Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

You say it right, you "catch" the kick, which means you pick a spot on the shin you want to catch it with, and you meet it up, like you are using a glove and catching a ball. As to how high you bring it up depends on how high the kick is. I'm not super experienced with this myself, but I did start doing it in padwork when I had a banged up shin, and the train was fond of whacking me back with a kick. I just started catching the kick just below the kneecap, or even with the point of the knee, gently. For me, I'd fold the leg a bit to give the knee support. It is very hard when bent. There are some really good things about it. The first is that you are practicing accuracy. People don't think of blocks needing accuracy, but they do. It's usually just "Get your block up!", but all the greats were super accurate with their checks. They aren't using the whole shin. Trying to catch it in a specific part of the shin is super productive, and will give you confidence in your checks over time. As to hurting your partner, well, they are hurting you. Not intentionally, but yeah, it's hurting you. The whole point of sparring without shin guards, or the whole benefit, is that it teaches you control and feeling. If you are catching kicks up on the thick high part of your shin, or catching with the point (a little), they just have to pull their kicks, gain control. It's sparring, not whacking. You don't have to spear them with the knee, just catch it. I'm not even saying you could/should do this. But there are some good ideas why it might make sense in your situation. And it could be fun. In terms of Muay Thai you don't want to be catching kicks all day, in the long term.

You can use it as an occasion to maybe become more accurate with the block, and try and catch the kicks up at the top of the shin where the bone is thicker, below the knee, or even bending the leg and catching it with the knee point. This is basically the Low Kick Destroyer (catching low kicks on the knee point). It might be worth experimenting with, just to avoid catching all kicks.

A worthy article on the shoulder strike and it's use in MMA/wrestling: Conor McGregor’s shoulder strike: A potential new trend, or an old classic briefly revamped?

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This is an awesome little book we found today, a guide put out the the Sports Authority of Thailand, which had Sylvie's gym Petchrungruang in it. There are not a lot of places where this kind of information can be found so we came home and just photographed the pages. You should be able to download any single page and zoom in to get the details you might be interested in. Not the best format for browsing, but it is a resource! You can find Sylvie's recommended gym list here. As a guide you might scroll through and find a gym that you hadn't thought of, or hadn't heard of before. Every gym has 4 pages devoted to it. continued below

A good example of this is that Cerrone has his "head in" pretty decently, in the sense that he's protecting from the elbow from the controlling arm, which in Thailand's Muay Thai would be the main concern (other than being manipulated and turned). This is a "not bad" head position, something that would not get punished. But, in this case, especially because he's grinding forward, he's exposed to the shoulder. The top of head here needs to be really tucked it, on the shoulder/collar/jaw bone, tick-in, which is a very strong Thai clinch response. But, where it is, is the "good enough" position in many Thailand fights because there is no concern for the shoulder strike.

I'm, personally, not interested in its use in MMA, or this fight. I think because it came out of a common Thai clinch position it maybe exposes a few holes in the position, specifically in Thailand's Muay Thai (the ruleset and fighting style in the country, which is what I'm most familiar with). I'm not really openly asking anything though. I'm just thinking through the position, from a traditional Muay Thai perspective. There are always blindspots in fighting styles and customs, this seems like one of them, in a very narrow sense. Imagining this position with more optimal postures on the Cerrone side, it would be much harder to execute, but it is interesting to think through it's possible uses, even if more well-defended. This is complicated though by how it might be reffed or perceived within the traditional Thai ring.

Cool to look at. Two useless arms. Conor has a basic Thai clinch position. Arm loop + inside frame. Cerrone exerts no control or pressure over either arm, especially on the shoulder strike side. This lazy over position on the frame drives me crazy. Happens all the time. What's beautiful about this is how Conor is giving ground, which really sets it all up. Backwards movement in clinch is key to so many dominant movements. watch the slow motion of the strikes here: https://web.facebook.com/watch/?v=2852823818097683 This is a pretty fascinating strike in that it's set up by a general grinding forward, and the lack of pressure or control, but also because it develops from a very common position in Muay Thai, so much so it would be pretty easy to get lazy about it. No Thai would just grind forward like that in the clinch, which is a pretty big factor here, but they very well might not dig their head in deep enough, like Cerrone, to control the shoulder and collar bone, or not snake in hard enough from the top arm position. Because Thais clinch train in very lengthy sessions habits and position assumptions do develop - and I find these unconscious shapes pretty interesting. Though shoulder strikes are perfectly legal in Thailand's Muay Thai, they really are almost never seen, likely due to evolving aesthetics, and maybe a sense of sportsmanship. In short, this is a kind of a "hole" in the form of Thai clinch, I suspect. Proper technique probably closes the hole pretty firmly, but proper,. or optimized technique is not always happening, or even trained. From this position Cerrone, in Muay Thai, would be most concerned with the elbow. The shoulder isn't even thought about. It's a blindspot. Blindspots happen in fighting styles and disciplines, shaped by rulesets, cultural aesthetics, and training practices. The shoulder is actually a hidden appendage and leverage point in lots of high-level Thai clinch technique, but it's not thought of as a direct weapon. I imagine that it would likely be seen as "base", perhaps in the way that Yodkhupon's amazing high volume elbow fighting style was looked down upon, despite winning at the highest level (simultaneous stadium belts in the Golden Age). I personally find this strike really interesting because the McGregor position is a dominant one that Sylvie works herself toward and secures in lots of fights. She loops that right arm hard, and is always exploring developments from there. This is a Dieselnoi position. Most often it's considered better to control the neck with the left arm, and work towards knees and turns, but this frame up exposing the open side, pinning it open is definitely an active position. So much of this strike is dependent on Cerrone grinding forward, allowing McGregor to bounce back and load. But it does seem that the shoulder strike is a perfect fit in the vocabulary from this position, even if under neutral pressure. There is a lot to be developed here. Even as a threat (as a miss), it can get the opponent to posture up too high, and set up knees or a deep turn.

Are you wondering: Will I have to run? Or, looking for a gym which doesn't push you to run, or will accept running less? What are your major concerns? - It's cool that you are getting your miles up in advance

If you have related images, aesthetics, feel free to upload and post them!

Our experience with Visas is that enforcements are constantly shifting, and really do vary from office to office by region. Something that is no problem for one area of Thailand, or at one consulate, can be a problem in another area. The best universal advice is to go to a Visa agency in your area. Visa agencies run vans to the border, and have the most up-to-date sensitivities on what is working, and what is not working. If you get a good agency, they have strong connections, work in volume, and may argue on your behalf when something isn't right. It costs a little extra money, but it can be worth while. That being said, this is just our experience. Agencies around Thailand might also vary.

That's beautiful to read, just because I can feel you just throwing yourself into it. A few photos from Samson's time in the gym to add to the color: The last of these is really beautiful. Samson is sitting with Arjan Gimyu, a legend of the Golden Age himself, but as a Trainer. They probably had not seen each other, close like this, since 1992, when Samson beat Arjan Gimyu's heavy-fisted fighter Lakhin, two times out of three, to win the Fighter of the Year Award. That no doubt was a painful result, but somehow it was beautiful to see these nemesises, now sitting together on a bench, in the gym together. In fact, they even collaborated in training together, when Arjan was holding, for Sylvie, culminating with Arjan even holding for Samson: :

Answered to include many regions, you may find this post by @Tyler Byers informative:

We'll try to get the commentary versions out on YouTube this week. The live streams are here: Fight 260 Fight 261

I was...I am...very moved by this post. This is everything I'd hope to hear and read from others, such a human story. All about our frailty, and our ache to be better, to find better, in something, in ourselves. And it is fucking incredible that for whatever reason Sylvie and her work sparked something in you, that all your gears got triggered to turn in whatever beautiful way you are turning them. Thank you for taking the time to write so realistically. It means a lot.

Hey Jaco!

What often happens to fighters who enjoy the idea of switching stance is that their offense will improve, but their defense will suffer. A lot of this happens simply because you aren't used to seeing things reversed, so you don't pick up strikes as quickly. One piece of advice we've seen when fighting someone who switches back and forth in a fight is to just rush them when they move into their unnatural side, because their defense is probably suspect. But this isn't such a huge problem, you just have to work more on your defense than you might think. Focus on it. The biggest aid in this for Southpaws is learning the "forward check", which is a feigning left leg (rear leg) raise, that closes off the Southpaw's biggest weakness to Orthodox fighters. This is a really, really big tool. Karuhat teaches it to Sylvie in the Muay Thai Library session where he turns her from Orthodox to Southpaw. There is a whole vocabulary of the forward check that is really special, both defensively and offensively, for Muay Thai. Maybe check that video out.

We think that forward aggression is just the natural way to show dominance, but it's more complicated than that. Let's say we are kids, I smack you in the mouth in a fight, and then move away from you and make you miss when you lunge at me. Then I laugh, move slightly out of the way, call you a name, you lunge at me again. And then again, this time I hit you making you off balance, and laugh again. Who is dominating the scene? This is just a simple school yard fight, but you can clearly see who is "winning" the fight by dominance. The kids are all around us, laughing. This is an extreme example of how Thais see the backwards fighter looking in control in a fight. They have to keep scoring, they have to seem like they are controlling everything, but they do it by making the other fighter look desperate or out of control. It's actually much closer to "real" fighting than otherwise supposed real fighting is.

This is something we will probably be discussing in the next Muay Bones Podcast, but it is seriously interesting. It comes from an article on load management in the NBA. I'm not so much interested in any conclusions in the article (that is a more pampered recovery orientation, maybe we can call it Wagu Training, is perhaps aimed at a different aesthetic, and even spiritual goal), so much as the basic diagnostic framework used by longtime Laker trainer Gary Vitti, and how that intersects with the Thai concept of Ruup (basic bodily form, not just physically, but as an expression of state). In fights you basically try to break your opponent's Ruup, and maintain your own. Vitti, when watching players looking for warning signs essentially look for the breaking of what Thais call Ruup: What is super interesting is that this dovetails into Sylvie's recent re-understanding of the common Thai trainer's admonition "Mai me lang" (You have no power [today]). She had always taken this to mean "You aren't hitting the pads as hard as usual", but really came to recently see it more as "Your Ruup is breaking". The overly form of your expression, everything about you, visually. The Thais, ridiculed in the pro-science dudes as dumb and uneducated are right on it. It's all about Ruup, first. When the Ruup is breaking, something needs to change. The other key is further in the article. Intensity must meet load. Thais are famous for their very intense training, but what is missing from the stereotype is a) the micro-rests and relaxation that are constantly occurring in even the most pushed Thai training, the little downshifts are there everywhere if you learn to see them, and b) Thais are not training just Load. They are training Intensity during Load. This is the NBA way of rationalizing this relationship for data capture: What the Thais understand, perhaps even better than Gary Vitti, and this comes from the performative dimension of Muay Thai in Thailand, is that you are first and always training your Ruup, the compensive dignity, the integrity of the movement, and the emotional expression of the Self. The reason for this is that the Thai load is high, very high, and thus the Intensity, the focus has to match that load. Training is like this, fighting is like this. Westerners like to flip themselves onto the ropes, or bellow out in a groan after a brutal round of padwork, maybe even throw themselves on the ground. I've seen the impacts of westerners on Thais in the gym even, as if it's a disease of expression, caught like a contagion from the west. The truth is that if you are rigorously training Ruup in all things you create a carefully calibrated, extremely sensitive diagnostic tool for a Thai trainer. If your Ruup starts to break in even small ways (ie, not thrownly yourself on the ropes, heaving how hard you worked), they can see they something is wrong, or needs to be adjusted, perhaps. And training the intensity of Ruup (composure), is the Golden Key to understanding why Muay Thai is like no other fighting art in the world. Selected from: The Ringer: How Kawhi Leonard Turned Load Management Into a Style of Play. https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/12/24/21036024/kawhi-leonard-clippers-load-management

You see this much more in the Golden Age, close range, in the pocket hand fighting, and more...hand feeling. One of the beautiful skills of that time involved hand to hand redirecting and really, perception. This Scientific American article talks about experiments that confirm that the human brain reads the environment "through" material extensions of the body, as if the ARE the body. Check it out: Scientific American: The Brain Senses Touch beyond the Body. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brain-senses-touch-beyond-the-body/ I've always felt that, because the human body is a vast predatorial (and prey) computational device, evolved over millions of years, and because so much of fighting is about not only sensing exactly where you opponent is, but also sensing where they are going to be, increasing the sensorial inputs only makes sense. One spends a great deal of time training vision, imagine if vision inputs become married to kineasthenic/touch inputs could create a super computational perception, well below the conscious level. Think about this. The human body has evolved to actually feel through you gloves, as if the leather at the ends were skin. Think about the precision of that perception. Think about this. Do all you padwork, but do it touching your padman, or the pads, constantly, creating an additional vector of information, to confirm or sharpen the perceptions of your eyes. Fight and train with cat whiskers.

Can you maybe post some photos, a map of your gym's location, and other interesting details like the price of training, how to get there, opportunities for fights, anything else that might give a more personal sense of what it is like there.

Sylvie says that she has skinning legs and she uses Fairtex and likes them. The model she has (I think, FAIRTEX - Pro Style Double Padded Shin Guards (SP3)) does not have a stop (additional reinforcement) on the strap that you pull through, so you can make them snug. Not sure about the issue of height.

Is it on your front side or back side? Good question! I would think that lots of footwork shadow could work, in guard. Yodkhupon has a beautiful footwork gallop you could learn in that time. It doesn't involve a ton of twisting. There is also a big question about immobilization and healing. Doctors really like to isolate injuries at times. Sylvie goes in a very different direction, continuously working around and feeling the limits of motion, and expanding them. Something along the lines of thinking that in the natural world when you had an injury you pretty much would never stop moving. There is some sense that motion might encourage healing, in many circumstances (blood flow, etc)

I'm not sure one can advise about mind- or mood-altering substances over the internet, but it is pretty amazing how devastating alcohol can be to ex-fighters in Thailand. Of course alcoholism a problem all over the world, but there is something about it and Muay Thai that has a deep cultural groove to it, and a fairly strong moral judgement as well, it seems.