Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

I'm really not sure that this is the case. Or, I am very hesitant to apply "normal" or "natural" to certain reactions. We become highly conditioned. For instance, lots of people might hold their breath during exertion, and exhale afterwards. And in thinking about the animal kingdom I can't even picture an animal exhaling strongly on exertion or attack. Maybe??? But I think it's far from believing that exhalation on a strike is "normal". When a child hits you they aren't making a "Hiiii-yahh!" If I had to guess it is probably more "normal" to just hold your breath? I'm not sure about that either. If you are breathing IN (after your strike) you are actually extremely vulnerable to counter strike blows to the body. You hit someone on the inhale and they go down. Just being armchair here, it seems that the exhale right when you might be counterstruck, would be more ideal defensively. Maybe I'm just spinning things, but at first blush that is what it looks like to me.

@Tim Macias From the vlog above, I find this really interesting. "inhales before he strikes...then exhales on the recoil" I know nothing of kung fu and other traditional martial arts, but always got the sense that the exhale on the strike point was a moment of "release", that in some sense, even emotionally, when the breath comes out, energy is "coming out" or being transferred. To move from this basic pattern of storing energy (inhaling), and then releasing energy (on contact) would be profound, like learning an entirely different body map and rhythm, a very different music. On the other hand though, I wonder if this alternate breathing really points to the fundamentally profound difference in the General's art. In Boran styles, commonly, you will hear how important defense is, that the core of the art is somehow defensive, or at least "not offensive". It makes sense for a truly martial art to be oriented first towards self preservation. This is the compelling point. If "release" is on the point of attack, or is on the point of maybe we can call it "gathering". This seems like a very powerful emotional mapping difference. The release (exhale) is on return, because for the General everything is rooted in the return, never falling outside the frame -- if I can wager that thought. I also wonder if the development of breathing patterns on impact, of traditional martial arts, may have been guided by their gradual removal from live fighting and combat. A focus on delivering the blow, rather than within the gathering of the human forum <<< prospective thinking here

Timothy's Vlog: Day 5

No, Kru Dam was in the per-cursor to the Muay Thai Library, work we were doing for Nak Muay Nation. Here was the public clip from that session: Kru Dam, of course, was the one who taught Pornsanae, who then made it his own style.

Hey, totally. I run into it all the time myself! I want to encourage and support, but then don't even know what is helpful. But yes, the project is above and beyond, and Tim is incredible for diving in. Nobody really posts this kind of raw footage and comment. Making history.

I think it's totally great to be offering support, but maybe, because Timothy is brave enough to be sharing video which will record things he feels are failures, by which we all can learn, it's best to not be giving too much "advice support" from the crowd. These kinds of comments are super well-meaning, but they very often don't help someone who already knows they aren't hitting the mark they want to hit, and putting it out there. Very few people post video of development. Sylvie gets lots of these on YouTube. We are all cheering Timothy on. Hey, just my two cents coming from my own perspective.

For Burklerk this is really only a counter kick to the standing leg, Kenshin did an edit:

Lowkicks do not score highly in Muay Thai in Thailand. They, I think, are considered low-hanging fruit, and have maybe a kind of slight stigma to them? Middle kicks on the other hand score very highly, as they are difficult to pull off, involve tracking your opponent's opponent's open side and passing through their check defense, as well as having a higher degree of difficulty in terms of balance. Mid-kicks are really the bread and butter of Thailand Muay Thai, one could say. You need to be able to stop them, and deliver them. (Ha! as I write this I see Sylvie said much of the same.) You see lowkicks used by Kongsamut in the Library, combined with a punching attack that I really liked, good for shorter fighters: #43 Kongsamut Sor. Thanikul - Muay Mat Style (74 min) watch it here And then there is also Burklerk's very cool mixed-stance cut kick which he teaches in his session (a slow motion video of which we shot, below):

Dieselnoi's favorite fighter. He raves about him.

Yes, he's been around our filming several times, and we definitely would like to film with him. He was there at our 4 Legend's seminar just watching it all, and he's close with Dieselnoi, Karuhat, etc. He seems hesitant, maybe because he has not trained for a very long time, but we are slowly working on getting him in the Library. He has a wonderful gentlemanliness about him.

So cool that you put this up! Will throw this in there from the early 2000s for those that don't know about Lanna history, Brave Dave's documentary: This is all well, well before Sylvie arrived, before she ever heard of Lanna. It was a transformative gym that had a huge impact on the history of westerners in Muay Thai in Thailand.

Day 2: Thank you to all our patrons that are helping make this archival project possible. If you aren't a patron yet you can easily become one: patreon.com/sylviemuay If you have plans to be in Bangkok you can also train with the General, and help in your own way to preserve Muay Lertrit. You can arrange to train with the General through the World Muaythai Alliance Association.

The first batch of documenting videos are in from Timothy who is running the GoPro during his sessions. This is just going to be raw video, so that over time the methods and techniques of early teaching are at least recorded. You can look at his field notes for insight into what the General is looking for, and what Timothy is focusing on. Feel free to shoot Timothy questions in the thread too: Day 1:

Or, simply that Noguchi who would have a long career creating some pretty suspicious fights (check out Fujiwaras 99 KOs), making his audience primed for the coming new smash sensation kickboxing, just had two show fights for PR reasons, and this was the most diplomatic way of describing those fights. The article is written as a celebration of Kickboxing, not Muay Thai, this is Black Belt magazine. The account of 1963 is a story telling how great Japanese Kickboxing had become. Clearly the author understood the event to be a PR event to make Japanese audiences satisfied. I strongly suspect that it was hardly a blip in Thailand rather than it being some kind of terible stigma (wow, we are getting so creative!).. Noguchi went and found some guys, hey ANY guys, who would come to Japan and fight some Karate dudes, and 2 of the three were not even (likely) ethnically Thai, admitted to be not very strong. Just as a note though, there really is no such thing as a 'Thai System", unless you just mean: hit a bag a bunch and had some fights. There really is no standard of a system at all. There was an incredibly broad range of talent and skill fighting in Thailand at that time. An unskilled fighter could easily find themselves fighting at Lumpinee then from what I have heard from fighters of that era.

If you've read Sylvie's posts on the Jade Dragon Set, and also about Petchrungruang, you'll know that a big part of the early training isn't about actual "fight knowledge" or good "techniques". It's a slow process of pulling a young boy in line with the culture of the gym, and involves lots of playing, or pseudo-playing, which creates lots of relaxation, but still in the context of hierarchy. This combination of relaxation (playing) and discipline (hierarchy) is what will make them the fighters they will be. In my opinion this is why it's super important to be in a gym like the one that Pi Nu runs. The whole process is guided by a knowledgeable eye, Pi Nu who has help raise some of the best fighters in Thailand, through his pack method. There is no scheduled time for the boy to suddenly enter the big boy process. He's always watching for how they are responding, feeling when things are too much, or two little. When to challenge and when to ease. It, from what I've seen, is a very FEEL thing. And, to complexify things, he isn't just weighing each boy, he's weighing each boy against the other boys, using the group to kind of steer a multi development. There kind of is no replacement for that kind of feel and sensing.

Tyler's post above is pretty damn good. I would just throw in that Chiang Mai is going to be substantially lower cost than Bangkok, Pattaya or Phuket, while still being a major city with all those amenities or conveniences that are probably necessary for a first time visit. Costs can creep high in Chiang Mai of course, if you go an expensive route, and they can be low in BKK or Pattaya if you really know how to pick and choose, but the overall economy in Chiang Mai is just more affordable (and I imagine that if you are very frugal there you can do even better than elsewhere). It's also a burgeoning gym and fight scene, with lots of small stadiums, and new gyms opening up all the time, along with the dependable names.

That whole post was a killer post Tyler.

More from the day.

Incredible. It must be the feeling he has.

The General.

Another beautiful shot of the General. The arc and power of his punches are like nothing else in Thailand that I've seen. Short, explosive.

This was the Black Belt magazine source I had in mind. Note, the described animosity between Thai and Japanese and the Japanese desire to prove the efficacy of Karate. I assumed in reading this that "an Islamic" and "the Chinese" and "the Chinaman" were striking descriptions - I had assumed this emphasis meant that there were not Thais, or at the very least not those that Thailand would choose to defend Muay Thai's honor internationally if this was a substantive event. The author points out that these match ups came after a bit of "searching". Even if the author is only making racialist observations, because this match supposedly was a "Thailand" vs "Japan" match, it seems pretty notable that 2 of the fighters were not ethnically "Thai" (probably a pretty big deal in 1963, and read as non-Thai at least at some social level). The writer is making the distinction boldly. But perhaps they were Thai nationals. But, the article makes the assertion that these were admittedly not particularly strong Thai Muay Thai fighters. Osamu Noguchi, if I recall, is the Japanese promoter who was reportedly run out of town (Bangkok, abandoning his kickboxing gym) after the 1982 World Championships still attempting to assert the worthiness of Japanese fighters vs Thais two decades years later. It appeared to be an enduring preoccupation.

Chances of training with him are pretty limited, generally. But he'll be at Sylvie's gym Petchrungruang from probably July 2019 til January 2020. I urge pretty much anyone who has a passion for him to make the trip out to Pattaya. It's very rare.