Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

When you say "takedown" are you saying it in the MMA sense, of an explicit takedown to the mat, or do you mean being swept, etc, as in Muay Thai rules?

He teaches out of 13 Coins in Bangkok. Contact Sylvie, she can set up a session for you. https://web.facebook.com/pg/sylviemuaythai/

Face I was not able to reach this in the discussion above, and I am not particularly knowledgeable in Dance, but there is something in Dance which has always struck me. Face. Even in popular forms of dance, the best dancers dance with their face. What do I mean by that? It's the facial expression that carries the dance, no matter the style, and more than anything it is usually the absence of exertion in the face that makes the dance float, creating an affect space above and beyond the technical zones of performance. It's the grueling work of practice that is ef-faced, through the way the face carries the dance, freeing it from the earth, in a sense. This is precisely the case in Thai aesthetics of Muay Thai. You learn in the Thai gym to control your facial expressions, often to adopt a placidity, or a flatness, sometimes a joy or freedom, sometimes a boredom even (Muay Femeu), something trained in the very exertion of the thousands of hours. In the west we learn to show, sometimes even theatricize our fatigue, or our pain, over exaggerating and evidencing our commitment, our sacrifice, our loss of control. For the Thais (until recently, with the meme-like spread of Buakaw-face, or Anime-face, in some promotions), the face is one of the most profound channels of performance, the techniques of the face. I'm thinking of Weerapol's fight nickname "Deathmask" or Samart's "Jade Faced Tiger", two of the greatest. There is some sort of very basic continuity of performance in the role of facial performance in Dance and traditional Thai Muay Thai.

Creating a topic area for discussion, let's investigate the potential dialogue for both arts. As a starting point here is my interview with Thais who is a teacher of dance, and a Muay Thai enthusiast who was visiting Petchrungruang. I did this interview Muay Thai Bones style, which is basically a running conversation of riffing off of ideas. In comments maybe we can expand on the way each art and practice can shed a light on one another:

What is beautiful about Thailand is that Muay Thai is part of a living, thriving fight culture. Fights are everywhere, and the gyms that support the fighting scenes in various areas are super plentiful. I would suggest finding a gym in Chiang Mai (where the cost of living is lower than in the vacation-y islands, where there are fights every night of the week, and train like hell as best you can. This is Sylvie's list of recommended gyms: If you really enjoy training, don't have anything holding you down, just save up and go. At the very least it's something you'll never forget.

Sagat's is probably the best private in Thailand, especially if you are going to only take a couple, in that it hits so many levels. It's technically sharp and corrective, it teaches a style that can be applied in any fighting format, he gives a tons of energy to his privates (as far as we've experienced), and he's a larger than life intensity and character, a legend of the sport. Sylvie can help arrange privates with him if you contact her through her FB page. He's very memorable.

Hey, everyone who has been a part of the forum over the last several years, as many of you know the 8limbsus site was maliciously attacked in a pretty devastating way, the site had basically been wiped clean from the server, and though through the very hard work and support of several people 99.9 % of the site has been restored, one of the aspects of the site that was lost were all the photographs that had been uploaded to the forum. This means not only as the profile photos that everyone used, which gave a sense of closer community, but also all the humorous photos, the rich artistic photos, the uploads that were informative and explanatory. This was a pretty huge hit to me, personally. As a photographer I wanted the forum to be a home for an archive of images, and discussion around images, and I worked pretty hard on trying to develop this. I opened up the upload options so photographers could load hi-res versions of their photos, I hoped the forum would be a home for not only awesome conversation, but also graphics. I'm also writing to say that Sylvie and I really have to get back to focusing our time on the forum. For us the destruction was a serious gut punch. It honestly felt like our house had been broken into and ransacked. It felt invaded, and almost like it wasn't our home any longer. It's hard to explain, but we put a lot of ourselves into the digital record. Sylvie poured her heart and mind into everything, I extended my imagination, together we were creating something very special that exists no other place, and the forum was a huge part of that. There is no conversation space like this anywhere in the world, in a time when conversations are so radically changing. We feel beat down, honestly, by the intrusion and erasure, but we want to help bring it back, and maybe make the forum even better, different than it would have otherwise been. I'm really writing this to say thank you to everyone who keep investing in the forum, and to let you know we are in on it too (!), but it's taking some time. And to let you know that the wiping of the forum, and it's photos, it hurt us somehow, and we are still recovering from the kind of psychic-shock. We are doing so many projects, trying to document and foster conversation in so many ways, the blindside of it all just kind of unexpectedly hit us in a weak spot. So, thank you to everyone a part of the forum, you make so many important things possible. This forum is important. It's a digital oasis, and we can make it whatever we want it to be. That is really what this forum has always been. With the help of patrons we were able to carve it out, to kind of donate it back to everyone, and invest in it ourselves. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This is one Roundtabler's post on Charn Chai:

You can. Just go to the "posts" tab, and you'll see all the tags there on the left side (scroll down a bit). It will look like this: Communicating this with our patrons is a big problem. We put it in the original sign up email, but it just gets lost in the hoard of information. It's one of the difficulties in putting up a huge amount of incredible content. How do you even interact with it all. If you have any ideas on what would make this simpler, or more enjoyable, we're all ears. Tags are only a minor solution because you are limited to only 5 tags in post. There is always the Muay Thai Library Table of Contents, I think that is the easiest way to browse and locate something cool.

I can't give a source to study, google around. And it's not really appropriate to dispense with serious nutrition advice around weight cutting, because there are so many weight cutting methods, but a general thing to say is that after weight cutting it's probably smart to consume a teaspoon and a half of table salt, which should give you around 4,000 mg of sodium, and to drink lots of water, and to eat potassium rich foods like bananas and spinach. You don't have to take it all at once, but schedule it in. And on fight day take a teaspoon of salt (you can do this with a squeeze of half a lemon), and make sure you are well hydrated. I hesitate to even be offering this advice, but this is just what we would probably do in the very generic sense. A magnesium supplement pill wouldn't hurt. There is about 400 mg of potassium in a banana, the RDA for potassium daily is around 4,000 mg. Which means it's pretty easy to get depleted in potassium if you are sweating it out for long days in succession, and not purposely replenishing it.

It could be a few things. One of the more hidden aspects in the first 10 or so fights is that you can end up unconsciously holding your breath. This can happen if you are being pressured, or doing the pressure. You can be in great shape but still gas because you just are not breathing in rhythm, due to a lack of experience. Fights early on can make you hold your breath in ways you just don't realize. Another thing could be if you are not properly balanced with electrolytes, especially if you have cut weight. You want your sodium, potassium and to a much lessor extent magnesium to be abundant at fight time. If you are low on sodium or potassium you can seriously fatigue out of nowhere.

Never say never, but he really is outside of our scope. We blend our filming around Sylvie's travel for fights and the islands are really not on the radar. If we do expand the next area of reach will be Isaan. There are many we want to film with several legends and krus. We really don't want to go to the islands, hahaha. But, maybe one day!

Today worked on putting all the Library session that focus on boxing, or hands in some way, under a single tag Muay Mat. Muay Mat is a particular thing, this tag goes beyond that. But, it's a good way to find lots of sessions that have hands as an emphasis. Muay Mat Library Sessions

Pet Peeve, maybe call it UFC inflation. Everything that appears in the UFC is defacto "World Class". Ummm, nope. The very thin frame of reference has created a pretty distorted vision of even what "Muay Thai" is, let alone what elite level Muay Thai would look like. Ugh. No, the "American" version, or the Western version, isn't really close to where the art can go, and has gone.

Another Patreon session to check out is Samson Isaan. He was an undefeated boxer and, although short in stature seemed very long armed with great reach. He has some very beautiful form that is a little different than Sagat and Chatchai: https://www.patreon.com/posts/samson-isaan-art-19485162 a still from the session, above. This is his cross, he's southpaw. Extension comes from the rotation of the hips and/or shoulders. You pull back the opposite shoulder. In the most recent Sagat session you can find Sagat's jab, which indeed is very long. A still from that session, Sagat really exaggerating his reach to prove a point:

As others have noted, but with some emphasis, cooking one's own meals is not entirely customary. There is a network and custom of foodstalls by which many people eat throughout the day. The food is cheap and dependable. If you are only staying a week or two, cooking your own food would not be the ideal set up in terms of cost effectiveness, unless the reason is that you are trying to gain control over your diet.

He's not really the kind of trainer we are drawn to. Yes, I know he's been highlighted lately, and people find him very interesting, but to tell you the truth the whole "viral" thing is pretty big red flag. Plus, I've seen this review of his gym, which is intense in its dismissal: Elite Fight Club in BKK is possibly the worst gym I have trained at in Thailand, and I've been here over 30 times to train. I've trained in grassroots country gyms in Isaan where I was the first and only farang to train there, I've trained at hardcore gyms in the slums of Khlong Toei, trained at hi-so gyms in BKK where the rich Thai girls train, and I've trained at the tourist gyms in Phuket. Elite is by far the worst of them all. It was more like a fitness bootcamp class at the YMCA than a Muay Thai training session. No Gae didn't beat me up. He was there, but he only peeked out his window at the class and then went back to bed. Who knows what is true, but even if half of what was written is true of energy and what has been built, not very interesting. Live and let live is our motto, but these kinds of things we steer clear of, one way or another. I do appreciate the follow up though.

Sylvie loves him. We almost set a session up, but our contact kind of moved out of the picture for a while. He was at Muaythai Plaza in Bangkok for a long time. I think we could track him down again. Thanks for the reminder!

It it extremely difficult to find apartments or hotels that will allow a dog. They do exist, they are usually run by a dog lover, or dogs somehow found their way into the DNA of the the place, but they can be very difficult to find at times. When we traveled, driving all over with Jaidee, we mostly were relegated to staying in cheap "hourly" hotels if you know what I mean. Some sites like AirBnB do allow filtered searches, but generally the idea of having a dog in your living space is not widely acceptable. It's changing some, but it's still is difficult. When we moved to Thailand we had a plan to have our dog sent over in a few months but we really couldn't find any apartment what would accept one, and ended up having to leave her with Sylvie's father. That was Chiang Mai which can be more conservative. But even in Pattaya a dog friendly apartment is pretty rare. On a sidenote, a story that always stuck with me was a fellow that brought his two beautiful dogs with him, so he could have companions while hiking in the North. I can't remember the details, but he went out on a bit of a hike only a few days into his travel and they both were bit by a snake and died. I can't imagine. I only mention it because it's one more parameter in thinking about bringing your pets. We of course had Jaidee with us, a soi puppy we rescued, and traveled everywhere with him. He went to probably 100 fights. He was a huge part of our life. Sylvie went running with him in the mountains, he rode on the motorbike, so yes, it can work. But there are always complications.

Not sure how germane it is to the discussion, but @Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu's article on what she perceived to be one of the fundamental challenges for men from the west: https://8limbsus.com/blog/fragility-western-masculinity-muay-thai

Hey Chris, sorry it took me so long to get to this thread, we've been driving all over and are finally back in Pattaya. Here, I think, is the thread @Tyler Byers mentioned where general budgetary details were shared by him: Here is his comment where he lays some things out that seem pretty close to Pattaya costs (even though BKK): But yes, definitely fly into Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK). I don't have experience with the bus as Tyler mentioned, we usually take a taxi which I think runs about 1,500 baht? When flying into a whole new country, new city, etc, it sometimes is worth it to just get to your hotel pronto, to settle down and locate yourself. Then begin the adventure. But, I would guess that the bus is also a perfectly reasonable option as well. I'm a "get me to my bed, first" kind of guy. Royal Thai Residence is kind of a middle of the road hotel. It has surprising amenities, like a pretty nice pool, for a pretty reasonable cost, but it is not the lowest budget option. Though, one of the nice things about it is that Dieselnoi stays there 3 days a week Maybe you can hang out at the pool or the local sauna with him. I'll have Sylvie hop on and maybe suss out how low clean low-budget hotels can go. And I've asked Kero to maybe jump on re: food costs?

Loma isn't really an example of a complete Muay Thai practitioner, in terms of elite Thai male talent. She's the best female clinch fighter in the world probably, and can hot-knife-through-butter opponents who don't know how to face her beautiful throws. But most elite female Thai fighters are usually highly specialized in a singlar dimension of Muay Thai, not representing the "Gracie" level of male Muay Thai I was talking about. That being said, she can do much to alert the world to what real, high level female clinch talent can look like, and what it can do versus other supposedly potent styles of grappling.

99% sure it is just his own. He told us he pretty much invented his Muay Thai after success with a single kind of elbow. People started just waiting for it, because his reputation grew, so he had to invent a complete Muay Thai to make elbows possible from any position. I'm sure he would say that he just created it. Karuhat tells us the same thing about his footwork. Nobody taught him, it came from nowhere.

There all kinds of means of ring control, it really depends on your fighting style. But, for an advancing fighter Yodkhunpon's pressuring gallop footwork is a thing of beauty, and a wonderful tool to have: