Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

May 24, 2015

Here's a brief video clip for the installation from Chok Sabai's facebook page.

Wow, that's an awesome clip! You can feel it.

May 24, 2015

Seems very likely a completely set up video, including all participants. The same fighter was involved in fake purse robbery video. You can see the article here. Just an attempt to make a viral video.

May 23, 2015

dtrick924 you are the best. I hope you get a chance to get down there - its a really beautiful, user-friendly museum in a huge old factory space. There are tons of different shows to see. Thanks for offering to post. Appreciate it.

Dana, can you tell us anything more about the exhibit? Are the projected video samples available online (for our imaginations)? What is it that you are trying to accomplish in that ring space?

May 23, 2015

Hi guys,

Great forum here! Has answered heaps of our questions so far, my wife and I are planning the move over ASAP to Chiang mai but we are taking our 2 dogs with us, we have decided last night it's a better idea to go over first and sort our visas and place of stay then receive our dogs, has anyone brought their dogs over with them before? Also to some people including vets.. They may look like pit bulls, which are banned in Thai? Anyway we have DNA tests saying they are not and should have enough paperwork, do they try and extort money out of you bringing in dogs/ illegal looking dogs, I have heard that they have been sent back to origin or euthanased on some forums (but not sure if they had organised paperwork).

We are prettttty stressed about it all and just want to hit pads already ;)

Hi. I don't have personal, technical answers that you are looking for, but when we originally planned to come to Thailand we were thinking very seriously about bringing our Cattle Dog with us. We Googled and Googled and just never got good information about how to do it and ran into the occasional nightmare story of someone being denied at airport immigration with their dog in the crate (possibly looking for a bribe?). What we thought was best was to come first, get everything settled, and then send the dog - it was just too much to have to figure out everything with the dog there too. In the end Sylvie's parents kept our dog for us and it wasn't until we got to Pattaya that we just spontaneously adopted a soi dog we found that a dog was finally in our life - and it makes a huge difference.

I don't know about Pit Bulls being illegal in Thailand, but we've seen plenty of them. In fact we saw a gorgeous puppy being carried around just two days ago at a rest stop we were at. Down the street from our old gym in Chiang Mai there was an enormous pit called "Knock Out" who was constantly chained, and Sylvie played with a pit puppy at the gym, back in the day, that we think was named after her:

This isn't to say that it isn't illegal to bring them in the country, but one would think that paperwork would be all that is needed. Thais love paperwork. As long as there are documents then Thais (generally) feel that their decisions are backed up. There needs to be a chain of documentation.

Something to keep in mind when bringing dogs over, or trying to adopt dogs, is that can be VERY difficult to find an apartment that allows them. Dogs are seen as unclean, street animals, and fears of their barking unattended pretty much rule out the average building allowing them. Our apartment in Pattaya only takes them by a sheer coincidence of a change of management when we started bringing him home. Thais have been surprised that we found such an apartment. People do have dogs though, so situations must exist, but they are hard to find, especially if you don't speak Thai. We started with the notion of finding a small house to rent, but the thing we had in mind in Chiang Mai, despite long searches, didn't seem to exist. Perhaps you have your living conditions set up, but if you don't this could be a big problem. On the other hand, because dogs are everywhere in Thailand they can go places you wouldn't expect. We've seen people bring them to wats, inside the temple where they were giving blessings, and Jai Dee (our dog) has come to every one of Sylvie's fights.

One person to possibly check with is the owner of Baan Sakorn TDK. They have been breeding and exporting Thai Ridgebacks for years in Chiang Mai (incredibly beautiful dogs, btw), and even though that's going the other way (export), they probably know more about dealing with paperwork, government rules, Chiang Mai and dogs in a general sense, more than anyone. At the very least they may point you in the right direction to other web sources. We were seriously considering getting a TDK from them at one point, contacted them, and they were very friendly. They responded quickly to the email on the site and the owner, Jack Sterling, has a Google Plus Page.

May 23, 2015

I love your updates Gavin. You've got a great attitude. Pretty cool.

May 22, 2015

Sylvie wrote an article about the neurological reasons why people may hit harder than they think in sparring. Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control.

May 21, 2015

It is offered only when the holder of the world title, who is ranked No 1 in that category is unavailable for a title defence due to serious illness or legal difficulties (I think because of travel). An interim title can only be fought for between the No 2 in that division and a serious contender ie someone ranked in the Top Ten of that division.

This is interesting and perhaps is more functional in pro-boxing, but part of the problem is that accurate and up to date public rankings don't exist for WBC Muay Thai, so it is impossible to tell if someone is in the top 10 or not? Am I maybe missing where the public WBC Muay Thai world rankings of female fighters are kept? As far as I could find the WBC Muay Thai site only shows the ranking of men . The only other source I could find was the WBC Muay Thai wikipedia page which anyone can add to or change, which lists only the champions (no rankings) with most of the weight classes empty:

The most up to date rankings seem to be kept by the WPMF - they've even (recently?) tried to keep track of Interim titles - but these are pretty much significantly out of date as lists, often containing retired or nonactive fighters. I follow the WPMF closely, much less the WBC (mostly because I can't find their active rankings, and their titles seem less frequently fought for in Thailand), and interim titles in the WPMF can seem almost randomly created for events, sometimes even with the weights of fighters not made public. "Interim" becomes a title ex nihilo (albeit between good fighters). On the other hand I also seem to remember the WBC "creating" a World Title fight in the 100 lb division, a division I don't even think existed. And then, if I'm not wrong, another "International Belt" title last August between fighters I don't think are ranked by them (at least one I suspect wasn't). The bottom line is that if rankings are not kept up to date and made public it is really hard to even know who is fighting and why? The WMC website also does not keep female fighter rankings, or up to date champions.

I agree with Emma that this isn't the faults of fighters in the least. You fight on a card, you are told it is for a title. All you can do is enthusiastically fight.

I do feel for these organizations because they are political bodies and keeping up websites is probably low on their list of priorities. But it would make a world of difference to the growth of the sport and their organizations as well if we could follow along with how they rank fighters.

May 20, 2015

Isn't this happening in every culture that tends to be "westernized"? I see that in Poland a lot, hell I'm one of the people who hates Polish religious traditions and even though I'm open-minded to the world I don't like cultivating the religious traditions of my homeland.

It's funny, it isn't even just western cultures that do this. One of Sylvie and my favorite Japanese animes is called Blue Exorcist. See the trailer below:

It completely exotifies the Catholic traditions of the west. Japanese kids go to "exorcist" school to learn how to cast out/destroy demons. Catholicism basically stands in the place of exotic Other in Japan (in this show) as Buddhism can in the west. It's the religion that is not "ours". So it isn't even what the west does, so much as any appropriation. I wrote about this a little in my Slow Cook vs the Hack guest post though, in terms of the west. The west, probably because it does so much appropriating, does exotify what it takes from a great deal. Really, really good point about Poland and Catholicism, something I would never think of or imagine. I'm sure that Thais feel the same way about westerners who are drawn to the traditional elements of Thai society and do not see their use as ideological at all. I am convinced that the show "Thai Fight" is ideological, but western eyes don't see it, the coded messages aren't for them. Another example is that Sylvie and I both have a very strong instinctual feelings of respect towards the King of Thailand, even though this is a hot-button political issue in Thailand.

But it isn't just that the foreigner is clueless, and the people in society see clearly. A foreign gaze for instance can also restore innocence and purity to something that has lost it's glow. Thais are not only bemused by Sylvie's Ram Muay (she fights before Thai only crowds mostly), many of them are excited and perhaps even moved by it. To use an analogy, I remember how Ying (who is a big filmmaker in Thailand, and a friend) talked about New York City where she lives part time, about how free artists were there to express themselves, not at all like Bangkok she felt. There was a radical freedom. A another filmmaker friend of mine from Denmark felt the same. To me NYC was an extremely jaded, at times soulless place filled with competition, but these foreigners saw through the "reality" of NYC to something pure, something real. I think that in misunderstanding a tradition (or a city, or a way of life) just as we do when we try to grasp the traditions of Thailand, we can also renew the tradition somehow. And this is probably something that has happened to traditions over the centuries in cultures everywhere. A tradition becomes old, unused, or even misused, but then it become exotified by outsiders and can be reborn. This isn't without dangers of course. There are all sorts of fantasies about the Other that go into this kind of exotification, and many of them are not about the liberty of those we are drawn to. It's a careful line to walk.

May 20, 2015

Further, I've also been a promoter since 2006...When I first started working with these other promoters, we originally tried to do things traditionally, but we received COMPLAINTS not only from the audience, but from many of the PARTICIPANTS! Granted, the complaining participants weren't from gyms with truly traditional Muay Thai programs, but those gyms make up the bulk of our participants. We'd never fill a fight card if we only stuck with the traditional teams.

Sylvie may have performed one of the last amateur Ram Muay's in NY, if I recall. She went ahead and did it after the main promotion decided to bar them...maybe Sylvie can correct me. I think this is something of a marketing mistake, though I certainly understand it and it is probably irreversible now. If Muay Thai only is marketed and understood as "stand up MMA" it will gradually just become K-1 (Glory, etc). Muay Thai, in my opinion as a marketer, needed to take both routes, the exotic Ram Muay "unique marital art" route and the brutal K-1 route. The reason why the Ram Muay is/was boring is because audience members (and fighters often) didn't understand what it was, what was happening. An informed audience - it wouldn't take much - would find Muay Thai more special, more unique. If Muay Thai is to be saved it can't just be stand up MMA.

May 20, 2015

This is totally a cultural/religious ritual. It goes beyond the Western mindset of simply paying homage... there's a real "magic" to it.

This is one of the most interesting things about the Ram Muay. It IS magic, or at the very least derived from magic. It's incantational. It isn't just "Thai", but it is Thai from the old world. Most of the beliefs surrounding the Ram Muay aren't even believed anymore. I'm pretty sure Master K does not actively believe them - he felt ashamed, he told us, about his sak yant for instance, done in sesame oil in his youth. But as with all matters of faith and a people's past you don't have to believe to BELIEVE. We were astonished to find that many Thais don't perform a Ram Muay, especially at festival fights, but sometimes at stadia too. These were often very experienced fighters who were foregoing a fancy formality and just were ready to fight. They had a distancing towards the heritage, and perhaps were even bemused at Sylvie's foreign respect paid to their own Thai past. It's so compelling to me that foreigners often are in the position of preserving or respecting aspects of Muay Thai that the Thai people themselves have an almost nostalgic connection to.

May 19, 2015

In this article Clarissa talks about her very difficult childhood and ultimately about her repeated abuse:

"A turning point came when she spent a week at her Aunt Mary's home. When it was time to go home, Shields pleaded not to be made to go. Her aunt asked what was wrong. Shields was reluctant to say because if her own mother didn't believe her, why would anyone else? She just wanted to stay where it was safe.

Her aunt knew something was seriously wrong, so she gently quizzed her niece. And slowly, Claressa let it slip.

She couldn't vocalize exactly what it was, but made her points when Aunt Mary handed her a baby doll and asked her to show her what the men did to her.

Her aunt told her mother, but Shields said it still didn't resonate with her mother. Before long, Shields was shipped off to live with her grandmother.

In her grandmother, she found a friend, a confidante, a sympathetic ear."

also about how she took custody of her cousin's baby after the 2012 Olympics:

"Her cousin, whom she refers to as "Remmi Savage," had two children when she became pregnant with a third. But she didn't want the baby. She was trying to have an abortion. She needed roughly $500, but didn't have it.

She approached Shields.

"I told her I didn't believe in abortion and so I wasn't giving her any money to do that," Shields said.

The cousin, though, didn't give up. She cobbled together $400 and met with Shields one more time, pleading for the final $100.

At that point, Shields made her a proposition.

"I really wanted a baby myself and I wanted to have one when I turned 18 right after I won the Olympics [in 2012]," she said. "But if it would have happened, it would have messed up my body going into the 2016 Olympics. I couldn't get pregnant because of that. So I said to her, 'You have the baby, and I'll adopt her.' "

Shockingly, her cousin agreed. Shields took custody of the child and began raising her as her own. She said she's in the process of a formal adoption, though she hasn't completed the process yet.

But she has had Klaressa living with her, and on days when she couldn't find a baby sitter, she’s skipped going to the gym to train and worked out in her home.

"I'd shadow box for an hour-and-a-half with the baby right there," she said.

Being responsible for a young life gave Shields an epiphany of sorts. She thought of the woman she'd heard speak at the University of Michigan-Flint. She recalled her own difficult childhood. She looked at her baby.

And she knew more than anything that she didn't want what happened to her to ever happen to anyone else.

Shields knew she couldn't completely prevent that, but she also knew that her story could serve as motivation for others who might feel trapped, helpless and have nowhere to turn. She decided to present her story to the world."

May 17, 2015

It was only 16 USD as an e book, Micc.

I think Micc was saying that because she's in Poland and does not get paid in US currency $16 is a lot of money. Something comparable to $60. Looks like there is a way to loan a book to someone else: Kindle loaning. Maybe we can loan Micc a copy?

May 16, 2015

Hi Freddy,

Sorry you have been feeling low about your work. I've watched Sylvie closely for not only the three years here, but all her years in Muay Thai and I've come to think that the fighter's burden, the fighter's path is all about confidence, feeling it, displaying it, recovering from its loss. How to build genuine confidence and maintain it? Even fighters who exude confidence I think often have precarious confidence, something a losing streak or a bad loss can easily shake. Fighters are always walking such a line, pushing themselves to fatigue, paying so close attention to their imperfections, experiencing make-or-break events (fights). I'll tell you everything changed for Sylvie after a really bad loss and she decided to start mental training. She bought tapes. Listened to them. Did the work, and the results were pretty amazing. One of the things it made her aware of was how often she was negatively tearing herself down, in private, and how to work to change that.

I will say that getting with a coach who wants to change your fighting style, and rebuild everything can be really problematic, especially when that style may not suit you. Many coaches will teach what they themselves know, or think in cookie-cutter shapes. Sylvie was pushed into a fighting style that just didn't suit her over and over by many people because she is small and female, and it resulted in her beating herself up, very concerned with trying to please people, over-sensitive to her failings. It wasn't until we identified her fighting style, and that there was such a style in Muay Thai (things she naturally did well and excelled in) and then even made the location move to get instruction that supported that style, did we get on a more positive path. Before that it always felt we were working against the grain. It's good of course to expand yourself, explore techniques or elements that are not natural to your comfort zone, but its a fine line. So I'm not saying that if a coach wants to change your fighting style its a bad thing. But I do think that when it comes to strengths and weaknesses some people are better suited for certain ways of fighting, and others not. And because fighting styles are very deep arts - you can train in a style for a very long time and not have really bottomed out on what it can teach - it seems best to stick with the vocabulary of an approach you feel that expresses YOU.

She wrote this post when we finally realized she had to pursue a different style, something that led us to move to Pattaya.

May 15, 2015

I actually found what you posted fascinating. And while indeed she is carving out a path for females in both fighting and public presence, for some reason, I still don't like her. Maybe it's the way she is portrayed, the overly cocky and confident bitch who will whoop your ass in a heartbeat, or maybe it's possible I just don't like what I've heard about her (which isn't much, by the way.. Only in the past year have I really heard her name a great deal), which is that she's done nothing but take people down via submission. Which, I'm sure that it takes a great deal of skill to do, but, I still don't like her. I can't really explain it.

Otherwise, I have heard of and read articles by Serena Williams. And I don't really like tennis, but as a personality and person, I do. Maybe I'm just weird. Who knows. Great post though :)

Thanks for the good words Michelle. I've heard several women say this about not liking her. And we know that there are certainly men who just don't like her. I'm eager to read the book because it sounds like she didn't just have a ghost written fluff piece produced, but that there are real things in there. I'm probably on the other side where I can say: "Well, I just like her", though I think I was pulling for Cat Zingano in the last fight because I like her too (and Sylvie trained at her gym a bit before we came out here). The thing that just makes such a huge difference for me is that she really went through hell long before she was known, was at the fringe of falling out of a fighting art that she had devoted life to, and somehow leveraged up a future for herself - I want to read about those things. Also, one of the things I DON'T like about MMA is how it has become a mishmash of martial arts and the top fighters are now not really great at any of them. Ronda kind of represents male MMA years ago, when you came in AS a particular artist, as someone with a very strong background of that art, which you built around. These two things, her throwback nature, and the way she wears her toil on her sleeve really made me satisfied with her. I'll also add that there are a lot of people who just don't like Sylvie. They don't know much about her at all, and what they do know is probably pretty distorted. The way people filter through media is complicated, and a lot of it has to do with pre-existing bias and values in the media that receives her. Women suffer when they are poured across media, especially when that media is conditioned to and by men.

It seems pretty clear that Ronda took on the villain persona as a strategy, in really a WWE kind of way. And from what I read it matches up with her own mental game where she always felt disrespected as an American female Judo player on the International scene. Most of the things she says seem well-thought out when I hear them, she seems to think about where she stands. I have to say though that every time she talks about gender it is horribly grating to my ears. Fallon Fox, and now Cyborg. It's painful to hear, and honestly I don't even know where she is coming from. It threatens a lot of credit I've built up for her, but I give her begrudging leeway.

I imagine that she's under incredible strain given her position. She basically has two jobs now, full time female fighter - I love that she fights a lot and doesn't stay out of the octagon to protect herself - and as a media marketer for herself and the UFC. The mental skills that make you a great fighter don't necessarily make you able to handle all the aspects of the other.

Mostly though I feel like we are all missing how unbelievable this is. As in, 10 years ago nobody would believe it. 5 years ago even. In our day and age we lose a sense of time, we lack perspective. We can't even remember that Facebook didn't exist a decade ago. It feels kinda normal for there to be a female athlete who has so much air time, whether we like her or not. This just was not even remotely imaginable a short time ago. It was science fiction. I remember when CBS (I think it was CBS) was debating about whether to have Gina Carano fight on national television. Would it even be a real fight - can women fight? Would there be blood which would suddenly shock the nation?

What does it mean for a woman who is a fighter to be a media superstar? It means at the very least this: little girls growing up now see a woman who is KNOWN for her fighting. Not for her beauty. Not for any number of qualities or achievements. Even her Olympic achievements are largely un-thought-about. She is known as a fighter. This creates a huge resonance in the possible lives of young girls everywhere. For almost everyone you have to see an example before you can know it is possible. And, of course, the phenomena of Ronda also normalizes the fighting of women everywhere now. The bigger the image grows, the more normal it is for a woman to be a fighter, or, for that matter for women to train in fighting arts.

Of course it stands to follow though that the choices she makes also cast a very long shadow, or a very bright light, each of which will endure. Who she is will shape who other people can be.

I think she has a terrible burden being in that place.

May 13, 2015

In Ronda Rousey's book tour a lot of interesting things are coming out. One of these is an article about the specialness of Ronda's Sports Illustrated cover, only the 2nd time a UFC fighter has made the cover. And as is pointed out, it is really only the first time that they have done so AS the story.

One of the notable things is where the author mentions that Ronda Rousey threatens to take over Serena Williams as the most talked about female athlete in the world:

The former Olympic judoka now duels tennis star Serena Williams as the most-talked about female athlete in the country. As far as domination, her last three title defenses, against Sara McMann, Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano, have lasted a total of 96 seconds.

and it goes on...

With the exception of iconic boxing figures, a Sports Illustrated cover is a rarity for combat sports athletes. Rousey would be the first judoka ever to make the cover. Nobody from the jiu-jitsu world has ever made a cover, and the lone amateur wrestler, Danny Hodge, did so back in 1957.

Still, the other part of the cover is the jinx. The lone female combat sport athlete to make the cover was boxer Christy Martin in 1996. While Martin didn't lose a fight until 1998, her career never really advanced past that point. Martin is best known as a nostalgia figure from the 90s when for a brief period of time, people talked about women boxing. Like Huerta, she is probably best known as the answer to a trivia question about the cover. As a sports figure, Rousey is almost assuredly going to be remembered as something far more significant.

read the rest of the article here

Personally, I was intrigued about this battle between Serena Williams and Ronda, as I don't follow tennis much and I wasn't aware of just how much Serena has been in the public conversation over the years - it's a great deal. I'm a numbers and graphs guy, and an analyst of digital footprints, so I thought I'd turn to the Google Trends tool and see what the was case. If you are not a numbers person you'll find this boring, no doubt, but maybe the conclusions of interest.

Google Trends reports an index of presence of a search term compared to total searches, something that makes it easy to see a rough picture of how much a topic is on the public's finger tips. So I ran a few trend pictures of four different female athletes to see where Ronda has stacked up:

Ronda-Rousey-Most-Talked-About-Female-At

2005 - 2015 - Index of Google Searches

above, Ronda Rousey (blue), Serene Williams (red), Gina Carano (yellow) and Danica Patrick (green) since 2005 - you can see that Serena (red) has had a very strong footing for almost 10 years. below the same selections since Ronda came on the scene in 2011.

Ronda-Rousey-Most-Talked-About-Female-At

2011-2015 Index of Google Searches

Ronda-Rousey-Most-Talked-About-Female-At

Jan 2013 - May 2015 - Index of Google Searches

and then above, the same selection since January 2013. In the last year and a half Serena (red) and Ronda (blue) have been searched roughly at about the same frequency. This is worldwide Google data. If you run this for just searches done in the United States Ronda has indeed passed Serena as the most talked about female athlete in the country.

As a point of comparison I also ran the trends of Ronda Rousey and Jon Jones as search terms since Ronda came into the UFC. As Jon Jones has had his share of controversies, this too has stimulated searches. It is just amazing that the budding male star vying for the title of the "best fighter in the world" or Best MMA fighter ever, has caught the public eye perhaps to a lesser degree that Ronda has:

Ronda-Rousey-Most-Talked-About-Female-At

2011-2015 Index of Google Searches

Now of course this data is snap-shot, and if we were really to break it down we would provide more caveats and analysis. All these numbers are telling us is that Ronda is really standing somewhere special in terms of reach and public consciousness, both among female athletes and in her own sport as well. This is something we already knew, right? But seeing the numbers puts things into a certain perspective. Why? Because these kinds of numbers are the things that money looks to, the things that drive decisions. The important thing is that in our fast changing world we really forget that there was a time when things we take for granted today were unthinkable a short time ago. 10-11 years ago there was no such thing as YouTube or Facebook. They were a murmur. Now we can't imagine a world without them. And before Ronda it was simply unimaginable that a female FIGHTER, could outstrip male fighters in one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

Evey single thing that Ronda does. Every image the media takes up of her. Every motif and story arc is a new thing. Something that never existed before. It is cutting forth a path for female fighting that will shape the fighting imaginations and expectations of both men and women for decades, if not longer.

May 13, 2015

Only $12 on Kindle, not bad at all.

May 13, 2015

Excerpt on Jezebel from Ronda Rousey's new book MY FIGHT/YOUR FIGHT. I have mixed feelings about Ronda but this article is awesome and makes me want to read the rest of the book. How a One-Armed Ronda Rousey Grappled With the World in Rio.

Also this story out from the book, how under the fear of an ex posting photos she decided to pose for ESPN, a preemptive defense she also adopted in playing the villain:

Out promoting her new book Monday in New York, the UFC women's bantamweight champion explained how a creepy ex-boyfriend helped her transform herself into a villain.

"It's more of a defensive thing," Rousey told the 'Opie Radio' show on SiriusXM. "Writing the book, the whole, 'My Fight, Your Fight' thing has really forced me to be introspective and figure out why I do things the way I do. It was because of that one ex, we called him 'Snappers McCreepy,' because we caught him taking naked pictures of me. The first thing I did was take naked pictures for ESPN.

"If it's going to get out there, then I want it to get out there on my terms. The same thing with playing the heel. If people are going to dislike me it's because I sought for it to be that way."

the article

May 12, 2015

There are two places where Thais teep which would be hard to catch an elbow from a beginner. Up higher above the solar plexis, and also very low on the abdomen. This lower teep can be very fatiguing. When Sylvie's been shown this low teep they usually use the ball of the foot, or sometimes even the toes. Also, practicing accuracy, instead of just a general mid-teep, could be more fun or challenging. Maybe Sylvie can hop on and talk about this lower teep. It's very effective.

May 11, 2015

This is a small, but big deal. Shorter female rounds are linked to all sorts of ideas about the difference between female fighters and male fighters, stamina concerns as well as economic consequences. Lots of details about the struggle for longer rounds in sanctioned boxing in the US.

"The issue of three-minute rounds has been a crucible for women’s boxing, and lies at the heart of legitimizing the hard work and effort that goes into professional boxing contests between female fighters including such matters as television time and the pay checks female boxers receive, which are paltry compared to their male counterparts. The “joke” is that women are told they receive less pay because they only fight two-minute rounds! It is also part of a continuing argument on issues of female stamina and even whether the monthly menstrual cycle affects the ability of women to fight longer. The latter was part of the argument used by the World Boxing Council (WBC) sanctioning body, which in supporting championship belts for women, has also waded into the fray by stating they would only sanction two-minute round, ten round bouts for women."

and

"Boxing trainers also agree that holding women to two-minute rounds is arbitrary at best. Veteran Lennox Blackmoore who has been training female champions since the late 1990s including Jill “the Zion Lion” Mathews the first woman to win a New York Daily News Golden Gloves contest in 1996 said, “I think that’s great. When a woman trains, she trains three minutes a round like anybody else. I don’t see why she shouldn’t fight that way. There are a lot of good women boxers, and it’ll show people what they can do. Jill Mathews fought ten rounds for a championship belt, but it could have three-minute rounds too, she had the experience and the endurance to do that because she trained that way.”

ortiz-reno.jpg?w=655&h=468

The article is here: Three Minute Rounds for Female Boxing In New York State

In Thailand it remains either 5x2 minute rounds or less often 3x3 minute rounds, though we thought for a moment in one of Sylvie's recent fights that 5x3 had been negotiate between parties.

I think that is Susan of the documentary Fight Like a Girl.

May 8, 2015

The body and mind require rest to perform at their full potential, and if you are "over training" you most likely are not getting the rest required and are "under resting". I think that the mind is an incredible thing and extremely powerful. Some are more powerful than others when it comes to pushing their personal limits, but I believe that minds can be changed as well, with the right mental training.

[matt quoting you here, but only as a start]

One of the most important distinctions perhaps is that what Sylvie is talking about is training for performance IN a fight. There are two things at play in the overtraining story. Do training regimes that far exceed "normal" or even some "professional" recommendations give you a physical edge? And, do they give you a mental edge? A lot of the training that Sylvie does brings her into non-optimal states, and the mental dimension is about learning how to perform at a high level when your resources are down (both mental and physical resources). Much of the overtraining story does not seem to serve non-optimal performance increases well, as you are told to, or you come to, ever be on the look out for physical diminishment, symptoms that are telling you that you need to stop or slow way down. Given the Brain Governor Model of fatigue, the brain will be telling you to stop when you have plenty left, in many instances. It seems like a very slippery slope to start down, and the opposite of what you are trying to achieve in fighting, which is how to fight and respond to deficit (real and imagined).

This goes a little bit towards a way of thinking that both the west and Thailand share (differently), that you want to fight as close to 100% as possible. The west more than Thailand thinks about it in terms of physical capability I think, that your punches are faster and harder, your cardio is way up, that you generally just feel GREAT when you fight. (In Thailand it is almost an obsessive focus on rest before a fight: sit here, lay down here, don't move, as if you might expend some little bit of energy that will be wasted.) We've found that you almost never feel GREAT when you fight, and training towards feeling great does you no real benefit. In fact you are always injured, always sub-optimal. You aren't trying to shave hundredths of seconds off a 100 meter time. You aren't trying to close a minute off of your ultramarathon, or even lift more under pressure than you have before. You are trying to respond to an opponent who is trying to actively put doubts in your mind, and doing so with a mind that is reading back to you distorted information about your own reserves and capabilities. You are fighting in a land of doubt. How do you relax? How do you proceed forward? The overtraining story is essentially a doubt factory to me, pushing your eye towards an ever watchful state looking for warning lights. I can't tell you how many times Sylvie has been in states with the red engine light going off and she simply found ways to do more. It does something to you.

The other question is of physical benefit. Is risking your limits something that actually improves your physical capabilities? This is harder to say. Certainly we know that sometimes it does. I am utterly convinced that Sylvie has grown much harder physically. Not only is she stronger, and has more endurance, but she just is made of tougher stuff, than she would have been with a much more reasonable regime. Not only is her pain tolerance high, but she literally does not get hurt in fights. When she clashes against experienced opponents, bone to bone, her opponent gets hurt. We saw this in Master K Sylvie's original teacher (in his 70s), and you feel it in the bones and muscles of old Muay Thai fighters. They are made of different stuff, like iron. Phetjee Jaa doesn't like sparring with Sylvie because Sylvie's bones can be felt through the shin pads though they aren't kicking hard. I don't know the real answer to this, but it does feel like the western, finely tuned sports car approach to the fighter is far more fragile, far more susceptible to injury than the relentless Thai style approach to repetition - keeping in mind Sylvie kind of trains beyond the typical Thai approach as well.

Of course the emphasis on active rest is an important and really vital one that Sylvie's talked about a lot. But perhaps the deepest lesson is getting to a place where you can rest and recover in your work, during your work. This maybe is the biggest change I've seen in Sylvie, especially after she took up mental training, her recovery time from both physical and mental diminishment is faster and faster. Something that would have put her in a valley for days sometimes is gone in a minute. This I think is the most interesting thing about the overtraining story. It isn't about hitting the gas every single minute. It's about finding your plateau, wherever you are at on that day, and feeling, believing you always can do more. And finding ways to do it.

Also, a really interesting distinction here is that Sylvie basically trains herself. She puts herself in the hands of different trainers, but the entire framework and commitment comes from her. That is, if you put her training exclusively under an all powerful coach who was just pushing and pushing and pushing it would be a very different experience, and maybe a unhealthy one (?). A big part of Sylvie's resistance to the overtraining story is that other people are telling you what your limit is. When Sylvie helps others with their training she's never a driving task master. It's more about making people feel and see that they can do more, sometimes in small ways. Becoming aware of all the habits and pull backs that come from the fear of hitting limits.

Just some thoughts as an attentive onlooker to what Sylvie is doing.

May 8, 2015

I don't follow the western Muay Thai scene much, but it's pretty cool to see an ALL female fight card set for next week in Los Angeles California.

Cali 8 - Cali's Finest

WCK Muay Thai Presents Cali 8. Top ranked standouts in an ALL Female Fight Card!
Saturday May 16, 2015 @ 7.00pm
Hollywood Park Casino
3883 W Century Blvd
Inglewood, CA 90303

wckmuaythai.com

May 7, 2015

I am up for fighting a more experienced or heavier opponent but what I saw was one step beyond this. I know that no gym in the west would do something like this, or not any that I have trained at. It makes me leery of accepting a fight out of this gym as I am not sure if they would really be in my corner or are placing bets against me and booking me against an opponent looking to make money from me losing.

All opinions on this are greatly appreciated.

Hopefully Sylvie jumps on this later because I'd love to know what she thinks, but I can say as her husband that it would not surprise me at all if some of her trainers indeed placed bets against her in fights. I know this sounds terrible, and a strong conflict of interest, but the way it feels at many times is that it is really up to the fighter to convince his or her trainers that he or she is the right bet, both during training and during fights (betters don't just bet on who will win, but also bet during the fight and will often hedge their bets). A lot of the betting that goes on is simply out of view of westerners who are fighting. Does this mean that you might get set up in an unfavorable match up? Possibly. But the general experience is that your trainers want to build you up and make you the best fighter that you can be, and they want to bet on you as well.

This being said, "representing the gym" and understanding all the relationships that are in place long before you got there, and long after you go is very complex. No gym in the west would do this because gyms in the west don't make their income on students that are only with them for a few weeks to months most of the time. Also betting on Muay Thai fights in the west is not an important part of the fabric of fighting. More or less Muay Thai IS gambling in Thailand. We just don't see it.

At the end of it all most matchups I've seen in person between farang and Thai in tourist areas have felt like they favored the westerner if anyone, usually with size.

May 7, 2015

I would imagine it really depends on person to person, circumstances to circumstances.

It wasn't in MT, but JDS suffered from overtraining before his 2nd fight with Cain Velasquez. He developed Rhabdomyolysis, which is when muscle fibers die and go into the blood stream, leading to potential kidney problems.

Well, this is the thing Charlie, overtraining becomes a huge blanket category that is vaguely applied to an almost infinite variety of effects. The very link that you give has a host of causes of Rhabdomyolysis, including:

"The use of alcohol or illegal drugs such as heroine, cocaine or amphetamines" - not to mention several other possible causes. The list is long including the flu and herpes simplex and bacterial infection. Instead it just gets chalked up to "He overtrained."

It is extremely difficult to cite these examples and know at all where they are coming from.

May 6, 2015

Really nicely done. But is it just me and my personal response to the edits that being summarily called "the perfect specimen of beauty and brawn" is a little jarring and that a male fighter would never be called this? "John Wayne Parr, the perfect specimen of good looks and toughness". Big fan of Caley Reece, and no doubt being beautiful favorably serves female Muay Thai in some ways. But what was special about her wasn't that she was/is beautiful, in my mind. It's that she fought in a Thai style which is becoming less uncommon in the west, fought injured, fought with incredible drive in her career, fought as a clinch fighter. I guess this is just the state of things. When beauty is present in almost any category of achievement for women, it's going to push itself forward into our awareness whether it be politics, academics, business or athletics. And Caley is such an interesting case in this, as she did everything while being iconically beautiful.

May 4, 2015

Lady Go! shared this video with me and I thought I would pass it along.
She is 16 years old and won the 48kg Girl's S-Cup last year.

Wow. Great long combinations, nice body lean Charlie! It says she fought at 52 kg. Is she now up in weight? Wonderful share.

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