Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Attempting to bend the thread back to it's general theme a bit, for those reading across the posts, the concept or critique of patterned training in the west is perhaps, from the position of Self Organized Criticality, one in which the notion of error and correction produces a real ceiling on development. It causes us to view errors as broken pieces of a machine of techniques to be repaired or replaced. I've elsewhere made the connection between patterned fighting, and the more broad commercial requirement that patterns facilitate promulgation. Meme-ishness below. In many ways this isn't really something so much to blame, as to simply recognize as a phenomena. For things of one culture to promulgate in another culture there has to be some sort of grafting of the one onto the other, very often including extreme translation. People are going to experience this as a bastardization, or a distortion. Perhaps, but it is almost an necessary one. In the widest view we just need to recognize it. On a more personal level, when dealing with one's own Muay, and thinking about the patterns within it, this thread is about maybe thinking about one's progress not in terms of Bell Curves, but instead in terms of possible Power Laws, where exceptional leaps are expected as part of the process.

It's actually a pretty crappy term. It immediately positions the problem, and more importantly its solution as academic, the discourse (hahahaha, yeah, "discourse") on it and its reality at a very rarefied level of class. And it isn't even rule by the father. It's really rule by all the sons of the father...perhaps filiiarchy.

We were talking to Chatchai Sasakul, a fighter who fought so many of the greats in the Golden Age in Muay Thai, and then came into fame winning the WBC World Championship western boxing belt. He's in the Library here, and we are about to add another session with him. We were asking him why in his fight style back in the day he wasn't doing many of the things that he was advocating now. He said, "back then I didn't know". He looked at us like we were crazy, like "what do you think I've been doing for 20 years since I retired" or "of course I didn't know, I was young". It brought home for me one of the most special things about the Library. We talk about it as if it is preserving the literal techniques of the Golden Age, but it is much more than that. It's preserving those techniques AS they have undergone a period of reflection and refinement. If you talked to an active fighter you may very well get some very noteworthy pointers on how to fight. But if you talk to that fighter 15 or 20 years later you get something very different. You get those elements having passed through a very long stage of reflection. You get to see those elements, very often, taken up as craft. Sometimes, if that fighter has fallen out from the fight game entirely, like maybe someone like Samson Isaan (in the Library here), and who is a taxi driver, this is mostly the craft of recollection, of memory. What he knows and thinks about are all the things that worked for him, and probably some of the things that didn't work for him, things that had success against him. The whole thing goes into a process of memory's slow boil, low and slow, and what you get is a condensed essence of fight knowledge, his style, under refinement. Even if he isn't actively working on improving on or conveying his fighting style, it has been worked on by memory and reflection. It is the art of his style, his knowledge. On the other hand when you have someone like Sagat - you can find him in the Library here - this is someone who has been teaching Muay Thai for probably three decades. Not only is he bringing his fight style, the one he once had, but he has become a craftman about it. What he is teaching is a rarified, purified form of his fighting style, something that has been honed and polished over decades of communication and thought. What he is showing you in the ring today is very different than what he would have showed you 30 years ago. It is enhanced, has been worked on endlessly. Not in the "I've got to be a better teacher" way, but rather that each time you try to convey something you touch it a little, you change it, you add reflection on it. Sagat teaches a great deal of precision and correction on his strikes, as does Chatchai, who also has been teaching for years. Chatchai as a fighter would drift away on his jab. Today he insists, do not do this, this is stupid. I've seen Sagat incorporate things into his teaching that I know he recently has experienced - for instance he has been helping General Tunwakom teach Muay Lertrit lately. These internal elbows are now in his mind, as he teaches movements. Sagat is 60 years old, and his Muay is still evolving. I've watch Karuhat come up with brilliant throws, things he is simply inventing on the spot, feeling his way on, things I've never seen before, because Karuhat when he was a fighter in his gym would always be experimenting, stealing things from others, dreaming up new wrinkles. When we look back in time, through our telescope of the Library it isn't like how starlight is reaching us from far away, how it was years ago. It's instead coming to us with immediacy, having passed through the reflections of these men, as they have become craftsmen, working on the raw materials of their fight days, lifting it to art. Perhaps nobody is more like this than Master K, Sylvie's first instructor back in America. He's 80 years old now, and his Muay Thai is this incredible time capsule of Muay Thai before the Golden Age, the Muay Thai of the late 1960s 1970s. But...it also is filtered and hand sanded by the mind of a Thai man who was no longer in Thailand, reflected on, improved and dreamed up through watching the great boxers of the decades, long ruminations in his own basement kicking the bag until 2 AM, the result of a craft-work of elaboration and self-creation. I think that is what a lot of us miss. These men, all of these men, are producing the work of their mind, as artists, as creators, bringing to life and carrying forward a new thing. It isn't just their techniques, or even their fighting styles. It's the fecundity of the years since they stopped fighting. It is their meditation. What is also kind of incredible is that these ruminations, these craft-works, have been documented and continue to be documented. And that Sylvie has first hand seen them. You can see the full library here.

Maybe I can add this too, as a point of detail. There are really two important factors in one's experience in a Thai gym in Thailand. There is the general culture of the gym, which is the overall vibe of what is happening all around. Are the trainers lazy and not into the work? Is there a general sense of "This is happening, dive in"? Do you feel included or excluded? What are the qualities being expressed by everyone, the Thais, the farang, etc. This is like the high or low tide of the ocean, it floats or sinks all boats. It's hard to get a feel for this at a distance. It's going to impact people different, but more so because the feeling in a gym changes all the time. It depends on how crowded it is, which trainers are there, how much time the "boss" spends in the gym. The energy in the gym might be great one month, but then a top trainer goes back to his village and the gym is overbooked...then, not so great. That's why you have to go and see. The second part is which trainer are you put with? By most of our experience longer term farang will usually end up paired with a particular trainer, at least somewhat. This has a huge impact on your experience. You can be in the shittiest gym in Thailand and if you connect with your trainer, and get a relationship where he wants to improve you, this can be an amazing experience. On the other hand, you can be in the best vibe gym in Thailand, but if you somehow find yourself regularly with a trainer who is reluctant or dismissive, or whatever, it doesn't make up for all the wonderfulness of the gym. You don't have a lot of control over this aspect of a gym. You can try and steer this, somewhat, but it's kind of a roll of the dice. That's why you want to be in gyms that generally have pretty good trainers all around. But, no matter the gym you find yourself in, working on your relationship with a regular kru or padman is the surest way of having a positive experience. You just need that one. That's why I mentioned Kru Daeng at Lanna. I know for sure this is a very fight oriented, excellent, fair trainer. If you go there, b-line to him, and tell him Sylvie suggested him. Budgeting a few privates with a trainer is also a good strategy if you see someone you really want be guided by. So, whatever gym you are talking about, spend 2 days there and just take the temperature of the space. Then when you pick one, work hard on your relationship with your kru or krus.

The above illustrates what proponents of Self-Organizing Criticality imagine. Since the invention of statistical mathematics our vision of the world has become very Bell Curved in expectation. That is to say, wee "see" in averages. Things that fall far outside of averages are seen as anomalies, and largely are excluded from much consideration. The L Curve of Power Law distribution (shown here as the related Exceedience Probability) is a very different world view, and brings out the connectivity between those out-lying properties, and the overall system. These are the avalanches, the cascades that are rare, are built into the system itself. They aren't exceptions, they are part of the patterns. This is a world view shift if we think about the kinds of productivity, and exceptionalness we want to build in new skills or new traits. The Bell Curve of Averages causes us to see our present averages - let's say of skill level - as essential and relatively "stuck". If a beautiful kick suddenly comes out, it's just an anomaly. Our kick, fundamentally, is an "average". Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, mostly meh. The Sandpile conception of complex systems positions supposed anomalies on a scale. When the entire system cascades, it's just a sandpile having an avalanche of connectivity. We set about making the sandpile more prone to these events, of the quality searched for. graphic from: Bak's Sand Pile: Strategies for a Catastrophic World ($9.99 Kindle)

This is a very cool nutshell which probably speaks to the motivations of each. I know we are talking extremely broadly, there are lots of men who feel insecure about their power, and maybe drawn to Muay Thai for that reason, but it seems that there still, even for them, is a general tide, a fabric in the culture that reflects an experience of powerlessness for women, and powerfulness for men. Sylvie may not be indicative of all women, or even most women, but I remember when she was taking Nihi Sobo's mental training course and one of the first mental exercises was to just unchain your mind and think of the most absurdly satisfying fantasy of what your life could be like. Like, off the charts "dream come true, beyond all dreams", no judgements. And honestly, Sylvie just couldn't access any of those ridiculously blown out visions the guys found so easy to dream up. As a woman - and probably for other reasons too - all these super-visioned, jacked up thoughts were like a different language. Of course thinking in those ways may not be the right or best way to go, but the very fact that they can sometimes be cut off from some women, that it's a mode of thought that is maybe discouraged, really has a discrete impact on female fighting.

One of the most powerful and probably meaningful aspects of fighting as an entertainment form, but also an art, is that fighters do something that is a "peak experience" in most lives. Most of the fans in an audience have had very few purposive fights, and if they had them there were under extreme conditions. What fighters do the "normal" person will rarely do. It makes fighters kind of emotional astronauts, having to live in spaces - to perform in front of audiences - over and over in peak states. I think it can really be a struggle in how to manage going into those states, or at the very least exposing yourself to that kind of duress.

Sylvie and I haven't been around either gym, in an active way, for a while, and never trained more than in a private session under the existing management at either. Maybe someone can hop on who has been around these gyms recently. Both seem to be supportive of female students, both have top notch head trainers (Joe Hongthong at Hongthong, Kru Daeng at Lanna), and both encourage fighting and are well connected. The right thing to do, to be honest, is to go and train at one for two or 3 days and just feel the vibe, and then go and train at the other for 2 or 3 days, and feel the same. A big part of all this, especially between two gyms that are thought to be somewhat comparable, is just the feeling of the space, the feeling you get off of the krus, how they conduct training. By our experience you can feel pretty quickly whether you want to spend a month or two in a place or not. And sometimes you can walk in a place and get a big "get me the hell out of here" inner voice. A mistake many people make is paying for gyms in in advance. I know that some gyms try to get this to happen, and there may even be gyms that require it, but it's just not a good long term strategy. You just have to go and feel your way. Even if you hear great reviews from people who are even IN the gym right now, they may be very different kinds of people than you. Nothing replaces intuition. We've sent a lot of people to both these gym, in a general sense, just because they have pretty nice reps, and support female fighters, but really it's how you feel when there. There is always the small chance that you wouldn't like either of them, for whatever reason. You could still pop over to Manop's gym, which is much smaller, or a more westernized gym. In Thailand it's almost always best to keep your options open.

What is this were the motto for our Muay, or, alternately, for our living...which is the same thing: - Per Bak This is very close to a poetic, quasi-conceptual unraveling of Sylvie's motto: "Live the question."

Detouring back to the original theme, here's a citation from a secondary essay I'm reading on Self Organized Criticality "Society as a Self-Organized Criticality" (I have the PDF if anyone is interested, message me on the forum message system) This essay takes up the thesis: What if society were organized like Bak's Sandpiles (mentioned at the top of this thread). Now, a few translations have to take place to appreciate the possible impact on this passage on Muay Thai. In particular, the author is interested in how "catastrophic" or "revolutionary" events happen in societies, for instance the outbreaks of war, or scientific paradigm shifts. But let's not be mislead. The theory really is that systems near the edge of chaos, near a tipping point, are complexly organized toward what we might call "avalanches". Avalanches, like on sandpiles upon which individual sand grains fall, are sudden shifts of coordination from many parts of the system. Whether this be an outbreak of war in a society, or a perfectly timed Mike Tyson punch full of power and accuracy, the avalanche is when disparate parts all flow and work together. In the rat brain study cited at this thread's beginning, it's how the brains of rats slowly wake up from sleep. There are small, unpredictable waking actions (tiny avalanches), and over time eventually the large system-wide avalanche, the rat wakes up. This is what I find incredibly interesting. One of the great frustrations of training, and trying to change oneself in Muay Thai, is about trying to bring all the parts of the system (your body) together in a desired way. Your muay is, perhaps like a sandpile, and training is about getting it into these criticality states, when suddenly, but perhaps not predictably, it will avalanche in concerted ways. What is very cool is that this could mean that your muay, and all your practice to hone it, is more precarious toward sudden efficaciousness than you think. In the cited passage above, any influence can set off an avalanche who's size (degree of coordination) cannot be predicted. You do not even know the state of your own muay. Key of course, is to regard, and really assemble your self into a criticality state, one prone to the right kinds of productive avalanches, the right awakenings. Easier said than done. But "error" (or really null values) sits in a very different place in these models. Error is waiting for the avalanche of coordination. Key to this coordination possibility is for the system (your self) to have a certain amount of play in it...and by play I mean both the unpredictability of outcome, but also maybe actually "play". This is one reason why too rigid, or too stable of training system will not produce the criticality that will bring diverse parts together. Consider this passage in the same essay: Heavy pattern repetitions, overt control over diverse parts or actions, may produce just too stable or shift a system. Instead you want one which has parts that interact a lot (as they do in play), capable of sudden shifts (as they do in play), with a certain unpredictable nature (success or "failure"). You want a sandpile that might, at any point, cascade. If you are training much of the time in states far from this, you are maybe spending too much time in non-criticality.

Yes. 100%, but it is also that you have to use the language - albeit full of errors and inexactness - all the time, you fumble your way through, often without any correction, but just through living use, you somehow find a way, you find correct. If it was just being IN the culture, a lot more long term westerners in Thailand would speak Thai. A large number of them do not. In fact, I don't at all, I've been here 7 years. Sylvie is almost fluent, or at least getting there pretty quickly. The difference between us is that she fumbled and bumbled through uses of it, to do real things, to interact, shape things, get things done. I didn't. Andy Thomson, the amazing coach I mentioned above, didn't really speak Thai after 25 years here. But, I totally agree that if you have the opportunity to USE the language repeatedly in the culture you get all kinds of rich clues about the uses of it. This is one of the beautiful, kind of amazing things about real Thai gyms like the one Sylvie finds herself in, there is just a tapestry of Thai "Muay Thai" culture everywhere, and that whole culture of behavior and values - how you hold your body, how you hold aggression, or exhaustion, or respect...- molds all the techniques you are trying to use. That's the super difficult thing about teaching Muay Thai in western contexts, the "culture" of Muay Thai (in the Thai sense) is missing, all the rich, tiny stuff. You can try and duplicate certain aspects. You can wai when you come in, you can adopt Thai attitudes in techniques, but it's just really an absolute shadow of a Thai gym, and kind of feel just like imitation and in some cases caricature...so, maybe that's why instead you need structure, for the absence of "culture".

I think I see where you are going with this... (I hope you don't mind my humor! I just couldn't help it, just love the Hulk too much...)

My real analogy, the one I always turn to, is the learning of language. Do we really crave structure in learning a language? I kind of think not. I guess I can only speak for my own experience, but structure when learning a language always feels like something getting in the way. Just a bunch of stuff to be memorized, tested on and then filed away. When learning a language you immediate, more or less, want to know how to use it. Right away. How do I say "cat"? How do I swear? And, as everyone knows, the most direct path to fluency is immersion. Which means using it, using it, using (for a very long time wrong). Muay Thai, at its real level, is like a language. Which is why it's pretty much taught like a language in Thailand. You learn a couple of words, and then you just start using them. Then you learn some more, and you use them. You are not taught structurally. Now, I understand that teaching a class of 30 people, of differing levels, in an unstructured way is not easy. And indeed for many it might be impossible. But it does happen in Thailand, only it's not a class. I think the real reason why something like Muay Thai is taught in a structured way, so much, is because of the demands on teaching itself, which is not easy. Not really because people crave structure. I was always struck by watching Andy Thomson teach beginners (a westerner who taught in Thailand for 2 decades). He would start them out with. Stand naturally. Now take one step forward. There, that's your stance. And he would proceed like that, and in 30 minutes - I swear - you were "doing" Muay Thai. Like...pretty damn good Muay Thai, considering. He put them on the bike immediately, and he was like: pedal. I don't think this kind of training or teaching style is easy. It takes a certain perspective. But one of the coolest things about Muay Thai is just how simple it is, at the bottom of it all.

It truly means a lot to hear that others are sparked by my thoughts and my words. As you can tell my mind is ever expanding in its search for implication, and I truly believe that Muay Thai is the great arts in the world, period. And I mean any art. The plastic arts, the literary arts, all of the performed arts. There is nothing that pulls on so many strings, and has the potential to reconcile the traditional and (hyper)modern worlds as much as Muay Thai, that is, the Muay Thai of Thailand.

My spinoff thoughts on this!

This post grows out of a really excellent thread started by James Poidog on training fighter aggression, especially for those uncomfortable with aggression themselves (that thread is linked at the bottom here). I started answering James and then just realized that this probably deserves a thread of it's own. This was the beginning of my answer: I hope she hops on here to discuss, but I'm just giving my view. I've seen female fighters go this way. Roxy Richardson advocated for it in some blog posts, Michelle Waterson talks this way. For Sylvie the creation of an alter never was super effective. She wasn't at peace with the values in that alter, and Muay Thai is so much of her soul I think it all was a little jarring, and in a way "not believable" to her, so it didn't quite stick. You definitely see this in male fighters too. The whole "persona" which works well with marketing, etc. But what Sylvie seems to have discovered for herself is the mantra: "The way you do one thing is the way you do all things." which means that if you want to fight differently, you have to bring those values and habits into your life, the way you do other things. An interesting example for instance is that as a Muay Khao fighter you need to constantly be taking up space. More and more space. Sylvie's physically small, often shy or reclusive person. She has been moving out of the way of people for a very long time, sometimes just out of the reality of what happens on sidewalks. So...when you are moving through supermarket aisles, who is the one who moves out of the way first? You don't have to be an asshole about it, but always one person makes the gesture to move first. Who is that person? If you really want to naturally be a certain way in the ring. for instance somehow who takes up space, yes, you can make up the "Space Eating Monster" alter who just gobbles space, or...you can become someone who increasingly takes up space more often, in all things, in all ways. What I find really interesting about this is that the reason why people are drawn to certain personas, or let's say certain fighting styles, like literally drawn like a moth, is that they speak to something deep inside, something that they might not be reconciled with. Training toward something in technique, or in style, or even persona, in the gym, is a way of working toward that expression, that thing. Alters are way of approaching that, but it seems much cooler, much more rich and transformative to literally take that thing, that desire onto yourself, and start to shape your life with it. I think that's much closer to the arc that fighters are spiritually aiming for in the first place. There is also always a suspicion for me that when people put on alters that those masks can break, if you push on them hard enough, that the fighter, or even the person in life, doesn't really, really, really believe that that is who they are. And that there can be a kind of fragility to that path. Yes, you can put on masks to grow into them, to give permissions, that's a tool, but what is is stronger, like a slowly growing oak tree, to really become what you dream. The original thread conversation spin off:

hahahaha. Sure. This is the better article: Ars Technica Rat brains provide even more evidence our brains operate near tipping point

Hmmm. If you are responding to my thought experiment it really shouldn't involve pushing people around anywhere. The whole idea is to develop a sense of domination, which is really just control over your environment, submissive people are also trying to control their environment as well, they do it hrough submission. In my example this is done without aggression, which means you aren't pushing against anything. A good example I can take from my bartender years. I used to bar tend during some shifts in NY in a very small service bar (making drinks for waiters) where customers would come and kind of corner me, and talk to me. Ha, I'm not the talkative bartender type at all. One night I just decided to see if I could move the person in front of me who was jabbering away - it really was only maybe 4 feet across, the little bar space, I tried to move them to the left and to the right. I would talk to them and look off center, slightly to their left to move them slowly across the bartop, and then slightly to the right, and like a cat with a laser they would move to be in front of my gaze. I felt trapped, it was my degree of freedom. I wasn't really pushing them. I'm not sure that classifies as aggression. Maybe? But, I think it's something far below aggression. It's just the natural desire to control the environment, and there are many ways to do it. Not just aggressively. When a fighter like Samart is just drifting backwards, teep juggling his opponent over and over, looking bored, leading them quietly around the ring like a dog on a leash, is this aggression? There are moments of aggression in his style to be sure, but the domination he exhibits is the same as me looking to the right, and to the left. I think the confusion is the idea that as a fighter you need to tap into some fundamental, probably repressed aggression, and then stay in this aggro state for long stretches, in order to fight. No, not really. Not in Thai style at least. You have to learn how to control the space, control your opponent, and control yourself. Yes, you can use aggression. Yes, you can tap into repressed energies, as a tool, but it isn't fundamentally that. I think there is a lot of misleading about aggression in fighting, it necessity, etc. Is there fighting with absolutely ZERO aggression, probably not. But if you watch some of Somrak's fights you seem almost none. Dieselnoi when asked about Somrak said: He's a tall person who refuses to fight you!!! And basically implied, he's a nightmare for that reason. This stuff goes way, way back for Thailand. The oldest recorded fight between a farang and a Thai is from the 18th century when a French Man challenged a royal champion. The Thai champion just retreated (and probably teeped and whatnot) the French boxer became totally enraged. It was so humiliating that the Frenchman's brother then apparently hopped into the ring to simultaneously attack the Thai. I wonder who was dominating whom?

I'm not entirely sure how you mean. Do you mean differently than the two articles cited do? Like, just in terms of error production? Or, do you mean more generally, how these articles paint a picture of the brain as a tipping point complex system?

What is at stake here is pretty much the mechanistic world view which we have inherited from the industrial age. Models of the world call our attention to certain features, and suppress our attention to other features, and let's just grant that there is no one "all features" model of the world. A great deal of what we do in the west in terms of Martial Art or combat training comes out of our gearworks mentality. We largely see the world in terms of interconnected cogs or forces that behave in practical ways. And if something predictable fails to occur we lift up the hood and check for where the connection is broken. We do this with ourselves as well, often trying to fix or replace "broken" parts, like our beliefs (that may be holding us back), or habits. We imagine that if the parts line up the machine of the world will work as it should be. And you can see this kind of mechanistic thinking in fight training. Especially in Dutch Kickboxing (taking its cue from Karate's katas, fused with boxing combo thinking), we practice set patterns that are imagined to work like a mechanism unfolding. In fact people partner up and exchange set patterns in simulated "sparring" just to make sure the well-oiled machine of responses is properly geared. You jab, I slip. You cross, I lowkick. Etc. One reason why this patterned teaching proliferates is that it fits in well with our mechanistic world, another reason is that just like in the world of commerce, making widgets (discrete units), and selling and moving them quickly, is a very keen business model for the production of knowledge. You can just stamp them out and put them in a relative assembly line. I'm not saying that all patterned instruction is like this, but we should understand that there is a certain cultural, commercial and paradigm-based balast to all of this practice,. What the complexity systems theory does to this mechanistic world view is change up our expectations, and revise our concept of "error" (or non-response, null value). Error is not necessarily a feedback of a broken part. It may simply be a criticality building system under development.