-class movement and during fight I wanted to tell opponent 'you never be a great fighter if low-kicks all you got'. And at that moment she hooked me badly all turned white for a second. Joke on me
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So, me and my left multicolored thigh look forward to learn how to block these efficiently. But I find it so hard to find the right angle of the knee? Especially when opponent shorter?
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On 5/10/2019 at 6:02 PM, T. Vitayanuvatti said:
I’m 35 and I’m trying to retrain myself to fight but given my age and the amount of time I would need to properly prepare for a fight, I think my fighting days are over. I’m still going to train and spar but most Muay Thai fighters have long since retired by this age. I have the will to fight but are my fighting days over?
I had a beer with some fighters yesterday including Keng Sarikadong. He is 36 works as trainer on Samui and just won the King's Cup.
If your body is fit, why not? You write the book of your life. Would you want to read it?
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2 hours ago, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu said:
Ah! That's cool that Jomkwan's corner helped you get ready. I arrived during her teammates fight, which I think was bout #2. I was setting up my mat and talking to the promoter, so I didn't really get to watch her in the ring but saw that she was dealing with some serious leg kicks afterward.
A few of your knees had both my husband and my cornerman going "oooiiii" as we watched from our mat
That was fight 3. I thought she (Bangfaiknam) was amazing and very surprised she didn't get the win. Also big size difference.
And thank you thank you thank you. I feel I don't deserve the praise but considering the judges decision it really helps to hear. On my way back to Bangkok with a long list of issues to work on.
Best of luck for tonight. Hope you get another KO.
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On 7/26/2019 at 7:35 PM, 515 said:
If you ever would go training there again, please give us an update It is close to the place I stay normally.
For sure! It's also within walking distance for me so I'll likely check it out again.
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On 7/28/2019 at 9:29 AM, MadelineGrace said:
who is the other fighter that is on here that you said fought really well even though it was her 2nd fight only? Congrats to her also.
That was me
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Wow what a great mention makes me so so happy!
I also saw the fight in person (well obviously) and to people who were not there, the video does not make the size difference justice. I was so surprised by the sudden KO because Sylvie looked so much smaller and I remember thinking that "jeez so much power in that small body". Sylvie arrived during fight 4 I think and she was fight 8. And they drove all the way from Pattaya. It's a pretty insane thing to do, so many hours in the car and then arrive an hour before your fight.
Her opponent's corner man you see in the video ended up wrapping my hands and helping me on with my gloves. He was very cool and calm and great to be around to calm fight nerves. And the cat was super cute.
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Difficulties men face when training muay thai?
in Open Topics - men and women - General Muay Thai Discussion and News
Posted
I agree! Thanks so much for sharing.