Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
-
Posts
2,291 -
Joined
-
Days Won
506
Posts posted by Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
-
-
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.
-
2
-
-
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
-
4
-
-
On 8/26/2019 at 9:04 AM, Chris Shawbell said:
I'm writing to get some info regarding coming to Thailand to train. I intend to train in Pattaya at Petchrungruang. A few basic questions for my budgeting purposes: General monthly (or weekly) cost of living (food and so forth), and a cost of residence (I need only a bed and means to cook). I will not be there to "see the sights", but only to train. Also, where should I fly into?
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?
-
3
-
-
On 8/26/2019 at 8:54 AM, CoachMatty said:
How do you feel about Invicta or One championship with Lookboonmee etc?
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.
-
2
-
-
2 hours ago, Tyler Byers said:
I'd be curious to know if that is based in Muay Korat style or if he calls that his own. In his movement there are full steps, half beats, feints, etc. Just the general basic movement is a lie, and it's absolutely beautiful.
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.
-
2
-
-
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:
-
1
-
1
-
-
43 minutes ago, LONGLONG said:
Hello
Looking for advice/videos/patreon videos on how
control the ring, stay off the ropes, cutting off the ring and creating angles.
Thanks very much
These are 27 Muay Thai Library sessions filtered out with some Emphasis on Ring Control:
Ring Control: Muay Thai Library
You can see these filtered out on the Posts Page of Sylvie's Patreon, and scrolling down. You can see tags there, it looks like this:
One session that really sticks out in my memory is Kru San of Sitmonchai, you can see that session here:
#33 Kru San Sitmonchai - Control of Pace & Distance when Advancing (56 min)
There are lots in that list though. If you really want to dive in you can watch the Intensive Series Sylvie did with Karuhat, which is over 30 hours long. It's not all ring control, but large portions of it are. Karuhat has a whole system of leading the opponent where he wants him to be, limiting options, and then striking where they are going. Intensive Series here.
-
1
-
-
2 hours ago, S.F said:
Hi,
I've been practicing Muay Thai for about 2 years relatively lightly and, long story short, during holidays I'm not near the gym I normally train at and I can't get anything like a partner or a bag to train on. What I have built however is a makiwara (essentially a plank in the ground with some light padding). After browsing online, I've found very little in the way of Muay Thai training on one of these. At the end of the day, it's something to punch and kick and knee without injuring myself, but if anyone has any experience with one of these in Muay Thai or any ideas of what could be a good regime, I'd be grateful!
Thanks in advance
Can you upload a photo?
-
1
-
-
-
On 8/16/2019 at 11:42 PM, AndyMaBobs said:
Has Kru Nu ever been in the library? I realise that there's a ton of footage of his work with Sylvie, but I'd be interested to see his style!
He's actually really shy about the camera, and we've hardly filmed him because of it. We definitely want him in the archive, because it's a historic record, but it would have to be done differently than any other entry, simply because he works so much with Sylvie, and 99% of it is just grinding, very slow cook
But, thank you for the suggestion, it's good to be reminded. Maybe instead of one hour session, we could maybe film small segments over time and put them all together.
-
5
-
1
-
-
On 8/20/2019 at 12:15 AM, helicopterbears said:
I've been using Bas Rutten's Thai Boxing tapes for over a decade now and could really use something new. Just something to follow along with and fuel my casual shadowboxing workouts.
What are Bas Rutten's boxing tapes like, what did they give you?
-
1
-
-
9 hours ago, MuayThaiRy45 said:
Can anyone share any common experiences and have any advice or uplifting words of encouragement?
I just want to say, as someone who has supported Sylvie, and has been blown away by everything she is and does, my number 1 thing is, just commit, just dive in, just push every line. I'm serious. Every fight is precious, congrats on 30, but even well past 200 we savor every single one. Once fighting is done every one will be a gem in your mind, something taught in a way that nothing else can teach. I say - knowing nothing else - stop teaching, just push your training, save up, come to Thailand for 3 months, 6 months, a year. There is just nothing like it in the world. The country lives and breathes the art. It soaks into everyone. Motorcycle taxi drivers know more about Muay Thai than most western krus (no offense, it's just part of their fluency, their literacy). We overcame a lot to get here. We lived hours away from training. I recall us back in NY on one particularly bad winter's day driving literally 4 hours through the snow to get to a sparring session that lasted 15 minutes, and then 4 hours back. That's 8 hours of travel for 15 minutes of training. It was that bad. I just say you gotta take the jump, throw yourself at your passion. Go on a thin, thin budget, take extra work, and just get the hell to Thailand. Don't go to a bullshit camp, go to a living camp, and feel it. Kill yourself on the bags, the pads, get some fights. Stop training others. You are part way up a huge, huge mountain. When looking down at those below you you forget just how high you want to climb. Put your eyes up, up, up. 30 fights outside of Thailand is no joke. You're heart is in this.
note: the above is complete bullshit in the sense I don't know your life, and all the things that may feel very "complicated" to you, but it's my natural response to the feeling I get off of your post...so not bullshit at all.
-
3
-
1
-
1
-
-
Eyes change when you spend a ton of time looking at a particular fighting aesthetic. You see things you would never have before, and you ignore things that otherwise would have been interesting. I don't know what happened, but the UFC just got very, very boring to watch. A lot of it has to do with MMA spacing, which involves lots of circling out, some of it has to do with the relentless hyping of every fighter as the greatest, or the baddest, or whatever. Ugh. It's exhausting. And, then some of it is what Sylvie said. I know people have enthusiasm for hybrid rules, and a whole new fighting style, but in some ways it feels like someone made up a sport called "basket-baseball-foot" mashing together basketball, Baseball and football. Yeah, putting the skills of each into one sport definitely makes you have to compromise and modify, but what I really miss are acme performances seen in the reflected history of decades and decades of development. It also is a little disappointing that the UFC hasn't really see a single high level, elite Muay Thai fighter, ever. The picture most fans have of Muay Thai in the UFC is basically just versions of western kickboxing, which isn't Muay Thai at all. I wish I enjoyed it more. I miss the good ol' days of the WEC, when we were just falling in love with Muay Thai.
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
-
On 8/18/2019 at 7:50 AM, guyver4 said:
What I mean is, I am an overthinker, unfortunately this is a curse and a blessing as I can't turn it off, it's amazing for my work, but not so great when it comes to Martial Arts. I can critique someone, the snap pointers where you see your partner not twisting their hips on a round kick, or pivoting on a hook... But it seems whenever I attempt a constructive criticism as to why something isn't working by brain goes into overdrive and I basically start explaining it step by step as if I was telling myself how to do something, which the digresses into micro adjustments and eventually onto a full blown commentary... There are examples of it on this forum.
There is a very good book to read on this subject which is The Inner Game of Tennis, which presents the Coach's Dilemma, which is verbal correction very often leads to the opposite results as intended. As an overthinker you might find this book very interesting. If the aim is to actually help someone (as the outcome), and not just display knowledge, it gives powerful food for thought. I say this as a very analytical, breakdown oriented, let-me-explain-things, kind of guy.
-
5
-
-
On 8/18/2019 at 7:04 AM, Mike said:
Can anyone recommend a camp that would be good for 2 girls with only some martial arts and Muay Thai experience? I am just looking to give them an authentic experience—not actually fight at the end of it.
How long are you thinking of staying? How many sessions or how much hard work? Mostly, is this something you want them to really dive into, or you want to to be a part of other travel and vacation like experiences? Chiang Mai is really a nice city to experience these things in. For one, it's lots lots to do and see. Secondly, in the North it's culturally more conservative and traditional, so you will get less of the touristed Muay Thai subculture (not saying you won't get it there, but generally the city has a kind of conservative quality). Also, there are female Muay Thai fights pretty much every night of the week in the city, so they can go and watch some fights and maybe enjoy that and be inspired. Once you let me know how much time and how deep of a dive you want them to take (do you want them training twice a day, coming back to the hotel wiped out?...or, do you want them training once a day, or even less?) maybe I can give a few recommendations?
-
3
-
-
10 minutes ago, dtrick924 said:
I am way behind on watching the most recent Muay Thai Library sessions, although I always read the intro article as soon as it is up.
This is what I'm thinking about. Because we put up so much Muay Thai Library content trying to make a way to digest some of it without having to watch every video. Some people have said they like listening just to the audio, so maybe there is a way for us to make a kind of more audio friendly version.
-
2
-
-
The response has been pretty awesome for the Muay Thai Bones podcast, just me and Sylvie diving way down into the most details and big notion ideas that lie within Muay Thai, crazy as it may be. You can find the videos of those podcasts here on YouTube. So we're thinking of creating a podcast version of new Muay Thai Library sessions, and doing something special around the Muay Thai Library sessions. In the past we have put up the audio of some of them on Soundcloud, but we want to do something more, richer, more satisfying. We realize that we put up so much high-density content it's almost impossible to take it all in, so it might be nice to listen passively, on the run, to the sessions, and decide if they sound like something you'd like to watch in video, and study.
What we are thinking of is maybe a kind of mini-Muay Thai Bones, big idea chat session that could be also a video, maybe 20 minutes or so filmed after the session was done, a kind of Library Coffee (maybe just literally drinking coffee and hour later), followed by the audio of the session itself. This should give an hour and a half of good listening. No, you would not be able to see the video, obviously, but maybe we can help bring it alive more in Sylvie's audio commentary, and conversation. Back when we would just drop the audio file on Soundcloud several people wrote to say that they really enjoyed this. They would listen in the car, or on the way to the gym, and feel more connected to the Muay Thai of Thailand. Because a lot of what we are trying to do is to make people feel like they are here, and also bring out the bigger, important ideas of Muay Thai, and Muay Thai history, this seems like a good way to go.
I'm starting this post here mostly to get feedback, and to hear from you on ideas for things that would make this more interesting. We're open to all thoughts, but know that we have to find things that have as little friction in development, simply because we are already pretty swamped by all the content Sylvie already produces. Things that involve typed out translation, timestamps, anything that digs into piece by piece work is at this point overwhelming, to be honest. We are already backed up on some incredible projects that hopefully are coming your way.
But, if we can come up with innovative, creative ideas, ways to create more context, more detail, and a more enjoyable way to feel connected to the session through audio, that would be awesome.
Thank you to everyone supporting us on Patreon already. And, if you don't follow Muay Thai Bones on iTunes you can find out how to subscribe in this post here.
If you don't know what the Muay Thai Library project is, check it out here. There is now over 80 hours of archived, commentary training footage with legends and brilliant krus of Thailand.
-
1
-
2
-
-
6 hours ago, Kero Tide said:
It's a fair place where you reap what you sow. Unless you're a woman. However to be fair the disparity between genders really is not as great as what you'd expect in a gym that not so long ago still didn't allow any woman in the ring. Clinching put aside I got absolute great training and attention like everybody else. No shady behaviors from anyone either... Around 30min clinch. A bit more when you have a fight (if you're a woman you get less unless you are very insistent I suppose
I'm really interested in how this played out. We're pretty well-rehearsed with these kinds of barriers. If it's a Muay Khao oriented gym expressing one of the great knee fighters of all time, and as a woman you are held out of really the core of Muay Khao fighting, its beating heart, this seems not a small thing. I'm not saying that it can't be overlooked, but...it goes beyond even the actual training time, it goes to how much of the fabric of the gym you can fold yourself into. What is your read on this? Yes, I can see that you can insist on such things, and that you may not have, but insisting on something in traditional contexts doesn't always lead to good results either. I'd love for Sylvie to go and train there for a week or so, but honestly if clinch produces tensions, that is not awesome.
-
2
-
-
This is so cool. I can't wait til Sylvie and I can go up there and have her put in a few days, and of course film with him for the Library. For anyone interested here is a map of where the gym is, it's pretty out of the way, but maybe in a very good way:
-
1
-
-
I was talking to Sylvie this morning about transitional Muay Thai grappling, and we stumbled back upon the idea of persistence hunting and how it connects to Muay Khao fighting styles of the Golden Age. I wrote a post about how Persistence Hunting (a very old hunting strategy) reflected a different concept of time, and even how it connects up to the ketogenic diet:
Muay Thai Aesthetics, Keto, Persistence Hunting and the Shape of Time
It's worth posting that link because this is a pretty huge tangent of thought that might be as important as anything in the subject. In "the hunt" in clinch it's as if many are looking for "the kill" (the lock, the trip), but transitional grappling is more about creating persistence. Transitions from one position of dominance to another are designed to take the quarry literally outside of time and reality, until the capture is easy, or at least a whole lot easier.
-
1
-
-
Not sure if this is a meme, but I enjoyed making this today. Samart cracks me up.
-
4
-
2
-
-
There was a little cross-discussion on Lamnamoon's gym in this thread, though not sure how helpful it is:
-
1 hour ago, AndyMaBobs said:
There's a reason that boxing has been dominated by Black and Latin Americans in the states, and it's the same reason it was dominated by Jewish Americans in the 30s-40s. Same goes for the best Japanese fighters in karate/judo come from run down parts of Tokyo and Osaka. The rougher a neighbourhood you grow up in, the more likely getting into fights doesn't scare you, especially if you were the sort of kid who looked for trouble or hung with a bad crowd.
Yes, that's the usual theory. But Karate developed among the rich in Japan. And apparently BJJ developed among the rich in Brazil, at least in many of its formative stages. The Gracie schools, by Machado's telling, where all in the wealthy neighborhoods. It seems that the rich provide pathways for a martial art or fighting art's development. In Thailand it is similar. Yes, great fighters throughout the decades came from the countryside, but there is also a royal "Bangkok" tradition of the keeper of the flame, often in conjunction with military or policing developments.
-
2
-
-
From the Dao of Boyd
Tempo: To the Swift Goes the Race
“Under OODA loop theory every combatant observes the situation, orients himself…decides what to do and then does it. If his opponent can do this faster, however, his own actions become outdated and disconnected to the true situation, and his opponent’s advantage increases geometrically.” -John Boyd
When I met with Curtis Sprague, former US Air Marshal and instructor, he told me that there are two general principles to keep in mind when considering tempo and the OODA Loop.
First, the individual or organization that can go through successful, consecutive OODA Loops faster than their opponent will win the conflict.
Second, rapid OODA Looping on your part “resets” your opponent’s OODA Loop by causing confusion – it sends them back to square one
What often gets overlooked by folks studying the OODA Loop is that when Boyd talked about rapid tempo, he often meant rapid changes in tempo.
-
1
-
1
-
Suggestions for Krus and Legends to Film for the Muay Thai Library
in Patreon Muay Thai Library Conversations
Posted
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!