Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

Footwork is a very good place to start, as it's what allows literally everything else to function. For me, being able to "see" is the main difference between being overwhelmed and being able to wait out an combination and fire back. Everyone has patterns - ever single person - so generally you can start to read or see where those are and know when to counter in the middle of or after a flurry. There are different ways of being able to "see," but 100% it requires you to be calmer, which means focusing on your breathing and knowing literally what you're looking at (where are you looking when you spar? The face, the chest, the hips, the legs?). Trying different areas of focus is a place to start. Focusing on your breathing is a great start. Working on only one thing, like a hook or a kick and seeing when it lands and when it doesn't. All of this depends on you not being overwhelmed though, so step one is just focusing on how to bring your heart rate and stress down. I decide on some days that I'm just going to let myself get hit in the guard, so that I can find the holes in it, feel secure in it, learn to see out of it, etc. There's this guy I spar who hits too hard, so I practice this with him because I don't want to get clipped with his power if I'm open. And there's a guy I spar who is too fast for me, so I also use this approach with him, to find momentary openings.

I agree with Kevin that you ought to just try both before committing to one or the other based off of a coin-toss. Hongthong is big, has two rings, has female fighters and lots of westerners. Joe and Gen are awesome, they have some other trainers working for them but I'm not sure how many now or who's there. They're fairly technical, in the sense that they drill things. It's largely a westerner focused gym. And it's outside of the city, though not far. Lanna (I assume you mean the one in the old location, under new ownership) is going to be largely Chinese, a few westerners, and some Thai kids. There are, indeed, two rings and women are only allowed in one of them. Daeng is the trainer to look for at Lanna, he's friendly and can help with any kind of technical instruction. They have some younger trainers, who are fun and playful, and as far as I've heard from their new structure, they are much more organized in their training than they used to be. They're right by the foothills of the mountains, near the university, you can walk to anything and get into the main part of the city in just a few minutes by a share-cab "song taew" truck. You don't know how is at either place until you're there. Whether you have clinching/sparring partners your size or not. If there are women there at that time or not. If you like the training at either one or not. Check them both out and trust your own judgement based on the experiences you have actually in the space.

I do wonder why I have such an aversion to this Alter-Ego thing. An immediate thought that comes to mind is a comparison to acting. I'm a good actor, I enjoy it, I like impersonating people - I do a very good Karuhat strut. But I'm being Karuhat; it still belongs to him in a way. So I'm "performing," not identifying. I can't remember what actor it was, but someone famous enough to be profiled in a magazine I would read said that s/he liked acting because it allows one to experience very different life choices, without any of the consequences of actually having chosen those things for yourself. I find that kind of bullshit, honestly. I find actors who say they "lose themselves in the role" to be full of shit, too. You're either taking yourself into different silhouettes or you're keeping parts of those characters in yourself; or both. But in my mind, there's no such thing as without consequence. Which I think is what the whole idea of an Alter-Ego is. I understand the notion that your fighter-persona has permissions that you, in your everyday life, don't. I don't go around trying to knee people's guts out at the supermarket. But I can't conceive of having a different set of values for in the fight and out of it. I'm all unified theory, I guess. If I need to be more merciless in the ring, then I need to be more merciless in my life. I can't hold a value in one context and not in another. There is no escaping the consequences of actions just because of context. You either live a value or you don't. And maybe because it's something that I can't quite wrap my own heart around, I am tending to assume a much larger divide than is real for those of you who do feel these alters... like, it's not so much Jekyll and Hyde as it is Big Alice and Small Alice. Big Alice can pick up the deck of cards and toss them around, Small Alice can't. I get that. But they're not separate identities to me.

I don't think this is the case. It might be that the way Muay Thai is watched and scored in the provinces allows for more clinch, so the fighters rely more on clinch, whereas fighting in Bangkok the clinch is broken more quickly, so fighters need to make adjustments to that, etc. But it's not divided by style in any way that a casual, or even familiar eye would detect. A few of the men I've talked to who are of the Golden Age age (meaning now they're in their mid-40s and older), talk about how Central Thailand (Bangkok, Chachoengsao, Chonburi and maybe stretching into Ayuthaya area) the fighters are both skilled and strong (i.e. the best), with a nod to the South for being the same; but they complained that Northeastern fighters are strong but not skilled, and Northern fighters are skilled but not strong. I honestly always register these assessments as being bias toward one's regional identity. No Northerner would say the same, nobody ever says nice things about Isaan and yet, tons of the best fighters come from Khon Khaen (Karuhat, Pudpadnoi, Somrak) who are very skilled and yet there's no credit given.

Changes to Lumpinee Stadium: Not sure if you all will be interested in the kind of "what's going on in Thailand" news, but I find it interesting and will be posting things here. Recently, there was a big meeting at Lumpinee with the head of the stadium. Lumpinee is run by the army and the man who is the head of the stadium is a high ranking officer, whose face was showing up in photos and and reports of this meeting, which seemed to be focused on 1) creating a new set of enforcement for punishing fighters who "lom muay" (that's "taking a fall" or "throwing a fight" to us), with a specification that "dek" (the word for children, but also colloquially used for "young") will be given a second chance; as well as some rules I'll have to get help fully understanding from Kru Nu, which seemed to be about fighters who change gyms and their alliances. And 2) how to drive more business to the Lumpinee, Ram Intra area throughout the week so that it's not just the 3 days on which they have promotions. When New Lumpinee opened, it was hit hard by being a completely inconvenient location and audience attendance plummeted. There are some things to do over there, but there's construction on the overpass and traffic is terrible, so the financial struggle at the stadium is real. The part that's interesting is this "lom muay" part, because within a couple days of this meeting, this fighter was accused of throwing his fight. Aekgarat Tor. Dor. Gudanamsai is seen in this video returning backstage after the referee called his fight off. He was out of power and after the third round the referee announced the fight was dubious and had both fighters exit the ring. I've seen this before - the first time Kevin and I saw it on TV we had no idea what was happening. It's not frequent, but sometimes a referee will decide that one fighter is not really fighting, or trying to throw the fight, and he'll stop the fight right there and all bets are cancelled. Sometimes fighters are suspended, sometimes there's an investigation and it's ruled that it was not being thrown; and sometimes the referee is suspended, in the case that his call for stopping the fight is deemed a method of cheating for gambling purposes. Suspensions are uncommon. But the disdain that fighters who are known to have thrown fights are spoken about, demonstrates this is a big sore spot on the face of Muay Thai. In this video, the military police come into the back room. He mostly just stays there to keep the fighter and trainers from going anywhere, then escort them to a meeting with this high ranking officer who runs Lumpinee. There were photos of that meeting in posts after this. Ultimately, the fighter explained that he was a replacement for this match and had only a week to prepare, which is why he had no power in the fight. He was not suspended or punished, ultimately. But in the video there's a guy who comes and is just screaming at this fighter and his trainer. You get a good glimpse of Thai style "not my business" with folks in the background, including another fighter who is getting ready for his match. The guy who is yelling is a gambler and his language is harsh. You'll get gamblers screaming at fighters from the stands after fights, but it's another thing for them to come backstage. I find it interesting that the military police officer is only concerned with keeping an eye on the fighter and trainers and has no care at all for controlling the gambler. In the comments on the facebook share of this video, my favorite is from a guy who, using very harsh language himself, directs his comment at the gambler and says, "if you've got so much energy to yell at the fighter like this, why don't you go fight the opponent yourself." Ultimately, one of the reasons I'm sharing this is that the proximity of this meeting and announcement of punishment for throwing fights to an event in which a fighter is accused is highly performed. To have published photos of the meeting and then published photos of a fighter being accused, taken to the office, and ultimately let off with a warning all appears to be a "we made a rule and watch us enforce it!" kind of thing. https://www.facebook.com/190387948278006/posts/360860344564098/

I 100% get what you're getting at with the Dexter vs. Conan example, but I chafe at the serial killer comparison because I believe you have to actually be quite empathetic to be a good fighter. You have to know what fear and pain and shame feel like to be able to impart them on your opponent - and to a softer degree your partner in training scenarios. But yes, definitely not the "beast mode" of the Conan approach. I've found that for myself, a degree of insistence is what works the best for me in training. I'm slightly pissed off, but not in a way that's directed at anyone or anything. It's just that my version of slightly pissed allows me to let go of judgement, I think. There is a kind of Hannibal Lector quality to feeling the emotional and energy state of your partner and calmly guiding them toward the deep end. Like, "you look close to quitting, let me just nudge you a bit." I've personally had a hard time learning how to have that "killer instinct," or your version of a kind of sociopathic instinct, in aiding your partner's weaknesses because it feels shitty. For a very long time, if I knew that what I was doing was putting my partner in an emotionally difficult place, I'd back off. Even though in part of my mind I know that's no favor at all. There's a fighter at my gym who is the universal little brother. He's literally the little brother of one fighter, but he's the youngest (without being the 7-8 year olds, who are kind of their own set), and he's a butterball who gives up and hates being tired, so Kru Nu is always working to toughen him up. Like, if he can't finish the morning run in 1 hour, he has to run more. A few times, he's been running on the road, all of us in the van with the doors open just kind of crawling alongside him. It's punishment, for sure, but it's not just him. If Alex comes in behind so-and-so, he has to run extra or do pushups or whatever also, and he's kind of a "star" of the gym. So, I struggle with this because I have a compassionate impulse to get out and run with the little brother. Just so he has a partner, a friend, something to make it less all-eyes-on-you. But I also know that a lesson is being taught and by jumping out and doing that, it comes off as "motherly," which I 1 million percent do not want to associate myself with in the gym. It's that same struggle when I feel my partners wanting to quit, or having a hard time, or hitting an emotional wall. I've been there. And I've had people ease up on me - so I know that just lets me stay exactly how I am. And I've had people not ease up, and I know that helps me grow. So, it's a weird version of "serial killer compassion," as it were.

give me a minute, we'll look into the Women's Only access problem.

I've noticed a change in what the female fighters in Chiang Mai wear to fight in, now versus when I was living there 5 years ago. Chiang Mai is a more conservative area of Thailand and when I was living there, a lot of the fighters wore T-shirts, so even a tank-top was kind of exposed. Now almost all the women fight in long sports bras, kind of crop-top length with no sleeves. Thai women wear their shorts higher, so only a little torso is exposed, but it's a big change to my eyes. And it's very prevalent. I couldn't say where that change has come from, whether it's influenced by more western women training and fighting up in Chiang Mai or not. Because it's the norm now, there's no gasping on an individual basis (because it's so common), but the way these fighters are photographed and promoted on the Thai-language pages is definitely not lacking the male gaze. I also see the exact same breakdown that you do, in terms of fitness vs fighter gyms. Part of this is, of course, class as well. Middle-class and Hi-So women training Muay Thai are almost always in tights and some kind of put together outfit, but rarely are their shorts too short, lacking undershorts, or just a sports bra. Not at least in what I've seen. My gym is not only a fighter's gym, but it's a family space. Occasionally we get women whose butt cheeks are literally hanging out the bottom of their shorts, or the shorts go see-through when they get wet and you can see their underwear. In general these women are not acting as though they're looking for attention. It's truly just what they're comfortable with from their own cultures. In general, at my gym, these women are working hard and are earnest in their training, and their DGAF attitude is quite literally not even being aware of the attention they are garnering. Further, because my gym only has me as a comparison, they only know that Sylvie dresses like this or that, not what "women" dress like in the space. I've seen it where there are 3 of us, one takes her shirt off to just be in the sports bra and the 3rd woman sees this as permission, or a sign that this is acceptable, and takes hers off as well. For the most part, at my gym, the men are well-behaved and don't make their notice obvious - although they do note it to each other in ongoing discussions that these women aren't aware of because they don't understand Thai. I've changed how I dress over the years. Emma commented on her last visit to my gym that I was wearing a mesh shirt, which I never would have done in the years she's known me prior. On a scale of revealing, this is pretty low. But it's still a step away from complete conservative dress. I'm with you in that I wish I could just throw caution (and reality) to the wind and wear whatever feels good in that moment, either because it's so fucking hot or because it makes me feel confident to wear it. But I still believe that the advantage to carefully not sexualizing my presence in the gym is a huge advantage in every way. And Thai culture sexualizes clothing at a line pretty far from where it becomes shocking to the west. I'm quite sure that the shirt I wear upon entering the gym is appropriate, but once it's wet and clinging to me, it's a whole other thing. So there's a kind of Catch 22 in that you have to wear SOMETHING and you can't give it so much thought that it's constraining you, but you should give it some thought. And, like I said about the 3 women in the gym where one dresses this way and one dresses another, in any given gym, there's a temperature reading you can take to what's normal among the women there at any given time. There is power and safety in numbers.

I'm not actually sure what you're asking, so I'm just throwing in observations and maybe they're meaningful for what you're pondering and maybe not. In my personal experience, I've always been either the only woman at the gym, or one of very few women at the gym. The ratio of men to women creates a completely lopsided social arrangement, wherein what role or quality women offer to the gym is heavily obscured by that inequality. In a gym where there are 10-20 men, the competitiveness they have with each other is an entirely different thing than if there were 2 of them, which is the thing women face. I find myself immediately excited by the presence of another women; annoyed and simultaneously happy to almost always be ordered to work with her (annoyed because it's simply our shared gender, happy because we have a shared gender); and disgusted with myself for having an automatic sense of competitiveness. Not competitiveness in the sporting sense, like how men might get to enjoy having a spar to see who's slicker, but competitiveness in the "there are limited social resources here and I now have to protect my hard-earned position" kind of competitiveness. Which is shit. Which is why you get women throwing each other under the bus to be teacher's-pet, or creating cliques when there are only 3 of us, or not being supportive despite there only being fucking 2 of us. And yet, there's a simultaneous support. It's like "frenemy" once someone is there for longer than a few days. It's supportive, the excitement and mutual aid is real, but so is the feeling of a threat. But I've never come across a feeling that men and women at the gym have markedly different motivations. The feelings of power, personal security, potency, achievement, attractiveness that come from fitness and sport activities feel good to both men and women alike. There's a difference in who feels entitled to those feelings early on, but it kind of evens out over time, I think. Like, men feel badass and claim that feeling way before they actually are, and women claim it way after they've already been labeled that way by others - generally speaking. So, why men and women "should" do martial arts is pretty similar down the gender line: because they like it and it feels good. How they handle when it doesn't feel good seems more divided. Men seem to disappear from the gym when it's difficult or their ego is hurt; women tend to just heap pressure on themselves and put themselves in corners - albeit still working - until someone tells them they're worthy of attention again. At least in Thai gyms, in both these examples the correct thing to do is apologize if there was an infraction, otherwise always just carry on as if nothing at all has ever happened, ever.

It's hard to care about anything when you feel as drained and unsure of bowel control as I did in that fight, haha. But it's a beautiful example, being sandwiched between two other fights, because it demonstrates how it doesn't matter. Each fight has meaning, and importance, but they don't MATTER. None of them... and somehow all of them. I was fine and fought, clinched with Pettonpung and then got food poisoning at dinner that night - terrible night and day, fight, then I'm okay again the next day (albeit tired) and you go fight again. It's like 0 and 1, as if fights are a binary, "good" or "bad," win or lose. None of them are like that. I did laugh when you said you fear the day that you just react with "ho hum" to feats like this, because that's how I respond to my own achievements sometimes. I need friends like you for perspective. So, thank you for that.

The specification of whether these are fighters or not is interesting to me. Because Kru Nu's philosophy is toward fighting. The whole "keep it light" enforcement in the west, I suspect, is largely because the majority of a gym is made up of clients who are not ever going to be stepping into a ring. The assumption is there's no reason to scare people off, get hurt, get upset, etc. That's bad business. I do believe, personally, that there's a lot to learn from putting yourself under that duress in sparring, even if you never plan to fight. But hey. The worst offenders of this going way too hard, with little emotional control with it, are bullies. They're usually men who want to identify as fighters but not actually fight, so they get their "fights in" at the gym, during sparring. One of the men I've mentioned in both these posts is absolutely that type. I do believe he'd ask to schedule a fight, but likely wouldn't go through with it and, if he did, would never be one to fight regularly. He just wants to pound on people who he knows are controlling themselves.

Rambaa has had non-Thais fight through his gym, both westerners and Japanese. It depends on your abilities and the available opponents and promotions at any given time, but Pattaya has several stadia you can fight in at pretty much any level. He mainly has his adult or late-teen fighters at Max or JF (both in Pattaya), and occasionally Rajadamnern. Thailand is incredible, you can fight whenever you and your trainer feel ready. Again, so long as an appropriate opponent and promotion are available.

Yes, the way he's always watching. Kevin took those. Kru Nu is very handsome but hard to photograph, haha. This is what he looks like when I take his photo:

This is an offshoot of a previous thread I started, on the "light" versus "hard" sparring and how that kind of divides down the emotional line, rather than the physical power of strikes. I wanted to ask my trainer, Kru Nu, about this. He's been teaching Muay Thai for 25 years or so, grew up in a gym that had the very, very early westerners who lived and trained in Thailand, has raised countless Thai boys to be stadium fighters and champions; and has had his fair share of "what the f*** was that?" experiences of people losing their cool in sparring and things erupting into potentially dangerous situations. My impetus for asking Kru Nu about this subject was two fold: 1) the "Thai sparring is so light," refrain I hear from westerners is often one that I've failed to witness with my own 7 years' experience living in Thailand. Thais don't spar super light, at least not the way that I see it performed by the westerners who are trying to mimic what they deem to be "Thai style sparring." And 2) I've seen some pretty intense sparring under Kru Nu's supervision, where he doesn't tell people to turn it down, whereas I - and probably most coaches in the West, would have done. With very little kids, like 7 and 8 years old, when they're clinching they aren't allowed to throw knees. Kru Nu tells them explicitly, "if anyone throws a knee, it's a foul." That's so they don't hurt each other, because they don't have control of themselves yet. They're tiny, so the impact is relative to their size, but I think it's more of an emotional precaution - they don't have control of their emotions yet and so they'll knee hard and hurt each other. They're emotionally not in control, so if they get mad they don't have a stick in their hand at the same time, so to speak. Most of the time, sparring or clinching with little kids like this ends because someone's crying. They're learning how to control their emotions way more than they're learning how to do proper technique, although they do get a few pointers here and there. Mostly it's just spending time in the water, as I like to say, and learning not to cry about it being too cold or deep or whatever else. Back to adults. The teenaged Thais in my gym have mostly been training for a lot of years, so they've gone through the emotional bootcamp long before they ever get big enough to really do any damage to anybody. We have one young fighter, Maek, who is often my clinching partner, and he's new enough and young enough that he gets a little emotional sometimes. He's ignored most of the time when he gets like this, or he's teased to put him in check. But he's pretty big, 60 kilos at only 13 years old, but a little butterball so he goes with partners who he outweighs but is shorter than. So, with his weight he can do some damage, but with his size and age he's kind of not so dangerous. In contrast to this, the westerners who come to train in Thailand are mostly pretty big, compared to me and Thais. They can do damage before they have any kind of skill, or moderate skill, and they've done usually no kind of emotional formation by a culture that esteems "jai yen yen," cool heartedness. So, you've got giant babies. Yesterday, my regular sparring partner and I were told to go spar but to go "bao bao," which is Thai for gentle. I've never been instructed to go light before. The reason was that both Carabao (my sparring/clinching partner) and I have fights in a couple of days, so a clashed knee or bruised eye or ego is not on the ticket. I fight often, Carabao doesn't. So, the instruction to go light is more to do with his fight than mine, but interestingly, Kru Nu has credited Carabao's wins in the past with being my clinching partner. In clinching, nobody is ever told to "go light." Just maybe to be more careful with hitting with the inside of your thigh instead of with your kneecap. So, this sudden "go spar, but bao bao," thing got me thinking. I wanted to ask Kru Nu about how he does sparring at his gym. I told Kru Nu that westerners seem to think that sparring in Thailand is all really light. He frowned at me when I said this, like "why?" I laughed. I don't know. But then I used the example of this Indian guy, who I referenced in my other thread. He goes too hard (in my eyes) with everybody. He's not out of control, but his power is enough to do damage. In the example I gave in my last thread, he sparred with an Italian who also goes quite hard. Hard vs hard, and Kru Nu said, "they like that, so I give for them." But I reminded him of a match up that was not a syncing of likes, where one guy didn't like to go hard. A few weeks ago he was sparring with a fellow from Spain. The guy from India is cracking these leg kicks and has good boxing, so he's touching up the guy from Spain and then just bashing his leg. The guy from Spain is not super experienced, but not totally green. He does okay for a round, listens sincerely to my advice to teep with the leg that's getting kicked when I talk to him between rounds, but ultimately lays down and sparring is ended with a "TKO" late into round 2. I thought that was shitty, honestly. I asked Kru Nu (yesterday, not when this happened), why he let the sparring go like that. "Because I want the guy from Spain to understand that in a fight, if someone kicks you hard here (he chops the side of his hand into his leg), you cannot ask them to stop. And you cannot stop. He has to understand." And, as I recall, the next sparring session, Kru Nu put the guy from India with Team (Thai, stadium fighter) and he got worked, which Kru Nu had said was, "so he can understand." Keeping everyone in check. I nodded my head in understanding when I was listening to Kru Nu. It's what I was saying about hard sparring, how it teaches you that you have to figure shit out under duress. You have to know what contact feels like and how to hide your fear, your shame, your pain, but you also have to be able to not get upset yourself. If you're going to hit hard, you have to know you'll be hit hard back. Kru Nu actually pointed at me, poking my shoulder as I sat next to him on the ring for this conversation. "Sometimes Carabao kicks you too hard, I know, I see," he said. Honestly, guys, I know Kru Nu sees everything but I totally assumed he was not clocking the times that Carabao is hitting me hard. "But you don't get angry, I know you are okay. And if you want, you can show him that you kick hard too and then he understand." I know there are times I've lost my cool in sparring and clinching when I feel like I'm being hit too hard. I've been punished for that by Kru Nu before, basically by him telling me to get out of the ring and go kick the bag and he ignores me for the rest of the session. But I've also learned how to control that shit myself. With Carabao it's a bit harder, just because of his size and the relationship we have in the gym, but with Maek I've learned how to take a too-hard strike, hit him back hard as a warning shot, and then use the next shot as an immediate comparison (much lighter), to let him choose which kind of strike he wants. You hit me hard, I hit you hard, but we can always go back to this. And know what? He always tones it back down. No words spoken. No looks. No complaints. No calling "dad" over, and the escalation in emotion is super short. But I wouldn't know how to do that if I'd never been hit too hard in sparring; if I'd never been overwhelmed and wanted to cry. When Kru Nu lets these big Western dudes bash on each other, he's giving them the same lessons that led me to where I am now, but on a much shorter timeline. These two go hard, they go hard together. This guy goes hard with someone who doesn't reciprocate and he doesn't read the temperature, make him go with someone who will touch him right back (Team) and then some to keep him in check. It reminds me of the Cesar Milan approach to reconditioning aggressive dogs: put them in with the pack and a natural order will shake out, pretty quickly. I remember taking our dog Zoa to a dog park in New York and she was growling and nipping at some dogs who came to sniff her. I immediately thought to go control her and Kevin told me to wait, let it sort itself out. Sure enough, within 3 minutes the group had figured itself out and Zoa was playing chase with a dog she'd just been ready to fight with. You can't control everything. And if everything is always controlled for you, you never learn to control yourself.

It's wonderful to have you contributing here! A forum is really shaped by who participates in it, so your enjoyment of it is very much to do with your own part of it as well. So thank you!

I like your point about partners being dishonest with each other when they go too light. I've used the comparison many times that it's like tossing a ball at someone so gingerly that their ability to hit it with a bat is impossible. You have to pitch the f***ing ball, man. If you go too light, it distorts the technique so horridly that you're doing your partner a terrible disservice and they can't properly learn how to respond, block, etc. Interesting to me, also, is how different these two video clips look (to my eyes), despite them both being a "light sparring" example. The first video with Liam Harrison looks far too light to me. Like, you can only learn how to do tricks in that kind of sparring. There's nothing sincere about the basic movements and strikes, although the tricks and sweeps are slow enough that nobody is going to get hurt. Whereas with Pakorn and Sangmanee, the basics are all solid and the playfulness is present without it being "performed." But hey, my eyes.

I liken this to an element of Vipassana Meditation practice. The short version of explaining Vipassana is that, unlike tranquility meditation, where you're trying to get into a kind of mindless trance, Vipassana takes as its object the body (roop) and the mind (nam) and you don't want to change consciousness at all. You want to be focused, concentrated, but not overly focused/concentrated (which would be a trance or tranquility) and not overly distracted (unable to remain in observation of the two objects). So, to use your example of the leg kicks, Roop (the body) is kicked and feels pain, Nam (the mind) observes the pain - neither of those facts are YOU. There is no "I." It is not your leg nor is the sensation your pain. Rather "pain is happening," and because the body has sensors to experience that pain and the mind has sensors to observe the experience of that pain, the reception is also happening. So, rather than that the gods or Fate or the universe has willed the pain, it's not held apart from the one-ness of everything else. "Pain is happening." That's kind of how Ning is so rewarded. The body is being kicked, but it isn't moved by it. The mind is not distracted or deterred by it. The present moment keeps moving, more or less. A river isn't halted by an object thrown into it, even if the water has to then flow around it. It's an incredibly high-valued quality and characteristic of a man. Women, too, but for different reasons, I think. I think for women it's far more not "making something" of anything, rather than being unperturbed by resistance or counter-will in a physical, combat sense. But for SURE Ning in the ring is held high and Ning out of the ring is held high as an attribute. 100%.

One of the reasons I think that the traditional Muay music isn't necessary for Western promotions is that it's not live. Ever. The live version is great because the musicians not only read the action and respond, but also press the action by speeding up or getting louder, etc. It's like an orchestra pit under the stage of a ballet, versus those gymnastics floor routines set to a Michael Jackson mix (or something). They're not the same thing as each other. The use of the traditional music in the West is a nod to the traditions of Muay Thai, which I like. I wasn't allowed to do my Ram Muay at many of my fights in the US, first because they changed it so that only Pros were allowed, then they just cut the bullshit and said there's no time. There have been a handful of times in Thailand that I've been told not to do the Ram Muay (the Wai Kru bowing to your corner bit is ALWAYS allowed) due to televised shows not having time, or to speed it up and do an abridged version. I bitched about not being able to do my Ram Muay in America, quite a lot. I even said "fuck you" and did it anyway more than once. That said, keeping the music and butchering the art doesn't make up for it. People who do videos shadowboxing with a Mongkol on their head, it's got good intentions but what the hell is going on? If you're going to leave out some elements because they're strange to foreign audiences, that's fine. A Ram Muay is hard to watch if you don't know what you're looking at. The traditional music isn't easy on the ears if you aren't accustomed to it. But changing the movements, rule sets, and integrity of the sport - that feels more nefarious to me than the music. If they stopped playing it in Thailand, however (which, THAI FIGHT and other "international shows" have opted to do), I'd feel totally differently. It's a loss from the Thai tradition, it's a nod or not from the West.

I'm a bit inspired by Coach James's recent thread about kids "fighting" (they're sparring, but James is bothered by it and in his mind used the word fighting in his title, which I think is significant), but also because I just was watching some hard sparring at my gym here in Thailand. Here's the set up. In the West, we tend to have this "holier than thou" attitude toward "technical sparring" over "hard sparring," usually accompanied by some kind of credit to how "technical and light" sparring in Thailand is. Okay, sure, I've seen very little sparring among Thais in which they're trying to hurt or knock each other's heads off (I have seen some), whereas I have seen that kind of sparring in Thailand but usually when one or both of the people participating are not-Thai. This said, when Thais spar with shinpads and gloves, it's not "light." The word for sparring in Thai len cherng, literally means to "play techniques." That's the point, and usually the spirit of it. But it's not "light" in the sense that the West tends to characterize it as for their own uses and purposes. It is more "lighthearted," but the actual power of strikes and intention is well over the 60% that I'd qualify as "going light." I was watching two sets of sparring at my gym yesterday. The first couple were both not-Thai. One guy was from India, the other from Italy. The Indian guy always goes too hard, as judged by me for what's appropriate for practice. But he's never told by the coaches to turn it down, which means they see a purpose to how hard he strikes. He also tires easily. And they never put him with someone who is close to a fight, because they know he goes this hard. The Italian guy has way more experience than the Indian guy and, while he got battered pretty good by hard leg kicks and punches in the first round and a half, he took the lead with clinch and knees to "win" the sparring - as if it were a fight, judged by others. The thing is this: the punches and kicks were 100%. The emotional stress and intention was 100%. And the guy who goes too hard, by gassing and ultimately being bettered in the end, his disappointment was 100%. All of those elements are important for learning how to fight. You have to deal with real stress. You have to deal with the consequences of coming out too hard, too early, if you don't have the stamina to keep it going. You have to learn how your power overwhelms someone and then doesn't. And likewise, the Italian guy has to learn that you can't only practice going in and having everything controlled for you. I was pretty impressed by the way he handled it, honestly, and I'm not very generous in things I like about this guy. As an important note, while nobody was told to take their power down, there were shinpads, large gloves, a referee and spectators to break the two men when things were too heated or stagnant, or to stop the time early if needed. It's still being supervised, just not interfered with very much. The next couple were two Thai boys, both about 14-16, same weight as each other but a gulf in experience. One has been training and fighting since he was 8 and surely 100+ fights, the other a handful of years with only 20 or so fights. One loves to go backwards (the experienced one) and gets yelled at for it, the other likes to come forward and strike pretty hard. They both kicked and punched less than 100% power, but not far below that. There were exchanges when the power would go up, but then it would come back down. There was never any "danger" throughout that match, unlike the other one. The biggest difference, however, was the emotional charge. There were moments when the two Thai fighters were amped up a bit, the dominance was real. But they weren't trying to hurt each other. They were trying to dominate each other and shut the other down. It wasn't like that with the non-Thais; there was an element that felt not in control with them, an emotional derailment that felt dangerous... although the Thai men who sat around the ring to watch found it incredibly entertaining. So here's my point: there is a purpose to hard sparring. There is purpose to "technical" sparring. There is an art to both, and I think both are required for the development of a fighter. But what's "light" about Thai sparring is not the power of strikes; it honestly is in the "asshole factor" of emotional energy put into the sparring itself. It's a lack of control that makes hard sparring dangerous or not worthwhile, not the power itself. Stress is an important training tool. Disappointment is a training tool. Gassing out is an important training tool. To only ever advocate for some kind of pantomime sparring robs fighters of those tools. This was Jame's original post discussion that lead to these thoughts:

hahaha, I also thought way more about why it's in a hotel room and why they are dressed (well, only the girl is ever dressed particularly) than the actual sparring element. I also watched pretty closely and it doesn't seem like they make contact very often, and when they do not very hard. If you look, there's almost no impact response from the receiver at all. But, who knows. I'm not there. As someone who witnessed Phetjee Jaa and Mawin do TONS of "show fights" for a couple of years, I can attest to how "real" something looks from a short distance and how utterly choreographed it is in real life. People still share videos of their demos with gushing comments that reveal they believe it to be a real fight, whereas in reality they're barely touching each other. Also, having watched little kids train in the gym with huge gloves and shinguards, versus tiny gloves and no shinguards, I tend to believe that protective gear is far less protective than it's made out to be. Is the issue headgear? That their gloves are small? That they don't have chest protectors? Mouthguards? Chest pads? Why is a gym safer than a hotel or livingroom, other than obvious obstacles like furniture, which they don't seem to be getting close to? Have you seen those videos of the little girl with the crazy ponytail that whips around while she does super-speed boxing combinations? It's super rehearsed, people share it like she's a phenom, and it's all a set pattern but just really, really fast. Is that different just because she's hitting pads or a tree (again, not really touching the tree, obviously) instead of having someone in front of her? It's Wu Shu performance more than it is real sparring or fighting, in my eyes.