Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

Unfortunately, this promotion doesn't feature women regularly and this was a "special event" for HM the Queen's Birthday. That day is "mother's day" in Thailand and is the single biggest day for female nakmuay throughout the year. Duangdaonoi looks amazing in this fight. Without pressure on these big promotions to feature women, it simply won't happen. That pressure is going to have to come from sponsors or viewers demonstrating interest in women's bouts and I really have no idea how that happens here in Thailand. They tend to have women's shows apart from the major men's shows, not really integrated. But PPTV features at least one female bout every week, which is promising as that's on TV.

We were shocked by the decision as well. We watched online and our internet dropped out, so we missed half of the fifth round and thought maybe there'd been something SUPER significant that we missed... but no. It's unfortunate because Thanonchanok is a great fighter, and this was a great fight, and Petpaya deserved to win. It's just a shame.

You won't be disappointed. I've been clinching with an Italian woman who wears a chest guard - maybe "turtle shells" in her bra? - and it's weird. If anyone finds a suitable chest guard it would be nice to have something as functional and comfortable as the Lo-bloo, but every chest guard I've ever witnessed seemed to be designed by a guy who'd only ever seen boobs in pictures, haha.

Every gym I've ever been to you just pay cash. There are some very big gyms that somehow allow for "pre-pay" online, which I don't recommend at all unless you've already been there and know the gym/area/training. Sometimes discountrs are offered, but unless you already know you like the training and area, don't do it. If you're paying in cash you might even consider just paying for a day or a week before committing to a longer stay. Getting stuck somewhere you don't like due to having already paid sucks and it happens to enough people that I've heard about it a bunch. When I first came to Thailand we used Traveler's Checks and ATM. The checks require that you have easy access to a bank where you can cash them, but ATM's are everywhere. There's a 200 Baht transaction fee every time you use one, which can add up, so you'll want to do large withdrawls instead of taking out a few hundred Baht per day or whatever. Your bank might also have foreign transaction fees that are in addition to the fees of these ATM's, so look into that. Also advise your bank that you will be traveling and have some kind of contact number for if there are issues with your card. I've had more than a few friends have difficulties with their bank cards - either not being able to withdraw anything because of security lockdown due to not telling their bank they were traveling, or some kind of limit on what they can withdraw, making it like $30 at a time which is a HUGE waste of money. Not everywhere accepts credit cards - malls and Big C, Lotus, etc do, but most restaurants and shops don't - and there are high foreign transaction fees on those, so skip the credit card unless it's absolutely necessary. Apartments are very easy to find, but there are some difficulties. Some places do not accept westerners because you have to register with Immigration to do so. However, if there are already westerners at your apartment building, they know how to deal with you. Not everyone has contracts to sign, which can be good but it can also bite you. If you're staying for 1 month or so, there's generally no contract. Anything 3 months or more might require some paperwork and deposits and all that, but it's fairly simple. The cost per month rarely includes electricity/water, but per day and week often do. If you end up staying for a longer period of time and sign some papers, you'll need to pay first month's rent plus a deposit that's usually equal to the month's rent. That's for insurance and damages and all that, but generally you get it back when you leave or they take out the last month's charges from it. It's always cheaper to split the bill, but having a roommate can have some serious drawbacks. It's up to you what makes you comfortable, but most apartments are a single room with a bathroom and maybe a balcony. Having a roommate means sharing the bed in most cases.

I re-fell in love with German when I moved there and was forced to really use it. My roommate was great in that he refused to speak English with me, even though he's fluent. So it forced me to really think in German. But the true beauty was reading. The different structure, the separation and long wait for the verb... I love it. Goethe in German is perfection; Goethe in English is a shitty dubbed over movie.

Goddamn. Yes.

I had the same thing happen once, in the same way. This guy was showing me some kind of turn throw and didn't warn me, so I ended up having all my weight on my leg when he buckled it. It felt fine at the time, then later that night I got up to go to the bathroom and there was this audible popping sound and my whole knee went numb/floaty feeling. It was awful. Happily, it didn't last. But periodically I'll get knee pain from clinching or running. It stresses me out because knees are so instrumental in everything. From what I've read the key to prevention is making sure your quads and other supporting muscles are strong. In terms of recovery from an existing injury, I recommend you take glucosamine and condroitin, maybe some fish oil, and just be very careful in not stressing it when trying to work around it. Surely it all depends on what kind of injury it is, but soft tissue is a pain in the ass to heal. My trainer had surgery on his knee and he was told by his physio that if he wore a brace during recovery, he'd always have to wear one. So he went without it to try to fully recover all the peripheral muscles as well. So, I guess that's my "don't just throw a brace on it" argument.

I've fought with a lot of weight differences, some small and some pretty significant. The only time I really notice the difference is that it's harder to move your opponent than it would be at your same size. Not crazy hard, just more like, "wait, why isn't that working?" It will work, it just takes more time or you have to use angles more than you're used to. I remind myself to be more patient with bigger opponents, that what I want to do CAN be done, it's just a bit harder so don't give up on it if it doesn't work right away. But at 57-60 kg a 3 kg difference won't feel like a lot. Don't think about it too much, as in don't worry about it :)

Pi Nu was telling me about that horrible attempted rape in which that man broke into his neighbor's house and murdered her. He said very matter-of-factly that this guy was Burmese, to which his cousin shook his head and said that wasn't so. Same with the murders in Kho Thao, right, scapegoating those Burmese migrant workers.

A beautiful photo of one of Loma's throws in the fight. Great timing and such strong torque:

Thais shouldn't have a problem with it, though you need to buy some packing tape and tape down the velcro closure if you are using velcro gloves. I wrote a whole post on the pros and cons of clinching with or without gloves here. I do most of my clinching with gloves as it gives me more of a handicap, and more fight-realistic limitations.

I've definitely broken down her trips and throws. I don't usually look at much film of opponents, but she's great to learn from. It's pretty elementary in terms of movement, but what makes it special is all the experience she has had, really years in clinch training, which allows her to have perfect timing and set up. Her main throw is in the opposite direction of mine, so it's not natural for me, but when I was in a private with Karuhat he coincidentally taught me her throw, so I'm gradually working it into my clinch, if only to make me well-rounded and more balanced. I'm also working with it so I can be more aware of her when she attempts it.

I had a broken hand for a while and it was pretty painful to clinch, but I did two things to minimize the issue: 1) I clinched with gloves on to keep the wrist more stable and so my hand didn't get banged while I was trying to move it around elbows and arms and stuff; 2) I reversed my dominant side - my right hand/wrist was the problem so I didn't use that hand to grip but instead used that arm to pin the neck or arm or as the "long arm" in the long clinch, gripping with my other side. So all the grip work and strength was coming from the left and my right arm was more of a bar. I know that's not super clear if you aren't very familiar with clinch, but the advice is: figure out what you can do with your wrist and do that. Stuff that you can't do, don't do that. Also, I turned all right crosses into right elbows in both padwork and bagwork. My trainer got used to it really quickly and we stayed that way for a few months until I healed up. Once it was strong enough to punch on I devoted myself to Sifu's bare-fist training method.

Unfortunately, haven't found anyone yet who took video but it sounds like it was a very exciting fight with lots of dumps from Loma. Here's a photo of her with her girlfriend (famous fighter Chommanee) after the fight. It looks like she has a dent in her forehead, which she said is from the ropes, haha. Oh, Loma won on points.

My brother recently posted on his blog about the Underdog Mentality. He has a 7 point list of how to set your mind for success in this scenario (some links to exercises and other articles). Because I'm usually smaller than my opponents, I have a degree of the underdog in me all the time, although I've never actually purposefully played out the "underdog mindset." I reckon it's easy to go the wrong direction when the odds are stacked against you and develop an inferiority complex, so it's very useful to see this laid out for how to take advantage of competition situations where the playing field isn't perfectly even... which is pretty much all competition, really. Advanced Mindset - Underdog Mentality

I have a hard time with these articles, mostly because they seem to take an all-or-nothing moral stance that I just can't chew. I obviously don't condone kids being permanently injured due to negligence, nor do I believe that the concept of consent from children is an easy one. I make the choice to get in the ring and whether or not concussions pose a serious lifetime risk for me, but kids who play sports (all sports) don't have that kind of knowledge so it's meant to be up to adults to make those judgement calls. Here's where I get annoyed though: the issue of children fighting seems to be a really classist one. We know that kids who compete heavily in gymnastics are at risk for bone issues, joint issues and stunted growth. We know that dedicated ballerinas are at higher risk for eating disorders and hip injuries that can keep them from dancing their whole lives or having recurring or permanent damage. But it's seen in these sports or arts as being part of the risk that comes from being so dedicated. Due to the attitudes about children fighting, these very same issues are not taken to be part of one's dedication to an "art." It's just seen as violence, which I'm sorry is bullshit. In the US we basically have subsidized incredibly high rates of concussion and head trauma for adult men, most of whom are from communities that are marginalized by our socio-economic structures, in the world of profession football. Do I find that to be be an ethical problem? Sure, yeah, that's shitty. But it's not a zero-sum game. You don't get rid of kids participating in sport due to risk of injury any more than you do away with adults taking part in activities that are potentially dangerous. Because kids don't have full consciousness of these risks, it's our job to minimize that risk or to take care of their health as best we can without becoming Draconian or overprotective. Ultimately I think it's best to keep it as an ongoing discussion between health professionals, researchers, parents and administrators of the sports/arts, and all of us. I don't think we gain anything by closing the book on the discussion by labeling the result "unethical" or simply as "damaging." These kids get incredible benefits out of their fights as well. It's not either/or.

I hear you, there is such a thing as too much, or counterproductive aggression. But the issue here is about the lack of aggression and seeing how other people seem to have a knack for it, feeling, "what's wrong with me?" for a lack of it. Believing it's something you can learn - something that anyone and everyone who has any of it has learned, rather than an "inborn trait" - is an important thing for us to realize. Women are taught in most cultures to avoid aggression, and men are thought to have it automatically (and so might really question themselves if they don't), so we're all losing out if we think it's just a have it or don't have it issue.

The way Andy explained it was that the owner of Cong Carter is a former student of Andy's and invited him down. So Andy's going to be based there, but still keeping his Hill Camp. Not sure how he'll go between them, but sounds like he'll be at Cong Carter pretty much full-time.

I don't think it's quite right to try to convince yourself that fights are "just sparring." Fights are bigger than sparring for way too many reasons that you can't convince yourself to ignore all of them. It's a strange location, lots of people you don't know, you have to wait your turn, you wear different clothes and gloves and think different thoughts, it interrupts your training schedule, etc... none of those is like sparring. What you should be doing is convincing yourself (because it's true) that you don't have to do anything special; you don't have to perform differently. All the things that are different are things you don't have control over, so put them out of your mind but it's fine to be aware that you're in a different environment. The fight isn't the same as sparring, but what you have to do to have a good fight is exactly the same: relax, focus, flow. I think I wrote something similar in a response to a woman a couple years ago who felt she ought to be less nervous as she got more ring experience, but that wasn't happening.

Oooh, good advice! I'd add that part of "training my brain to think that fighting is not that much different from the sparring I do in training," is making your training as similar to fighting as you can. Not ALL the time, but as much as you can without it interrupting other aspects of your gym sessions. For example, when you sit down to wrap your hands, use that time to visualize having your hands wrapped for a fight; ask some of your training partners or your coach to talk to you between rounds in sparring and actually go stand in the corner as you would go to the corner in a fight. Before you do padwork, visualize your coach as your opponent and picture how seeing him before the event is filling you with confidence or resolve, rather than psyching you out. The more you can bring the emotions and small events that occur before fights into your training, the more comfortable you can get in training how you want to be before fights.

Hey, Muay Thai Dad thanks for asking. That is something I do need to put together. I've let it delay for a few reasons, but mostly now because Andy has moved from Hill Camp down to Hua Hin, and the video was going to be a part of an article on Hill Camp. I'll have to change the focus of the article, but thanks for reminding me! This is the video MTD is talking about:

Yeah, my trainer makes us do padwork in the weight room, which is like a damn sauna. He says it's good because you sweat more (really he just wants to lose 2 kilos), but I'm farang and I sweat SO HARD, all the time. No help needed.

Grading is not something that's used in Thailand gyms, although it's been considered by at least one faction of the Thai government as a way to codify the way Muaythai is taught around the world. That's what happened with Taekwondo and Korea made and continues to make a huge amount of money as a result because you have to get certified by the sanctioning authority. Muay Thai does not yet have that, but they are supposedly looking at it because that could be a LOT of money. That said, quite a few gyms in the west use grading as a way to let their students feel like they're progressing. Because it's designed individually by each school, there's no "I'm a green prajeat" that means anything to anyone else, as oppose to established grading systems like in Taekwondo, Karate and Jiujitsu. So, ultimately the answer is that grading in Muay Thai is a western thing, not a Thai thing. And it's not codified so there's no relationship between the grade you get and the grade someone in the next gym over gets. However, that said, if it means something to you, that's worth something in itself. If it doesn't, then don't sweat it.

I loved that PTT"s take on the tale of personal hardship is, "we're all struggling." In the US it's all this story of how everybody else has it easy and the struggling fighter is the isolated case of a solo salmon swimming upsteam. His battle is against the fear of quitting, rather than a "poor me" attitude that underlies a lot of western narratives, even if a lot of those are truly rags-to-riches, amazing tales.

Yes, I feel that the voiceover adds a lot. For me, reading subtitles makes me feel like I'm missing the visual poetry that's happening in real-time with the images because I have to keep looking down to the words. The young man who did the voiceover and made the video is very close to PTT's age as well, so they've grown up together to some degree. Speaking the words of someone you know well is quite lovely.