Oliver

OOOooomg yes, the Charlie Zellenoff videos were hilarious. Ok now it's making sense, if we're talking about guys like that. Don't think its a macho / ego thing.... some people are just properly mentally disturbed. Like he would stalk pro boxers on twitter, talk shit to them, death threats, dropping N bombs, the works. Best one had to be when Deontay Wilder invited him to his gym after the keyboard abuse, and the nutcase actually showed up and got his ass handed to him. Brilliant.

Yeah exactly, we all seen examples of the party hard dude that doesn't have it affect his conditioning at all, it's genetically freaky shit. Gotta admit, never seen the other one unfortunately. Like, the guy who comes in and says he's been in tonnes of street fights right off the bat. Always figured that happened in movies or Instagram memes but didn't know it's actually a regular real life thing.

Only once but the dude didn't actually talk about it - you had to get to know him, but down the bar after a couple of drinks his stories came out... which were both shocking and hilarious - but also 100% true. Not a bullshitter at all. Fairly quiet guy in the gym actually, from Russia. Came up in sketchy places where these altercations weren't uncommon for young guys growing up. Extremely polite and courteous, with an understated cleverness to him, but also *really* fucking strong, *really* fucking athletic, and *really* fucking skilled. He'd be out getting trashed and high on god knows what every Friday night, then Saturday morning he rolls in to sparring session with no sleep, still wearing the same clothes, stinking of whiskey and ky jelly. Then kicks all our asses in sparring. Half way through training we're looking around wondering where he is, and it turns out he snuck outside for a cigarette break. Got curious so asked him once about Russian athletes and what made them so successful in so many sports, expecting more street fight stories or something. He just said one word in his usual stoic demeanour. "Attitude".

The back of your calf to the back of their standing leg calf, same time as a double push on the shoulders when they do a knee? Glorious, gorgeous and yeah, because it's not muscled but timed. When it happens to you by someone who knows how.....you're almost too distracted by him shoving your shoulders that you don't realise it's a calf to calf thing that pulled the rug from under you. Not being funny, but even if it is a foul, he almost deserves the point if he pulls it off with you not realising it was a foul. That's the most morally vacuous argument ever made, but hey. But the wrestler's knee tap thing - is it legal or not?

Actually been wondering about this for a while and didn't know how to ask it. Training in Europe, partners and coaches would get WAY more pissy, anal and chastisey over clinch takedowns that were greyish areas, but during time in Bangkok it was way more commonplace and done with laughing and joking around... like, if it's done smooth and quick enough and nobody saw how, and the ref didn't see, then it's all cool. To be honest...kinda liked that approach. Or maybe it was just these Thai boys messing with me and I didn't have the language to ask what was legal and what wasn't. Actually never asked questions or even spoke much at all for months. But one that stuck in the mind? Kinda similar to a wrestler's knee tap. Actually incredibly similar. Even done to me with an underhook on one side, and with his other arm the hand drops down to just rest on the back of the knee cap on the opposite side to the shoulder being underhooked. That shoulder raised up slightly with the underhook and his momentum forward to complete the takedown. So... letter of the law, is that within the rules? If lower body attacks with the arms are out?

Awesome thanks

Hello, Don't have windows but have to install it now for games and video editing. Recommended programs for video that's idiotproof for someone new to it? Much obliged O

When the trainer says, OK sparring, find a partner. You pick the biggest, scariest looking meathead in the room, like 30kg heavier than you. 8/10 times he will be the most controlled, nicest and friendliest person there and you won't get injured. It's the little guy with a ying yang tattoo who has problems with over-aggression in sparring.

Raja is super nice, but too expensive for me. So just wear whatever.

Swear that's a true story.

Apologies, to be fair that was a bit of a bitchy rant on my part

That's actually a really good idea, teaching people how to hold. Sounds ridiculous but this is actually the reason I left and went to live in Thailand, just to have someone to hold pads for me. Like... legit, it was worth it just for that. Yeah maybe it was just bad luck on my part - there was 1 decent gym back home that wasn't so bad, but the rest I tried were cults. And yeah, usually those trainers would spend more time trying to seduce the new hot chick than taking care of fighters. One was a semi crook, lied about his fight record and never sparred with his students. Actually, the funniest one? Never had the misfortune to go as this was in another town, but there was a dude teaching classes while wearing a monkol and armbands.

Not quite sure I understand entirely. Just meant dark and scary before because adopting a killer machine animal mean alter persona or whatever is something that always felt out of reach. It's always nervous & terrifying enough before a fight, so usually feel unable to think about anything that complicated. But maybe that's personal inexperience, who knows.

That mechanistic structured way of teaching is also often the only way it makes business sense in the West. I mean come on, let's be real. You basically got a room with 40 people on the mat and only 1 trainer (translation: cult leader who wants to get his dick sucked), so people new to the sport are made to partner up and hold pads for each other. It's blind leading the blind - not their fault, they're forced to do it. How can you make someone who doesn't know something teach it to someone else who doesn't know it? Only by stripping the whole thing down and doing the rote thing you describe. Which then becomes only one very structured, K1ish combo for the entire 3 minute round, then switch pads over. And in that 3 minutes, 2 of those minutes are spent by the pad holder trying to figure out how to hold and where, remember what side etc. And god help you if you're a leftie. Absolutely nobody could do it. Round over, and you haven't even broken a sweat. Fucking disgusting, makes you wanna cry. And if you fight for that gym, pay your monthly membership, and want the trainer to hold pads for you, you're expected to pay him 50 an hour to basically do his fucking job. But usually that's the whole point. The highly structured thing you guys are describing? That's so he can spend *ages* talking and talking and talking when he demos the combination, more time than the students will spend actually doing the damn thing. Because in reality, that class he's running is in fact an advert for his personal training service, where he makes his real money. Basically from office workers with selfie sticks on the mat who are doing it for their Tinder photos. That's the Western gym's bread and butter, that's where the money is. If that Western gym was to do it properly it would need to split that room between fighters and casual exercise ppl, then hire at least 2 more experienced trainers/former fighters to take care of the people preparing for fights. But why would he pay those salaries if he doesn't have to? But then again this was all in my country, and from what you guys say it sounds like America does it way better than this.

Gotta admit, most of this sounds like fairly dark and scary shit to me. Not be squeemish or anything but....shit, thinking too much about this stuff reminds me of those fucked up Tumblrs. But anyway. Actually, someone on another thread talked about Hannibal, dunno if you guys meant the old movies, the books or the tv show. But in the new series, the main guy kept saying his real fantasy wasn't killing people, but watching a teacup drop and break apart on the ground. In that moment when it smashed, he wished time would stop and reverse, and all the pieces of the teacup would gather up together and be a teacup again. That's basically what it feels like when you're losing a fight and somehow come back and win. He's stronger, better, faster, nothing's working and you feel like you're drowning and there's no way out. But then all of a sudden something works and you can't believe it. That's the teacup gathering up again.

Only time this comes up is when you get a guy who's probably printing his own credit cards or some kinda scam back home. Got an apartment with 2 phone receivers on the floor duct-taped together upside down. Then comes to Bangkok and wants to be king of the white people. Actually, the not talking about techniques etc? Another thing that never occurred, because all the other foreigners didn't speak English. So we had google translate friendships mainly.

Living with the same one gym over there pretty long term, this doesn't seem familiar. Apart from maybe like, 1 douchebag the entire time who was gone in a week, all the other foreign dudes were cool as fuck and hardworking and got friendly. All the politics and bullshit happened back home, and it was the best thing ever to leave all that behind.

Agreed. Always found the most beneficial training partners were guys bigger than me, one by 20kilos. It meant you couldn't get away with bullshit. All the tiny details & phases within one thing you wanna do have to be on point, for the whole thing to work.

Again, hard to pay attention to it when really tired and doing something difficult, but one noticeable thing from those days was the weight issue. Say a real tall girl with the build of a South American tennis player needs a partner, she tends to prefer (and prob improve more) partnering with the guy who's like 72 or 76kg. If there's another girl there who is way way lighter, the trainer partners them up together, and some of them don't like that.

Very tough to know. Don't really like thinking too much when going to training or reading books etc. Only time seeing it from the other side is in yoga class, only time enough to do once a week and not because it's fun. Highly unpleasant but find it necessary. Have bad flexibility and bad overall body strength, and never found any kind of weight training helps. This does. People might not like biological arguments but in that room there's no escaping it, the advantage everybody else has in terms of natural hip and leg flexibility.... I mean it's clear as day. If you're a dude, it's basically you and an old guy recovering from an operation, and that's it. First day is like, damn... gonna be humiliating...gonna be treated like we shouldn't be here....look all clunky and rigid. So we just hide in the back and try keep up. The truth? Absolutely nobody cares, or even notices us. Over time, just realised it's better not to think about it. You get treated well, given the easier guy-friendly variations of the asanas by the teacher, and have no complaints, and soon forget you're the only 2 guys there. Unless we're told to feel the universe and breath into our bra straps. Totally different from the Thai gyms back home when starting out. Not only did the overall membership have more girls but half the fight team were girls. And the 2 most experienced girls used to chat about the gym going downhill, saying "Because now the gym has too many girls". For real, that's a quote. O

Another Chatchai be good. But for selfish reasons. Found that hands have always been the weakest and most difficult part.

It's a cop out response on the light vs hard thing, but getting both is beneficial. Like a musician's work time in between playing live shows, the practising vs playing issue. They're not the same thing. The Western dudes mentioned above who just want to brutalise each other in the gym for their facebook but not have fights, it's kinda like a music student who only wants to play through songs at home start to finish, or keep going over stuff that's already familiar. Without actually taking apart the song structure and it's harmony, so he knows that it works without knowing why it works. A player worth his salt will do way way more of what the other guy thinks is boring - basically sit there with a metronome for hours, slow the whole thing down, drill, try new stuff, experiment with new phrasing recently learned etc. Sounds like tedious baby steps, but the legit players still do this light sparring way even with 15 years behind them. The musical 'hard sparring' is getting together with other players afterwards for rehearsal and then playing through the songs on the set list before the show. And playing with others, especially live, leads to stronger improvement than anything. But...you kinda need the first way, the practice thing, in order to do the second thing effectively, the playing/rehearsing. If you really wanna be tight and clean. Best training so far, hands down, was light sparring in the morning session with a teenager with the eyes of an old man - and like, no shin guards and no timed rounds, just continuous. Then in the afternoon, the hard sparring with shin guards, 16s, rounds, and we each had a corner etc. Awesomeness. O

Thing is, you can kinda feel sorry for that every new guy with the red hat. Sounds like you guys had good training starting out so were decently schooled, but in loads of countries it's a bit shocking. In the beginning, this one gym (stayed there about 5 minutes, for this reason) had a trainer only wanting us us to do his bizarre convoluted long ass 13, 14 hit combinations. No joke, one would involve superman punch, then flying knee, then spinning back something, then another jumping teep, then his own ninja matrix move he invented... I mean it was cringe. Didn't know where to look. Growing up, there were guys running gyms this way to keep paying members coming back because it felt fancy and exciting. He knew his... well, basically cult members, loved to know they were learning the same thing they saw in a highlight reel the previous day on their instagram.

Kinda let down now. Was partly hoping it was true.

So wait wait... then the whole thing about TKD's jumping spinny spinny stuff being from infantrymen who knocked the cavalry guys off their horses..... was that an urban myth all along?