Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

I'm really unsure of this. I just read a complete history of Taekwando, which I thought had a long foundation in this, but it was pretty clear that so much of the "spinning" stuff is really a modern invention (far from its Karate origin), maybe since the 80s and 90s, and grew out of very non-fight oriented practices, and some of it from demo performance. In fact almost all of what we now think of as Taekwando arose out of pretty suspect rule-scoring shiftings (very, very light blows "scoring", no punches to the head, etc). None of this is really traditional martial art stuff. It's all very modern. It really surprised me. I think this is a significant thing. And I completely agree. But, at least for me, things are "working" against fighters who just are not very high level, fighters that lack deep-seeded spatial awareness. There are lots of things that work against more limited fighters. But the reason people get super excited about it isn't because "hey, this works!", it's because someone made a highlight clip and then that clip "works" in the social media stream.

Now that we've totally revamped the Roundtable Forum, with new software that will be regularly updated with the latest latest stuff, I'm starting a new features thread. This software is so awesome we're still stumbling on very cool stuff built in. If you find something you like screenshot it and share it with others. The first thing is simple, but not completely intuitive. How to Quote someone when answering a topic or a comment. You just drag your cursor over the part of what they are saying and you'll see the quote option pop up next to the highlight. It looks like this: When you hit quote the entire highlight will be dropped down into the comment box, with a citation of who wrote the original and when. That way people know exactly the parts you may be referencing in your thoughts. The part that isn't super intuitive is that you can quote several parts of a single post, just by doing the same highlight again. You can in that way quote a part, respond to it, then quote another part of interest, respond to it, and so on. The new quote will just pop in wherever you left your cursor in the comment box. And, even better, you can quote from more than one person, in a single comment, in the same way. Just highlight the words of someone in the thread, hit "quote", and then scroll to another person in the thread, and do the same. It makes for a nice, neat way of ordering the conversation. This is on desktop, I'm not entirely sure how it works on mobile.

In recent research on the history of Taekwando and Karate techniques recently I came across this argued historical point. The Karate round kick early on after the introduction of Karate to Japan evolved into a wide, circular power strike. It was meant as a single strike, and some of this came out of the lack of sparring, board-breaking and such. Taekwando, because it eventually took on very strong competition scoring point values which "scored" even lightly thrown kicks, completely took out that wide circular kick of original Karate, from which TKD derived, and created a very fast kicking style, with the upward knee action, and then a little flip, which chambered the kick. So you had a spectrum, in history. The big circular Karate power kick, and the super fast, but very lightly landing TKD kick. The Golden Kick is a really beautiful optimization of both of these. It removes the chambering of the kick (most often), but comes from the same very fast upward action. Because it's not flicking, but really ripping through with the hip or torso turn, it maintains a lot of the inner dynamics of the old circular power kick. There really is no "one" Golden Kick of course, it's a biomechanics tendency. Some of these great Golden Age kickers also have very subtle means of generating power through their kicks. You don't see the 1st stage, 2nd stage transition, but because of their high repetition training their bodies kind of swallow it, and turn it into a graceful transfer of power, like how an an elite western boxer can generate huge power on a hook without seeming to twist and load the punch. The speed and power seems to come out of nowhere, because it's not very visibly expressed. Rather the tendons and muscles in the body have learned how to generate the torque, subtly, and they might not even know how they are doing it. It just came out of 10s of 1000s of repetitions. Karuhat is an interesting example. He feels his power generation as a kind of chest-rising action. He feels like he's rising, or floating up, when he teaches it. But not many Thais even had his kick. It's particular to him. All this is to say is yeah, it could be that in the UK there was some Karate or TKD influence in technique, but my guess is that Wooten is doing the Golden Kick pretty good, but just hasn't reached the level of smoothness and expression that may have evolved if he kicked this kick 1000s of times since he was a kid. All that internal, personalized transition isn't quite there. Which doesn't mean that the kick isn't awesome as it is.

I can't speak to this as a fighter, but maybe as someone who offers support, and who is close to these kinds of swings. There is nothing wrong, first off. The reason why people fight, I mean the real reason, is that they are processing, and at many times expressing something deeply personal to them. And with that comes real risk. If it is going to mean something, that also means that it involves real risk. And the risk isn't "losing" or getting hurt. It's that whole bundle of things that are involved in why she is fighting in the first place. What likely is happening is that she's just coming up against, and facing the shadow side of what that is all about. So, how you support her would be the same as supporting anyone facing their demons, or shadow beliefs. First of all, probably just letting her know you are there is a big deal. She might know you are there, in a practical sense, but hearing "I'm here" can make a difference. Something that I think is also important, is to get the fighter to see through the fight, which means that what the fighter is after isn't "in" the fight. It's not going to occur there. The fight itself is part of a larger process. Just like in Karate you punch "through" the wooden board, in fighting you punch through the fight. It's very hard to advise about this because I don't know your relationship to her, or the level of the kinds of things you discuss, but even making plans for progress that will happen beyond the fight, like "After the fight let's start working on body punches together, I really want to get my body shots going!" or, "Maybe it would be cool to book a private with [whatever trainer x that is respected] after the fight", anything that gets the gaze going past the fight, to the larger project of self-cultivation that is what fighting can be about.

There almost seems a dialectic (geez, I usually hate that word and concept) between the perceived but yearned for "rawness" or "reality" of the poor (visual artist, fighter?), as nearly a fantasy of the affluent, and the transcendence of social strata (or even human strata), from the disadvantaged artist/fighter, in response. The raw "talent" is taken up by the urban elite, polished (in a gym, in a gallery), and brought into the marketplace when suitable for it. On the other hand, of course, in writing, in music, and in many other aspects of the arts, you don't always have this high/low dichotomy.

Here's a long selection on the history of -do, you may find it interesting: Here is an amazing passage that lays the foundation of Judo, as an art, right along class lines, in the words of the founder himself, Kano:

I'm reading a really good historical, critical account of Taekwando, mostly because I think it is important to understand the history of other martial arts and sports, how politics, economics and culture shape them, if we are going to understand and help the preservation of the Muay Thai of Thailand. This passage I'm posting here was particularly interesting, because it details the winding history of many of our conceptions of what a martial art is, much of that focused through Japanese Karate. Posted here for the edification of others, purchase the book here. Click on any of the pages below for a full screen view.

There is in Muay Thai a definite -do dimension of Muay Thai, which Sylvie expressed some of in the quote below. It's in the scoring aesthetic, in the comportment of fighters and krus, probably buried in the agricultural roots of the fighting and its performance. But any Thai involved in the Muay Thai of fighting would think it strange if you tried to isolate it, or make a discipline of it, make a Dao of it. I think we in the west (affluent as we are), can be drawn to the Dao of Muay, partly because of our affluence, but also because we are outsiders to the culture of Muay Thai. I'm not saying it's without merit or worth to contemplate it, but sometimes the "It's all about respect" western stories of Muay Thai feel like ideological fantasies of our own privileged. I'm not sure about that, but it feels that way. Sylvie quote:

Yes, but we tend to think of the -do as somehow older, more traditional, or grounding. But, from the book on the history of Taekwando I am reading, which is really also a history of Karate (because TKD is basically Karate at root), it may have been the case that the -do movement is relatively modern, that that nomenclature came after the -jutsu. And, at least by that writer's account, the -do movement very well may have developed as part of the affluence of the new Karate students in Japan. I'm not educated in the history of Karate, but I do find it interesting that Okanawan Karate was basically imported to Japan principally in the abstraction of forms. Japan already had a history of sparring oriented martial arts (Kendo, Judo), but instead Karate took on a -do priority in philosophy or orientation, at least in its first decade or so. The non-fighting nature of Japanese Karate seems to meet up with affluence, at least to my ear. You get the same thing in the appeal of traditional martial arts to the west, at times, learning less-applicable abstractions (taught to the middle class), while projecting images (fantasy?) of lethality. Today I was just reading that one of the reasons why mid-century Japanese Karate did not have much "combination" fighting and concentrated on only single strikes was the belief in that a single strike would be deadly. There was no reason to throw and land more than one strike. One could see how a martial art developed both around - do (Dao) and one-death-strike, grows quite far from actually fighting prowess. Perhaps we go to far astray in this, but I find it interesting.

It's very interesting for you to expand the subject to the level of arts in general. I did not expect that! In combat arts there is an added dimension, which is that fighting itself - and by that I mean "real" fighting as a capacity - tends to favor those who are raised in rough lives. Having to scrap, or be physically competent is something you learn at a young age, generally, and these qualities and their relationship to violence, really seem to help performance in combat sports. The rich or affluent are widely seen as "soft", which is why many of them may be drawn to fighting arts/sports, as a way to prove or improve themselves. In Thailand we are seeing a huge trend of this from the Chinese middle class males who are now coming to toughen/prove their manhood, now that their country is in full economic bloom. This is repeating much of what has happened from the last in previous decades. You saw it in the huge success of the book A Fighter's Heart, by Sam Sheridan, which was basically a rich Uni boy traveling around looking for tough adventure. So in fighting there is a kind of contrast, it seems. Over generalizing, you have the "real fighters" who come from rougher backgrounds, and then the meeting them on the other side, you have the affluent who are drawn to the arts because of their affluence. I'm not sure it's the same in the arts, maybe you would disagree. Yes, we have the image of the starving artist, there isn't the same feeling that he is a better artist because he's disadvantaged. One might imagine that an affluent person might make a very good painter, or writer. But, I'm not entirely sure of the argument there. What is "real" art? In the story of martial sports and arts there is a very interesting example in Karate, as it was disseminated to Japan in the 1920s and 1930s in a very abstract way, to the affluent, and that even sparring was removed from the equation. Funakoshi, was the man most responsible for bringing Karate to Japan from Okinawa, someone who prided himself on never injuring a single person:

There is! The Karuhat Intensive was it's own project. It was made possible by Patreon support, but it is not part of the Muay Thai Library. Instead, because we wanted to find a way to raise money in direct support of legends themselves we created the Sylvie Study On Demand Page on Vimeo. 100% of the net profits flow to the legends in the project. The 30+ hours of commentary work with Karuhat is all there. You can purchase or rent access to individual videos, or you can subscribe to the entire series by the month, and have access to all of them. It's kind of incredible. Karuhat had one of the most subtle and almost undefineable styles as a fighter, and the entire style philosophy and its techniques are laid out in these videos. No fighter's style has ever been so well documented, ever. Not only that, there are 6 hours of Yodkhunpon The Elbow Hunter also included in the same series. As a patron you get a discount on these series videos (see at bottom here). We also put up an entire website as home to more intensive projects and Muay Thai study, you can see that here: Sylvie Study. I'm not sure if you've already watched all the Karuhat videos in the Patreon Muay Thai Library itself, which you can see as a patron. Karuhat is the most archived legend in the Library. You can find all of the archive videos here in the Table of Contents. A control F page search can help you find content on that page. But for convenience here are the Karuhat Library entries: Bonus Session 1: Karuhat Sor. Supawan | Advanced Switching Footwork | 60 min - watch it here This is a beautiful session in which Karuhat expands on his switching style, having moved me from standard to southpaw in a previous session. #7 Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Be Like Sand (62 min) watch it here 2x Golden Age Lumpinee Champion (112 lb and 122 lbs), Karuhat is considered elite among the elites. Mixing an explosive style with constant off-balances, angling, and melting aways, he was nicknamed the Ultimate Wizard. I can only describe the things he's teaching here as: Be like sand. This is very subtle, advanced stuff, far above combo techniques or specific defenses. It may take a few viewings to absorb what he is teaching. Everytime I watch this I learn something new. #11 Karuhat Sor. Supawan Session 2 - Float and Shock (82 min) watch it here In this session one of the greatest fighters who ever lived really digs into what must lie beneath techniques, a general state of relaxation and rhythm, the thing that made him one of the most dynamic fighters Lumpinee has ever seen. #20 Karuhat Sor Supawan - Switching To Southpaw (144 min) watch it here 2x Lumpinee Champion Karuhat Sor. Supawan in this epic video posts installs a limited Southpaw core which leads to developing high level ideas found in his switching style: tracking and attacking the open side, watching for and dictating weight transfer. This is the blueprint of a legend's acclaimed fighting style. #27 Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Tension & Kicking Dynamics (104 min) watch it here Karuhat, a fighter with perhaps the slickest style of any Golden Age great, shows the importance of tension, and patiently goes through correcting the kick, making it quicker and much harder to read. #50 Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Serpentine Knees & Flow (62 min) watch it here The legendary Karuhat teaches his winding, advancing style, a culmination of many, many hours of our training together. You get a glimpse into his advanced movements, and his philosophy on reading opponents. #109 The Karuhat Rosetta Stone - The Secrets of the Matador (83 min) This session is somethign of a rosetta stone for all the other sessions. A few years past since we filmed with him, Sylvie still training with him periodically, so we took this session as an opportunity to cover the past techniques, using Sylvie's years long study of them as a way to open them up, and make them more undestandable. Bonus Session 7: Karuhat Sor. Supawan - Forward Check | 39 min - watch it here In this session Karuhat teaches his beautiful and unique Forward Check, and the system of attacks that flow out of it in his fighting style. You can read my detailed post in the Forward Check here. This check, aggressively from Southpaw, versus Orthodox fighters eats up space closes distance, effectively deal with one of the primary weaknesses of Southpaw attack. That makes 40 hours of Karuhat instruction available between both the Muay Thai Library and the Sylvie Study project. Insane. You can find the promocodes for the Karuhat Intensive down below: Patreon Promocodes: As a patron, depending on your tier you can be eligible for discounts on these purchases. $5 patrons get 15% (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17837199 ) of these purchases, and $15 patrons get 50% (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17837342 ) of of these purchases. The intensive series is supported by patrons.

For forum readers The Golden Kick can be seen in these two rough study video edits below, and written about by Sylvie in How to Improve Your Muay Thai Kick:

As a sidenote, the lopsided mis-match of Kickboxing vs Muay Thai didn't just show itself in Japan in the 1970s or Holland in the 1990s. You can find it in America as well, a different branch of Kickboxing (Karate). I believe this fight was in California in 1987 (?) and featured Yodkhunpon Sittraipum "The Elbow Hunter of 100 Stitches". Not only did probably the greatest elbow fighter Thailand has ever known fight without his preferred weapon, with which the fight would have ended very quickly, he told us he was at a 20 lb disadvantage:

You can see the hyperbolic Japanese prowess in this 1970 anime celebrating the incredible "Wave Breaker" Tadashi Sawamura, with his super secret flying knee. This was produced just 7 years after he had suffered his humiliation at the hands of the Thai Samarn Sor Adisorn. The manga Kick no Oni was released the year before, 1969. Anime Intro: Kick No Oni (1970):

This 1963 loss by elbows was, one could say The Origin of Kickboxing. The loser of this bout vs the Thai Rawee Dechachai was Kenji Kurosaki, a Japanese fighter who was by several sources said to be a co-inventor of Kyokushin Karate (1953) and who would after this loss go onto invent a Muay Thai + Kyokushin Karate fusion (the story is more complex than this, but this is decent shorthand), apparently informed by a Thai fighter he brought over from Thailand (Narat Siri by one report), opening up Mejiro Gym in Japan (1969). Kurosaki would then teach this new "kickboxing" style to among many other visiting Dutch men, Jan Plas, who would open his own Mejiro Gym, but in Amsterdam (1978), and go onto disseminate the hybrid invented Karate + Muay Thai style. Incredibly, it took only 13 short years after this loss (when in 1976, Plas founded the NKBB Dutch Kickboxing Association) for the invention of "kickboxing" to be formally exported to Holland. This fight is the origin of that series of dominoes. You can also read about the fight that definitively established Muay Thai as superior to Karate, at least in ring fighting, a few months later, setting of it's own hyperbolic Japanese response: Karate vs Muay Thai in the 1960s – Origins of Japanese Kickboxing << read and watch Tadashi Sawamura vs Samarn Sor Adisorn take a look at this 1968 Black Belt magazine article about that bout. Two Avenues of "Redemption" from these Losses Tadashi Sawamura There seemed to be two primary flows of Japanese development from these fights. There was the promoter Noguchai and his favorite fighter (who eventually would have an anime made of his exploits attempting to recover his honor lost to the Thais), and would have a Japanese television fighting career filled with dubious and spectacular knockouts. You can see these very likely staged Kickboxing KOs here: Kenji Kurosaki And there was the Kyokushin Karate + Muay Thai hybrid creation of Kickboxing through Kenji Kurosaki who also lost, appropriating/infusing Thai techniques and training methods, establishing the Mejiro Gym, which then created Dutch Kickboxing through Jan Plas and others. On this line of development you had the star Fujiwara, who actually fought and won the Rajadamnern title IN JAPAN. Yep, they got Rajadamnern to fight for their belt in Japan and not Rajadamnern. He "won" the belt by tackling: What plagued much of this Japanese success is of course the very strong sense that many of these fights, and the creation of these stars was faked or bought off. Anyone who follows the development of Japanese promotions knows that there is a long history of let's just say questionable outcome generations. The rise of the Japanese elite fighter had strong Nationalistic tones, and it seems pretty sure to bet that much of this was staged or at least manipulated. When the top Japanese Kickboxers came and fought the Top Thais in a World Championship (Dieselnoi and Nongkai were among the Thais, the team was headed by the respected Arjan Yodthong) in I believe 1982 (?) they had their clocks cleaned, and accusations of fight fixing attempts by the Japanese were rampant. My thoughts on this have been spread in a few places, here is where I've written elsewhere: The invention of Kickboxing as a sport, by the Japanese, was definitely experienced as "stealing" by many Thais. Techniques may have somehow "existed" in Karate in some theoretical sense, but nobody knew how to actually fight with them, as you can see in this famous 1963 fight between Rawee Dechachai and Kenji Kurosak (an instructor of Kyokushin Karate, and by some reports actually a co-inventor). You can see almost no ability to "fight" in the techniques often attributable to Karate. https://web.facebook.com/kevin.vonduuglasittu/videos/2975896942435500/ By most reports this loss, and many others, lead to a huge push to incorporate Muay Thai techniques into a new form of fighting, resulting in the sport and art of Japanese kickboxing. The chambered kick was reported ditched, elbows were added and emphasized, and Thai instructors were imported. By one report by 1970, only 7 years after this embarrassing loss, 3 Japanese channels were broadcasting kickboxing fights weekly. These fights featured lots of Japanese vs Thai showdowns, very likely fixed fights to demonstrate the superiority of the new Japanese style. This was definitely experienced as a theft by many Thais. When kickboxing promoter Osamu Noguchi opened his Kickboxing gym in Bangkok this was seen as afront. When the Japanese kickboxers were blown out in the World Championships there, it was a great cultural clash. By many reports Noguchi was charged with trying to fix those fights (the only Japanese win was by a disqualification), was punched in the face by Arjan Yodthong, and ended up having to flee the country in fear of his life, closing his "Kickboxing" gym. The problem wasn't so much that kickboxing (Karate) was trying to adopt Thai techniques, and Thai training methods. The problem was that they then were trying to prove their superiority in doing so through endless propaganda, and stage fights. Since the World War 2 occupation by Japan there had been long simmering ill feelings toward Japan and its' ethnocentric superiority (Ultra Nationalism). and, The problem was not that Karate didn't "have" techniques. Lots of techniques may have been in the kata. It was that no Karate "master" actually knew how to fight with them. There is a huge difference between "knowing" a move, and fighting with it. What the early Muay Thai vs Karate bouts of the 1960s and 1970s showed was that Muay Thai's superiority basically came from the fact that it was produced by 1000s and 1000s of full contact fights, in fact 100s of 1,000s all across the country. A single fighter's style was not only an accumulation of the transmission of the art, but also of 100 or so real, full contact fights, something no Karate fighter or master had. It's techniques and training methods were created by fighting. While Japanese Karate was produced by one or two men who came from Okinawa and literally just "taught" the art to others (mostly affluent youth at University clubs). At that point it simply was not a living fighting technique in the way Muay Thai was. It very well encapsulated and preserved very valuable fighting knowledge in powerful, meaningful ways, but was not capable of producing actual fighters like that of the process of Muay Thai, and this was born out in actual fights. The truth is I'm just piecing this story together from fragments of the history still discoverable on the Internet. A lot of us just think of Kickboxing as only another form of fighting sport, and don't really think much about how it developed, or it's origins of motivation. It doesn't mean that Kickboxing is "bad", but in some ways its origins reveal its weaknesses, not only as a fighting art/sport, but also in terms of ethnic storytelling. Much of this storytelling has been done through dis-equal match making (for instance pretty significant weight differences between Dutch Kickboxing stars and top Thai fighters), or in likely outright match fixing, or in propaganda-like media representations, or story shaping (some of it very passive: very few present day Dekkers fans realize he was only 4-15 in Thailand, the mythology of Dekkers is its own subject though). Present day Kickboxing comes out of this heritage, and much of that heritage has been ethnically driven to minimize the fighting prowess of the Muay Thai of Thailand, and leverage up, and in some cases plain making up the efficacy of foreign opponents.

You see this in Muay Boran styles like Muay Chaiya, at least as it is taught in Bangkok by Kru Lek. You get a real sense of "defense first", but defense itself has an offensive structure, or the difference between offense and defense is really blurred. This always struck me as the sign of a style's proximity to actual warfare. The very first rule of warfare fighting would be "Do not get killed", and then "Do not become disabled". When you see styles that are founded on rock solid defense (and in my book "evasion" is not rock solid because you can evade, evade, evade, and once you fail, you are dead - or, when a second attacker arrived) it just feels like it's the warfare logic. Those Chaiya, Lertrit styles, where defense becomes wounding, and you are always only a move or two from finishing the fight. That feels very realistic to battlefield demands.

Muay Lertrit is a very interesting example, it's like no other branch of Muay Thai or Muay Boran because it actually has root influences from other traditional martial arts. As the General explained, it's inventor was a Navy man who traveled regularly, and very likely picked up aspects of traditional martial arts along the way, and wove them into the Muay Khorat style he was raised in. Add in that it was developed as a martial (meaning warefare) Art, and you get a very unique expression of Muay Thai in it. วิสิทธิ์_เลิศฤทธิ์ Ajarn Wisit Lertrit This is not very different than the kinds of inventive cross-sections between martial arts that were happening in the 1920-1950s. East and South East Asia seemed to be experiencing unique cross-pollination (Karate itself only coming to Japan in 1922). There is a story that all traditional martial art fighting systems flowed from Shaolin, in some form or others. But there is another sense in which many of them were in contact with each other in the early 20th century. There is no "pure" form. Arjan Wisit may have even come in contact with Filipino martial arts.

Some of the sessions referenced in the OP: #54 The Late Sirimongkol and Lertrit Master General Tunwakom (81 min) watch it here #36 General Tunwakom - Lertrit Military Muay (46 min) watch it here #40 Gen Hongthonglek - Muay Femeu Tactics & Mindset (70 min) watch it here clip of General Tunwakom:

The Role of the Rich in martial arts. Reading a fascinating book on the real history of Taekwando. If you want to understand the fate of Muay Thai, you have to understand the fates of other martial arts and sports. Super interesting is that Karate was basically a rich kid art, when it was brought over from Okinawa, taught in clubs around Universities by only a couple of Okinawans in the 1920s, and then 30s. A few of these affluent youth were also Koreans (Korea was a colony), so they brought back what they learned in those clubs and basically invented Taekwando over the years. Two huge waves of martial art influence, Japanese Karate and Korean Taekwando (which was basically Korean Karate) fell out of that little university scene of rich kids probably affirming a deep and long for sense of manliness through study. Okinawan Karate (I don't know much about it) was probably born across the people of that island culture, but it was the role of the rich, or at least affluent, that created the bridge for its transmission. This tension between the rich who engage in dreamy, ideological theaters of transformation, and the poor who do all the fighting, and through fights/wars, actually develop the techniques, is in Muay Thai as well. It's interesting and important to not undervalue the transmitive-imaginative role of the rich. You see it all the time. Even in the huge influence of The Fighter's Mind by Sheridan, which essentially was a rich kid seeking to find manliness, but in a way that just resonates across the culture. Ultimately, its the affluent, or some mode of affluence, which will end up transmitting a culture and it's arts to other places in the world. The responsibility placed upon them is subtle and important.

There is so much good in your comment Patrick, but this really stands out as worthy of discussion. There is a strong sense - from afar - that the USMF and related activities have been inspired by the path that TKD has taken to become a world wide sport. Some of this may have simply been that some passionate about Muay Thai are passionate because of their experiences with TKD in America as a youth. I believe I've read some talk about this connection explicitly. There seems to be the hope to create something like what happened with TKD, but without all the huge organizational and political problems. Basically: Let's do what TKD did, without fucking up so royally. And that includes Olympic inclusion. But you are right, Olympic inclusion does not automatically create robust growth, at least along the lines of the data I'm looking at. Here is TKD since 2004, World Wide search data, compared to Muay Thai: You can see the huge spikes during the Olympics (blue), but that the decrease is basically not interrupted. Now, the big question is: What is this decline and what impact did the Olympics have on it? Has corruption and inefficiency at the organizational level just lacked any way of building off the wave of interest during those Olympic peaks? And, what didn't help was that the 2008 Beijing Olympics were marred by the accusation of TKD match fixing, adding to the already problematic image of TKD as "not real fighting". I personally suspect that this "not real fighting" brand is perhaps the largest factor in TKD decline, because combat sports the world over have grown pretty much with branding in the opposite direction. TKD has a limited brand reach that goes against existing trends, it's going to experience value loss. Olympic inclusion kind of complicates that picture, promoting it but also confirming a difficulty. In the US it's a slightly different picture than the one above: Same Olympic bumps, but I don't know if it is concidental, but in 2004 and 2008 Muay Thai seemed to get a bump during Olympics as well, suggesting a possible wave to tap into. I think it would be crazy to think that Olympic inclusion would not create a surge in class sign-ups in Muay Thai. There would be. The huge question would be whether there is enough infrastructure in place to absorb it, and be fueled by that surge. That is what the (perhaps) deeper value of what you are doing, it's putting in place the structures and relationships that they could absorb the influxes that will happen with Olympic inclusion. There is of course another component of Olympic inclusion, which must be thought about under TKD, which is that Olympic inclusion provides a tremendous influx of money into the sport. The stories of corruption at the organizational level are well publicized. You don't get sweeping corruption charges without sweeping money. What it seems is that the influx of attention and money into the sport simply was not transferred to broad scale growth in terms of world attention. But kids all over the United States, for instance, found themselves in TKD classes. All that energy was absorbed, but not translated into productivity. These are the things that concern me when thinking about the TKD model. The truth is that I don't know enough about the Taekwando development history. It feels like a really important thing to understand. Because I care about Muay Thai I think this is something I'll be starting to read up on, I've already got a book downloaded on Kindle!

The quality of your experience may really depend on the camp you go to, and the area of Thailand you go to as well. We have tons of experience up in Chiang Mai, and none in the very popular islands in the south (so no comment on happenings down there). Chiang Mai is awesome because there are just tons and tons of fights, and because of that the process of placing a fighter against someone who won't be a mismatch is well thought out. Simple math, the more opponent options available, the higher chance of a great first, second or third fight experience. Also, some of these gyms are really experienced with beginner level fight introduction. Kru Daeng at Lanna Muay Thai has been shaping westerners towards first fights for probably a decade. Having someone who has guided that process for years is a huge thing. We haven't spent time with Joe at Honthong Gym, but that gym also seems to be one that is very fight friendly. In general though, the best thing about Thailand is that fighting is seen as part of the training process, not some elite thing you do once you are really, really good. Everyone fights. So you are entering a kind of fight culture that can support what you are hoping to do. I totally agree with James about letting your gym know that you really want to fight, so they can put you on that training path from the beginning. But disagree a bit with the "at the end" or "near the end" of your trip strategy. Lots and lots of people do the "at the end" bit, and its often a mistake. I can't tell you how many people we've seen make "at the end" plans and have their fight fall through for a 1,000 reasons, and get nothing. Also, the at-the-end mentality really puts fighting in the wrong context, as a culmination, instead of a part of your overall training and development. Both Sylvie and I strongly recommend that if you want to fight once you should really aim to fight at least twice. That way you don't put too much pressure on yourself to prove yourself, but it also allows your trainers to see you on a path. With a 2-3 month stay that is definitely long enough to fight twice, and maybe 3 times. I would suggest, as long as you feel comfortable, and your trainers are on board, to try and fight your first fight fairly early if you can, so you can soak it all in, make adjustments, come back to training. This is what is special about fighting in Thailand. Because there are so many fight opportunities and the culture is so accommodating to fighting itself (not only elites fight), you can fight in different ways.

What is yours James?! I would love to know the things you favor as a coach and ex-fighter. I can't really have a favorite technique because I don't really train consistently, but damn, there is nothing more beautiful than the general assault of knees. They are like body punches, but sharking upward so they are very hard to perceive. Especially Yodkhunpon's style of inward knee:

For reference to others interested in this question, here are some of the materials cited: #59 Satanmuanglek Numpornthep - Beautiful Clinch Throws (65 min) watch it here #15 Yodkhunpon "The Elbow Hunter" part 2 - Escapes (48 min) watch it here #56 Tanadet Tor. Pran49 - Mastering Long Clinch (63 min) watch it here Bonus Session: The Importance of Building a Frame | 32 min - watch it here #10 The Clinch Techniques of Yodwicha - Session 2 (34 min) watch it here #4 Yodwicha - Clinch and Muay Khao (Knee) Specialist (35 min) - watch it here #21 Rambaa Somdet - Clinch Trips & Throws (34 min) watch it here And the Bank Lock Sylvie's Tips:

This is a very good article, probably the best I've ever come across, detailing the local Muay Thai fight scene on the East Coast of the US, but connecting it up with National movement in the sport, and large scale philosophical values. If interested in any of these things do read: Changing the Way Muay Thai is Done on the East Coast by Pari “Cherry” Aryafar I really enjoyed the folding of description in with interview and leadership perspective, and the photos. Events and orgs are just never covered with this kind of scope and depth, totally refreshing to read. I can't go along with the idea that this is necessarily "real" Muay Thai, in that the USMF/IFMA line of representation necessarily pushes this emphasis, blurring the notable and significant differences amateur ruleset brings to the sport, but I can certainly go along with this is real-er Muay Thai, bringing local fighting and youth fighting closer to the fighting of Thailand. This article, this writing, creates excitement on every level providing an important keyhole into the efforts being done to stimulate and nourish Muay Thai in the United States.

These are some of the most tourist-oriented or at least non-Thai oriented gyms in Thailand (outside of Phuket). There is nothing wrong with that, they give positive experiences to westerners all the time, but what do you mean by "a Thai experience"? How you imagine a Thai experience is really important because it will probably determine how satisfied you feel by your time there.