[Beginner sparring]

 

Actually, we had a bit of an altercation yesterday, and it has become clear that she is beyond help. I should add that she has been having the same problems with everyone in the gym and constantly complains no matter what. When the trainers and Master Toddy try to tell her how to adjust things, she is incredibly rude and talks back to them, saying that she is right and telling them what her trainer at home says, which, as you can imagine, does not go down well. It's all quite embarrassing. She's told the trainers that they aren't holding pads properly, too. This is a complete beginner, here.

We were sparring and to be fair, she was going very light, as was I. She doesn't block punches at all, so I was touching her only very lightly with my gloves to let her know that she was open, but she didn't like that. We got maybe two rounds in before she said 'can you go light? because you asked me to go light' I'd usually be very polite and reasonable, but I was already doing basically nothing there was simply no way I could have gone any lighter unless I shadowboxed in front of her, so I told her that. Frankly, we're all fed up of her shit, so it's hard to be patient with her. We started adding kicks and she got really angry any time I landed any on her, even though we were both still going super light. She stopped again to complain, and I started to wonder what the fuck was going on. This is the first time I've ever called anyone out in the gym. I told her that if she didn't want me to touch her at all, she ought to block, and that I was trying to help her learn how to do that. I also mentioned that she was getting annoyed because she wasn't 'winning' and that she does nothing but complain in every single training session. She said 'actually you are the one who is complaining', and I had no response, because none of this made sense. I just carried on sparring because I didn't want to waste time, but at this point, landing anything on her was too much for her to handle, so she stopped and said 'I'm done here, I'm going on the bag'. One of the trainers waved her off and said 'OK, then go!' He couldn't be bothered to deal with her, because she's like this all the time. 

Shortly after this, she was kicking the bag when Master Toddy approached her and said something like 'that's good, much better. Now, to take it up to the next level, you can start turning your hip over a bit more to get more power'. She screwed up her face and said 'but my trainer at home doesn't tell me to do that', refusing to do it. Well, he WENT OFF at her. This is the same attitude he's had from her the whole time he's been here. He said (because she is studying teaching) 'if you had a student who kept telling you that you were wrong and didn't want to do anything you told them and fought you back all the time, would you still teach them? Would you?' She said 'yes'. SERIOUSLY, SHE WAS STILL TALKING BACK AT THIS POINT. His response was, 'I can't help you. Go your own way', and off he went. 

We've had some frustrating people come through here at times, but she is undoubtedly the worst. She's here for another week before she goes to another gym for a couple of months. Should be interesting! I don't understand why anyone would pay to be taught at a gym and then not actually want to learn anything.

Sylvie wrote a post about why people sometimes think their opponent is going harder than they are:

 Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control – Neurology and Muay Thai

 

one of the most indicative traits of abusive people and self-centeredness is to blame other people. Might have a psycho in your gym, beware.

['Lucia Rijker's Greatest Hits' - a 1-hour video of all her best fights.]

Really enjoyed this interview, 

Favorite part:

MMAyou.com: Why are Dutch fighters so good at kickboxing?

Rijker: (laughs) Why are Dutch fighters so good at kickboxing? My philosophy is one; they have the best trainers. Two; they're so down to earth that the moment they are a champion or a legend, they are still normal people like you or me. They don't become celebrities, they don't become stars. They don't let the money and the fame get to their heads.

There was one fighter; Semmy Schilts, he won the K-1 and I hosted "It's Showtime!" which was part of the K-1 in the Netherlands last month. he was in the corner of one of his fighters. And it wasn't necessarily his fighter, it was his trainer's fighters so he right away rolls up his sleeves. He's the type of guy that goes to work the weekend after his fight and does what needs to be done. 

They don't seem to live off the high of the winning. They go back to the gym and either they teach their classes or they go back to their job, if they have a part-time job, and go to work.

I think the humbleness helps a fighter to stay real. They also train in a group with recreational people, a competition team, but they don't segregate themselves from the normal people. I think that's the number one thing. When I go to a press conference in the Netherlands, I meet all the legends like normal people and we just talk normal things. There's no bodyguards, there's no entourage, there's none of that rock star image that can come sometimes with certain champions that doesn't come with the Dutch people, because our mentality is very down to earth and very, they call it realistic. 

I'm not sure if it's realistic because people who become champions really work really hard at it but there's a part of our culture that says so what?"

 

Here's the documentary, might take a while to load because its a chinese hosting service: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDMxMTAxNDA4.html

 

Here's her talking about another bathroom incident: "When I was scheduled to fight for a main event for one million dollars in Las Vegas the owner of the promoter' gym suggested I would use the bathroom for my dressing room. A man would not have been treated like this." http://www.doghouseboxing.com/Ken/Hissner030510.htm

[Lawrence Kenshin on Lucia Rijker's kickboxing match with a man, Somchai Jaidee]

I haven't watched the whole fight in a while, but I didn't see a lot of clinch in that fight, especially as Lawrence presented it. But I do think that in the few clinch clips I saw it was fair to say that Somchai was more skilled in clinch, likely more trained in clinch in the traditional Thai way. He looks Thai, and his gym "Lumpini" in NZ was probably populated with Thais to some degree. Understanding off-balances can make you appear very strong. It's probably too much to say that those clips were showing some definitive muscle mass strength difference. (Btw, did anyone else think that Lucia probably had a weight advantage here?)

Drawing from our own experiences in Thailand, we have Sylvie and Phetjee Jaa clinching in training. Sylvie has 8 kilos on her now, and has had a year of twice a day clinch training in the Thai style, and is probably physically the strongest female Muay Thai fighter in the world at her weight. Sylvie definitively a clinch fighter and wins almost all her fights against Thai fighters in the clinch, even when they have a size advantage. Jee Jaa was raised basically as a boy since she was 7 in term of training in the clinch (very, very rare) and is able to hold her own against Sylvie, and even out perform her, despite both a weight and a strength difference. The knowledge gap is huge, and the physical differences between Sylvie and Jee Jaa are much more pronounced than those between Somchai and Lucia.

On your second point, this is really big. Yes, there are physiological differences, across the board, by average, but built on top of these are very strong magnifying factors exactly as you describe. Talent pool and training, not to mention ideological expectation (athletics are mental), which make those physical difference appear enormous. Your example of clinch here is a really interesting one. Even if Lucia was trained in Thailand it is very unlikely that she would have had the training in clinch that the average "Somchai" would. And even if a Somchai did have a small physical advantage in clinch, what really would make the biggest difference would be the training and technique.

Generally I resist essentialist arguments about gender performance differences, especially when they are grounded in averages. Yes, there may be on average built in advantages between genders, but the art of performance is learning how to turn an opponent's advantage into a disadvantage, and discovering ways to enhance your own qualities. For women I think there are much bigger hurdles to overcome than physiological ones.

Hey Kevin, I presented the whole fight. 

Odd, Nopadon of My Muay Thai shared the opposite sentiment as you in terms of Thai / Name - "She eventually went on to amass a 35-0 (25KO) record. Her only defeat came from a 2nd round KO by Somchai Jaidee of New Zealand. A little side note, I couldn’t find any info on this fighter Somchai Jaidee. I honestly think it’s a kiwi fighter who adopted a Thai name. (It means Good Natured Somchai… Somchai being the most commons men’s name) If you watch the vid, firstly he doesn’t look Thai, secondly he doesn’t move like a Nak Muay. He hops around like a nervous amateur. Anyway just needed to get that off my chest." http://www.mymuaythai.com/archives/lucia-rijker/

 

I think a few of the NZ people that shared the vid seemed to know Somchai, I'll approach them to find out a bit more. 

 

I'll hold that I see a definitive strength & power difference. 

 

Also, I remember reading about Sylvie & Phet Jee Jaa via Sylvie's posts, and their dynamic, but also recall a few months back  (maybe more than a few months) of Sylvie posting that she could now nullify PJJ with her size due to her new knowledge / training? 

 

Maybe I remembered wrong. Regardless, would love to hear more about the current dynamic. 

 

 

[Lawrence Kenshin on Lucia Rijker's kickboxing match with a man, Somchai Jaidee]

https://youtu.be/O06JQiVDvwc

I like Kenshin, and I think this video is worth watching -- in fact, better for you to watch it before reading my thoughts. I have a quibble, though. I thought I'd post about it here, since he frequents this forum and might join in.

I was a bit put off when he started explaining why Somchai was winning exchanges, especially in the clinch. Judging by his name, Somchai trained muay thai, and therefore clinch work. I don't know much about Rijker beyond that sports science episode, but most kickboxers literally don't know how to clinch at all -- or know the inactive clinch of a boxer. Maybe one factor was that only one of them knew what they were doing in the clinch, and now only a difference in strength?

I do think there are some physical differences between women and men, but I think we're often too eager to attribute gaps in athletic performance to biology. And I don't mean only in this specific case. When people are explaining how much stronger/faster men are than women, much of their evidence has very little explanatory power.

To take an example. Let's say we compare the top marathon times for men and for women. The men's times are substantially faster: the fifteenth fastest man finished about 6 minutes faster than the first fastest woman, and about 22 minutes faster than the fifteenth fastest woman. That's a pretty big gap.

But nothing here helps us understand which factors had the greatest influence on the result. For instance:

1. Inherent biological differences between women and men of the same height/weight (maybe hip shape, for instance)
2. Biological difference across populations (men are taller on average, although a given man is not necessarily taller than a given woman)
3. Differences in talent pool (there are almost certainly many more men than women who run marathons. The top 15 out of a pool of 5 million are going to be faster than the top 15 out of a pool of 500 thousand. You get the same effect when you look at the number of olympic medals held by large nations vs small nations.)
4. Differences in training (for various social reasons, it might be that one group trains with greater frequency or higher quality on average)

There's absolutely no reason to think that factors 1 and 2 are having a greater effect than 3 and 4. And yet all I hear about, over and over, all day, is how women can't expect to beat men in fights because of biology. Maybe there are some other things going on, too.

Hi :), 

 

Lucia started her martial arts journey as a Judoka. Her lineage was Vos Gym, which branches from Jan Plas (Meijiro). This means their style is Dutch Muay Thai, and the origins of that style is essentially from "Japanese Muay Thai." Her contemporaries training at the gym includes people like Ernesto Hoost and Ivan Hyppolyte, and other Dutch Muay Thai / Kickboxing pioneers.  

 

Rijker also either has a ISKA or WKA Muay Thai belt I believe, and also stated that she has trained the style of Muay Thai since she started, with clinch and with knees. 

 

Rijker sparred with the best in the world (Dutch MT/KB), because of her lineages. This doesn't mean she is a great clincher, rather, I'm just saying that she's trained clinch. 

 

Yes - talent pool different, but Jaidee is unheard of relative to Rijker, who some will say is arguably the greatest female combat sports fighter of all time. 

 

Off what I saw, I believe that Rijker was technically superior, but she did not have enough base and power relative to Somchai. In my opinion, while Somchai displayed technique, what he did to win was essentially power through everything. 

[Is Western Boxing Good For Muay Thai?]

Thanks everyone for replies!!

 

My boxing coach don't know anything about muay thai but he was a great boxing champ, soo technichal... he saw Giorgio Petrosyan fighting and told that when he wants to do a boxing action he becomes a perfect boxer, his elbows protect his body, legs are bent (or flexed, I don't know the right term lol) and he moves like a boxer... of course in k1/kickboxing you don't get kneed or elbowed as much as in Muay Thai but do you think he's right? So if you want to do a boxing action you have to change your style temporarily?

you don't need to change it, it's just that you get advantages and disadvantages when you change it. 

The stance to punch combinations optimally is different from the stance to punch optimally combined with kicks and defending kicks. 

 

Petrosyan is a bit different as he's a southpaw so he can get away with a longer stance more so than someone who stands orthodox. 

 

Masato is another great example, soundedly outboxed Buakaw in their second fight, but also ate a lot of low kicks. It's often a trade off that some are willing to take. 

[MTG: Can You Learn Muay Thai From Youtube?]

I might be a little biased here  :wink: 

But put it this way. Can you learn from watching sparring in a gym or at a fight? Yes, says the great Kenny Weldon. 

Essentially, what coaches and athletes do is watch footage and learn from the footage and then absorb in what they like. 

So if the internet is showcasing these, why not? What differentiates say, Saenchai's seminar from you attending the seminar? That you don't actually do it and don't actually get feedback. 

So, then it's up to you to actually do it and find a way to get feedback. 

My favorite aspect to what I do is how many people have found the breakdowns to be helpful, or how it complimented their training. 

Not everyone can be "self-learners" though, but if someone has the will, it can be done. 

Like Gavin said, Jon Jones learned MT first from Duke Roufus DVD. 

[10 Seconds of Courage: Life Lessons from a Fighter | Nadine Champion | TEDxSydney]

Sylvie sent this to me a few weeks back, it's a tear jerker! 

[Struggle with Emotional Lows and Co-dependency - How to Build Self-confidence]

The greatest coaches don't force you to change your style - they adapt what they teach you to fit your style and strengths. 

The greatest coaches do not break your confidence down, they find ways to build your confidence up. 

At the end of the day, we all seek some form of validation, but it's important to pick who to seek from. 

[Losing Streak - Why Am I Fighting? Struggling With Self-Esteem]

Hey S / "Fish" :) 

See all this support and wisdom? Carry on with its strength and you'll break through that plateau. 

[Ballet and muay thai]

If I remember correctly, Ali had a background in dancing. 

http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-485250.html- Marquez did ballet training before his infamous knockout of Pacquiao. 

An olympian I met at wild card said he believes his success was from ballet when he was a kid. 

Enough evidence of usefulness? :)

Also, Expert Boxing's Johny Nguyen swears by dancing as a compliment to boxing -- his brother is a dancer. 

[Is Western Boxing Good For Muay Thai?]

The ranges and timing for hands change when used in the two arts! 

Knowing when you're vulnerable to being kicked is an important step to learning how to punch in kb/mt. Even the great Sagat was often disrupted when he goes into punching mode -- of course though, he was facing some of the greatest kickers in history. 

[Rory Macdonald Vs Robbie Lawler - Elbows And Range]

Rory was trying to time Lawler as he comes in with the elbow because Lawler's very good in the pocket, going in and out. 
 

In southpaw vs. orthodox engagements shifting rear elbow has been used to great effect. Rory modelled many of his elbows off them, and it found a few of its mark, but it was hard to find the timing on Lawler. 

Here's the "quickfire" highlight http://streamable.com/ypdv