Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

This video link goes to a 404 Page Not Found :pinch: Do you have a different link? I'd love to see this.

So much the same for me. It's hard to realize - like, really accept - that I have to keep working on the mental all the time, not just when it's been a hard time and I want something to make me feel better. You would never expect to just do 10 pushups a week before the fight and be stronger. You have to keep doing it, and then do 20, then more, etc. My most recent fight I worked really hard on the mental practice. I'd lost 9 days prior and had no time to make physical changes, so I knew it was all mental. I worked and was very dedicated to the mental training. And while I lost again, I performed really well - same as you describe above. And I feel good, ready to learn and improve. But the physical side is so easy to design for yourself - watch some videos, read some routines off of athletes you like, make up your own circuit. But the mental isn't as intuitive. I think it's actually embarrassing to work on confidence and being kind to yourself - it feels narcissistic or something. I asked my brother in my interview with him, "what is the 'couch to 5-K' of Mental Toughness?" Just the most bare-bones starter program. He talked about breathing and relaxation, recommended some books. If I were to ask myself that same question and have the gall to offer an authoritative answer, I'd say this: start with "act as if." Think about the kind of confident, strong, calm and collected athlete you aspire to be and then act as if you are that athlete. Confidence is an action before it's a feeling, not vice versa. That's something I believe wholesale. Being consistent with training and kind on days when my mind is weak (just as the body can be) is hard, but I've seen how worth it the effort is.

Oh man, Gemma - I know these feelings. Emma and I were talking just before the Queen's Birthday about this "go! Just go!" command and the internal counter of "with what?" I've meditated on this in my own mental training, trying to figure out how to talk to myself in those moments so I can have specifics to get me going (not "go" but "jab" or "more forward and block until I can grab") and then let go and be able to flow. It's so fucking hard. And I have been exactly there with the fighter who is already in your head. Loma is an incredible clincher and because that's my strong point I went nuts losing to her, thinking that the best that I had just wasn't enough for her skill. As if that thought helps me at all. I'm glad you got out of that terrible head space, but despite how awful it is to experience it's also good that it allowed you to have some time with your family and reawaken your drive. Thank you for this honest blog post. Thank God it's not just you, or just me, or just any one of us.

Rare fight footage. Very little video of Erika Kamimura is around. Japan's Erika has been thought of as the best low-weight female Muay Thai fighter in the world until she retired about a year or more ago. She has unusual power for her size. Here she fights Loma Sitajou who is probably a weight class under her at the time. Erika held the 105 lb WPMF title, Loma easily fought at 100 lbs. I've fought and lost to Loma twice and she is very difficult to deal with in the clinch, the best clinch fighter I've faced near my weight, by far. In this fight it's basically her clinch vs. Erika's power combinations. Loma is currently on the Thai National team. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3

I've posted this elsewhere, but adding it here. This is rare fight footage. Very little video of Erika Kamimura is around. Japan's Erika has been thought of as the best low-weight female Muay Thai fighter in the world until she retired about a year or more ago. She has unusual power for her size. Here she fights Loma Sitajou who is probably a weight class under her at the time. Erika held the 105 lb WPMF title, Loma easily fought at 100 lbs. I've fought and lost to Loma twice and she is very difficult to deal with in the clinch, the best clinch fighter I've faced near my weight, by far. In this fight it's basically her clinch vs. Erika's power combinations. Loma is currently on the Thai National team. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3

Did you see "Shadowboxers"? Maybe two words. It follows Rijker as she's training with Freddie Roach and there's this scene before a fight when she's basically punching a swinging bathroom stall door. It's amazing. I think of it frequently before fights.

This was my answer to someone on Reddit who messaged me and asked what I do for mental training. I'm posting it here in case others have had success or experience, or if there are questions people have an would like to raise. This is what I said: Thanks for listening to the whole interview and I’m happy it resonated with you. I’m still working a lot of this out myself and there’s a LOT of trial and error, just like with physical training. It’s also so much easier to slack off of mental training than it is getting physical work in. So whatever routine you figure out for yourself, really set a schedule and stick to it. Break it up into a 5-20 minutes various times throughout the day. Hey, not selling this, it’s expensive. But it was an investment and it worked for me I used this program for myself and found it really helpful: 14 Steps to Mental Toughness. He walks you through some visualizations, using imaginary waves to match rhythms to your breathing for relaxation. Something my brother taught me, also, is that you can practice and teach yourself how to visualize using more mundane things than your training or fight. I found it SO HARD to visualize fighting in a concrete way. So John asked me to describe in strong detail just walking around my apartment. Picking things up, where everything is, how it smells, the lighting, etc. Stuff I see literally every day. That way I see how to visualize with all that detail and can slowly start applying it to being in the ring. A fight is an “event,” but what you’re visualizing isn’t. You’re kind of exploring a space and possibilities – like playing GTA in your brain. Something that really helped me from the tapes was writing down my thoughts before, during and after training, every day. So I’d get to the gym and immediately sit down and just write whatever I was feeling: “tired,” “sleepy,” “unmotivated but ready to work,” “strong,” “I”m going to kill my trainer on the pads,” etc. Then I’d check in and do some more mid-training, then again after everything but before going home. It showed me a few things: 1) My thoughts were really negative a lot of the time, for really no reason. I actually ended up naturally adjusting for this by writing the negative feeling but immediately countering it with “but…” and whatever good could come of it. I wasn’t forcing myself to be positive, I actually just started feeling like “I’m tired but I can focus on being relaxed in my movements” was better at driving me. 2) It showed me that my thoughts change over time in practice. I can come in feeling negative and end up feeling great at the end. Or I can come in rearing to go and then something that happens in training gets me down. Which leads to 3) I have control over how I respond to things. I just have to be aware of it – mindful of what I’m thinking and whether or not I want to keep thinking those things. More recently I’m working on connecting relaxing breaths to active movements. So instead of holding my breath when I’m being hit or blocking or striking, I pay attention to breathe out and in with a rhythm to my movements. The point is to get my heart rate down under pressure, but it’s conditioning myself to do it automatically through movements I’m going to be using without being able to think about breathing. If you breathe while trying to drink water you choke. But you don’t think about “don’t breathe” in order to drink water – you do it automatically. So I’m trying to get my body to do those automatic things to stay relaxed under pressure. As for a schedule, figure out where you need to focus your attention: how you talk to yourself, how you respond under pressure, visualizing, etc. and work out a plan to work on these things several times every day. I visualize when I lie down for a nap or sleep. I write when I’m at the gym. I breathe when I’m actually training.

WPMF 100 lb champion Little Tiger came to Thailand and fought on a Queen's Birthday card yesterday. She fought Peung Siam who recently beat PhetJee Jaa in a very controversial decision. I didn't see the Jee Jaa match, but there was an uproar at ringside when the decision was announced, with 400,000 set bet at stake. Awesome clinching by Peung Siam in this fight. It would be my guess that Little Tiger, despite coming to Thailand many times, does not understand the scoring here, with all her lowkicks. She also lacks in the clinch, which is maybe one reason why Saya Ito's recent development in the clinch could cause a problem for her. Saya has been very verbal about how Little Tiger has been dodging her in Japan.I had heard rumor that Little Tiger was going to fight either number 2 challenger Muangsingjiew or number 3 challenger Faa Chiang Rai, both of who I think would beat her. Saya tweeted something along the lines that she was told if she fought Peung Siam and won she'd be allowed to fight Little Tiger September 9th. This seems odd because Peung Siam isn't even ranked by the WPMF, but that's what it seems like is happening. A Saya Ito championship belt would set up a very odd future fight against Phetjee Jaa, who she trains with here in Pattaya, once Jee Jaa gains a kilo or two. Saya Ito is basically learning clinch from Jee Jaa, her family (and me) when she's here. I'm probably left out of all these matchups, even though I've beaten the two most mentioned challengers and Saya Ito as well. Strange to be so close to it all. In any case, a great exciting fight.

I love this about Muay Thai in Thailand - like fighting fish. Float, float, float, explosion of movement and then float, float float. So beautiful. My first ever teacher, who is Thai, wanted me to be very agile and hop around a lot, mostly because I'm small but also some older styles sometimes have more movement like this (SOME); but I really love this stand-in-your-space aesthetic. It's the baddest-ass pissing contest in the world!

Hey! I saw his picture on the back cover of my Muay Siam weekly ;) CHOK DEE!

Well this certainly reads like a long-winded advertisement for 7 Muay Thai, but I do think his points are at the very least things that westerners are keen to consider when choosing a gym. Cleanliness is something that I've heard mentioned by many people who write to me to ask about gym recommendations, but by and large what they actually mean is comfort, not hygiene. I've never trained in a gym with equipment that isn't thoroughly broken in and some of it falling apart, and I've never had a staph infection - proper personal hygiene is the best bet in that regard, although obviously a camp is a breeding ground for quite a few germs due to the turnover of people from all over the globe visiting and the tropical heat and humidity. I've seen the head honcho (never, ever referred to as Ajarn unless someone is making a joke in the camps I've trained at) stand in the ring with a stick or switch to keep a fighter from backing up or quitting, but it's done almost as a throw-back to the "old ways," not as an every day training method. And I've never once seen it used on anyone over the age of maybe 10 years old. Having someone overseeing the training is obviously not a bad thing, but it's a useless thing if the people training don't have any recognizable goals. As western-friendly as some gyms can be, I have yet to meet an ex-fighter, now trainer who doesn't think it's a little baffling that westerners come and train without any desire or intention to fight. "Just for fit," they say, meaning they do understand the goal, but they then understand that correcting the same mistakes until the trainer is blue in the face because the "just for fit" guy training doesn't actually care to make the adjustments - well, the trainer is bound to give up trying. He'll just hold the pads and in my experience the relationship between these guys and the trainers end up being pretty good anyway. They do have a place in the gym. But also from my experience, being able to go do rounds on the bag by yourself without a trainer holding your hand is not only standard, but is appreciated by trainers who don't have to keep after you (with a damn stick) to make sure you do the work that's required of you to be a fighter. Being left on your own isn't necessarily neglect in a gym - I've lived and felt that difference a million times. It's good that 7 Muay Thai has regulations about sleep times and that alcohol isn't allowed on the premises, but I will also say that I have met some truly incredible trainers who are drunks. It's a pain in the ass for the owner, yes, who has to pay these guys and get them to come to work on time. But as someone learning from them there is still a lot to be gained. Sober is better, but a heavy drinker is not uncommon even at very successful camps. Keeping alcohol away from the Nak Muay is grand - these guys who come here and party at night and barely make training in the afternoon are wasting their own time, but seeking out a gym that regulates this FOR YOU is only necessary if it's a problem FOR YOU. Which, for young men on the quest for "authentic" Muay Thai experiences might be more common. So, I guess my takeaway is that this advice is meaningful for guys who want a kind of regimented, hand-held training experience that performs some aspects of traditionalism and yet still has a "comfort" level of western-ness. But there are hundreds of very good gyms to choose from that will provide great training and great experiences that aren't at all like what's described here.

Shadowing is good, but you should add wall or uppercut bag drills as well. That's so you can feel your kick connecting, which you simply can't in shadow because it never connects to anything. You can kick a wall if you don't have anything else - just do that really slowly and controlled. But you want to feel your shin connecting all at once and put the whole movement together. That will teach you how to get the angle on the kick from start to finish. You can also kick over a short chair or Yoga ball or something, which kind of creates the rainbow arc on kicks. Here's video of using the wall kicks. I do this a few times every day before shadow to kind of "calibrate" the angle on my kick so I don't lean back too much. It gets me "pushing" into the kick.

I've done some boxing training and it has always been beneficial for me. There are some major differences between western boxing and Muay Thai, but it's mainly in hip position and the boxer's "crouch" versus the Muay Thai "c" shape. You can't check kicks with your legs from a full-boxer position and you can't sit down in your punches the same way boxers do when you're in a Muay Thai stance. But as long as you can figure out how to switch between them for what you're working on, it should all be very good.

Being hesitant about kicking leads to A) leaning back too much and B) not turning over on the kick; neither of which is a mortal sin but it creates an upward angle that leads to knee-to-knee collisions on blocks and is easier to end up kicking into an elbow instead of getting a shin into the body or against a proper block. You won't hurt your partner this way, but you will hurt yourself. I guess the knee-to-knee thing hurts both of you. Slow your roll enough to land knees deliberately, both so you don't go too hard, but also so you don't knee people in the junk (male and female) when you go for straight shots. I fucking hate this.

Only a clip, but featuring Daoprasuk who for many years was considered the best female fighter in Thailand. Daoprasuk Sakchaichot Vs Jankrajang pralasarkam found this summation: The main event was an all Thai affair and had the added attraction of 120,000 baht up for grabs for the winner from a bet between the two camps. Daoprasuk started the fight the more aggressive of the two, coming forward, looking to take the fight into the clinch. Jantgrajang looks to keep the fight on the outside and score with stylish roundkicks. Jantgrajang continues scoring well in round 2.Towards the end of the round Daoprasuk gets her in the clinch and locks her arms around Jantgrajang’swaist, Daoprasuk unleashes a big barrage of knees as Jantgrajang struggles to get out of her grip. Jantranjang manages to comeback with a few knees of her own only for Daoprasuk to spin her off balance to the canvas. Daoprasuk switched tactics in round 3 letting Jantgrajang bring the fight to her. Jantrajang now forced to come forward couldn’t find the range to land with her kicks and Daoprasuk pun-ished her with fast counter kicks. Jantgrajang was forced to push forward again in the final round, but Daoprasuk was too sharp, picking her off with kicks and then landing with another big bar-rage in the clinch. Daoprasuk winner on points.

A very young Iman Barlow vs Nongne Sitkruadd, only a clip, of the S1 fight: found this summation: Aman Jitti gym vs Nongnee Sitkruu-at Aman from England started the fight very determined, coming forward and taking the fight to Nongnee. Nongnee kept a very tight defence though and showed good technique. Aman started to catch the kicks of Nongnee well and land with long knees. Aman kept pushing forward in round 2 punching well. Nongnee though was fighting a technical fight, moving well and scoring with stylish kicks. Every time Aman caught one of her kicks now, she would come in close and lock her arms around Aman’s neck and then drive in a long knee. Aman kept pushing forward for the rest of the fight but Nongnee kept up her stylish game plan and moved around the ring well, picking Aman off when she saw an opening. Nongnee Sitkruu-at winner on points.

Ran into this action packed Denise Mellor (Castle) vs Funna Groundrat Queen's Birthday fight from 2008 - decision went to Funna (not shown in video)

There are only a few heavy ropes at my current gym, most are speed ropes. I don't want to come off sounding like an ass, but well, the speed rope is for speed, so I can see boxers and their footwork being better fitted to that approach. The heavy rope is more of a workout and for endurance. I like both ropes and use both ropes, but that frickin' heavy rope makes me want to kill someone when it hits my toes.

Yes, I've rubbed the skin off of my shins before and that is very painful. Filling a glass bottle with hot water and rolling it instead of using a towel can solve this. You can use the bottle to press the bump as well. There are also heat patches you can buy at pharmacies that are for back pain and period cramps. They're sticky on one side so you can adhere them to your shirt or whatever and they're supposed to stay hot for 10 hours or so. (Not Tiger Balm, not Icy Hot; there's one called Salon-Pas that's good - they make them very small as hand warmers for skiers, too.) Sometimes I'll stick one on my shin overnight and let the heat work on it for hours that way. If you have sensitive skin you might want to wrap plastic wrap around your shin and put the patch on over that, so it's not sticking directly to your skin. Let me know how it goes. I'll keep trying to help!

I'm posting my article on the pros and cons of training clinch barehanded (the Thai way) or with gloves (the way we fight), creating a space for longer form conversation of our experiences. I found benefits to both, but lately I've turned to gloves for reasons outlined in the article. Should You Train Clinch With Gloves or Barehanded?

I could not find this song on Youtube because I didn't know what it was called, but we just found it on a mix-CD we bought at a gas station on our last fight trip. I love this song. The video cracks me up, every damn time (mostly the nose bleed at the beginning) but it's so catchy I'd make it my "walkout song" in a minute. It's pretty much about this guy taking his girlfriend home and her "bouncing" and dancing in front of the stage gets all the older, higher-status men of this dude's family to blush and be... excited. It's basically "Super Freak" for Isaan, hahahaha.

An excellent interview of Anne Lieberman who conducted her Fulbright research in Thailand, in part, interviewing western female fighters, including myself (back on my first visit in 2010). She's a great voice for female fighting and is a Muay Thai fighter in the NYC area now. One of the first people to inspire me to research and study Muay Thai and not just live it. https://www.themuse.com/…/fight-like-a-girl-the-role-of-wom… an excerpt: "...But there's another layer to training as a woman in Thailand—one that is more controversial—and that's about the sexual politics at play, especially between male trainers and female fighters. Few farang female fighters come and live in Thailand for extended periods of time. I had the opportunity to interview several of them, as I felt that their experience was integral to how female fighters are viewed in Thailand and how they constantly negotiate their place in a male-dominated sport. Many of them expressed that they felt some kind of sexual pressure from their trainers. The intensity varied: One woman I interviewed was almost raped, another was verbally harassed and made uncomfortable by a trainer's advances; several ended up dating their trainers. In some cases, if a woman wouldn't sleep with her trainer, this affected the kind of training she received. This is not unique to Thailand, though—these kinds of sexual dynamics take place everywhere. (The story of the woman raped by her Jiu-Jitsu instructors in Maryland is a prime example of this.) But what was unique to Thailand is that there seemed to be this perception that farang women were promiscuous partiers and that white women would (and wanted to) sleep with almost anyone. This is one of the many ways the fraught relationship between tourism and sex and sexuality in Thailand bubbles over into the Muay Thai world..."

It's kind of hard to say because I haven't personally experienced many Thai girls or women at the gyms I train at. The women I fight all seem to come from gyms where there are small "pockets" of female fighters. For example, I'm the ONLY woman at one of my gyms and then at the other gym with Phetjee Jaa I'm one of two. There aren't many gyms that I've ever seen where there's only ONE Thai female fighter; it seems there are gyms that train women and gyms that don't. It's hard to know how it's all being conducted at whatever gym you saw advertised on Frances' page. I know quite a few Thai female fighters who come from Buriram, so they have a "feeder system" for girls who grow up in the gyms there and then have satellite gyms for Bangkok fights and that kind of thing. But I can't say how many gyms have female fighters, how many female fighters are in the gyms, how many keep fighting as careers, or how many move to bigger gyms.

This is the original post from 2010. Putting the content here because it is awesome. Her blog The Glowing Edge 9 Reasons to Start Boxing After 40 By Lisa Creech Bledsoe in Boxing, Over 40 1. Street credThink about the difference between saying, “Yeah, I play a little basketball,” versus “The stitches don’t bother me. I have another fight next month; you should come.” C’mon, it’s just cool. And when was the last time you had legitimate Cool Points, when you downloaded the Zippo lighter app to your iPhone? Puh-leeze. 2. Business smartsIf there is one thing you must do to thrive in the ring, it’s develop the ability to think clearly under massive pressure. That translates really nicely to the business world. Mergers and acquisition? Hostile takeovers? High finance? Forty-seven third graders? Bring it. 3. Get your mind off of workForget business smarts, if you’ve been racing your career motorcycle this long, you might want to ease up on that throttle and get off the bike now and then. It feels great to unsuit and pound the crap out of something. And taking a few good hits will definitely clear out the last of your desire to work 24/7, I promise. 4. Increase your bone densityOk, you’re over 40 and it’s time to lay off the loaded potato skins at T.G.I. Friday’s and get under that bench press bar. Your bones aren’t going to get stronger unless you bring them some game, and weightlifting — a boxer’s primary tool for building muscle — is just the way to do it. 5. Muscle is sexyAll that weightlifting and other training is going to pay off in terms of the way your body looks, feels, and delivers. You’ll like what you see in the mirror, and so will whoever’s looking at you when you step out of the shower. Hubba hubba. 6. Me timeIt wasn’t so long ago that you couldn’t take your eyes off the kids for a second or they’d eat all the buds of the neighbor’s peonies and you’d be on the phone with Poison Control. These days, they’re a little older and you only have to worry about paying the extra car insurance, who they’re dating, whether they’re texting and driving, and… whoops, sorry about that. My point was going to be that you can get away some nights and have “me time” without them. Boxing fits the bill. 7. Mentor someoneOk, if you just don’t get enough with the kids, you’ll find some at the gym. They will be faster and have a higher punch count and they will bring a serious press to you in the ring, but you’ll be able to outlast and out think them. And you have the maturity to see a much bigger picture than they do. Why not be a good influence and also kick their butts (in the later rounds) too? Now that’s what I call a satisfying mentoring relationship. 8. Get out of your comfort zoneLet’s face it, you’ve been trying to find a place of comfort and ease for years. Stop that, it’s not good for you. Get off your butt and out of your rut and learn something new. Growing means risks, and boxing has just the right balance of risk and safety to give you a jolt and still send you home in one piece. Mostly one piece. 9. Eat betterBelieve me, you are not going to work hard enough to go a few rounds and then sabotage yourself with crap eating. If you take to boxing, you’re going to want to support it every way you can, and that will spur you to make positive changes to the way you fuel your body. You’re sick of sports bar food anyway. This is gonna be purely delicious. There’s never been a better time than now. - See more at: http://www.theglowingedge.com/9-reasons-to-start-boxing-after-40/#sthash.pmKrBm92.dpuf

I thought I'd start a thread here about sak yant. I've had three significant sak yant sessions, and I consider sak yant a spiritual path for me. As such I do get lots of questions online, so maybe it would be good to have an evolving conversation. So here are a few videos and links. Hopefully others can add their experiences or questions here too. An note about "meanings". A lot of the sak yant meanings are fairly similar, bestowing luck, strength, fortune, though yants are sometimes gendered, and by custom are found among certain kinds walks of life. For instance I've heard that my two backward facing Tigers are favored among members of the police or military. I am by NO means an expert in this, but in many ways looking for the "meaning" is the wrong kind of question. Yants are more like devices, spiritual devices, and the better question may be "What do they do?" Firstly: These are all of my blog posts on Sak Yant My First Sak Yant - Elbow (June, 2013) and the blog post on the experience. My Second Sak Yant Sangwan Rahu (April, 2014) and the blog post on the experience My Third Sak Yant Session: Backwards Facing Tigers and Takroh (April, 2015) and the blog post on the experience This post isn't about me and my sak yants though, but an invitation to discussion and building awareness. As I've stated before, sak yant are not "Muay Thai tattoos", but rather part of a much, much wider Thai Buddhist spiritual syncretic practice of which we as westerners don't really get much more than a glimpse, and don't have easy references to make sense of them. If you'd like to read up on what is unique about modern Thai Buddhism this book is really good: The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk - it isn't focused on sak yant in particular, but explains the nature of Thai Buddhism that brings together Buddhism, Brahmanism, and animism and allows these grounded, real world focus practices to flourish. Arjan Pi Bangkating is someone I do consider my spiritual teacher. All my sak yant are from him. He tattoos in Chiang Mai, Rangsit (outside of Bangkok) and Taiwan, and sometimes Singapore. But I did attend also my friend Robyn getting her sak yant in Bangkok from the reputable Arjanneng OnNut, so I have a little cross-reference to other practices, but not much.