Micc

I changed to Twins Specials 12oz gloves since January 2016 and it's a world of difference for me. They fit nicely - a bit smug in the beginning, but now they're perfect. I bought them cheap in Thailand, in Poland they cost 3x the prize, so it feels good to have made such a good bargain while I was traveling ;) They start to stink already, though. :( I think it's the weather we have here, it's just beginning to get sunny and warm-ish.

I had one of these small pockets in some of my fitness trousers, they're for your key. I'm not sure how big the pocket in your shorts is, but that's a fight clothes brand, right? So I'd try if the mouthguard fits into it. Usually the pockets are so you can run without having to hold you door key in your hand, but you came up with cool ideas. An amulet- why not? :)

My trip was also this short and I enjoyed it anyway. I think you and I are pretty similar when it comes to level and expectations for the travel. I chose a tourist-oriented gym in Phuket and enjoyed it. They were teaching me bits of technique on pads and light sparring in every training, but it was much less than I expected. I chose to do a private class instead of the afternoon training during my second week there and this is where I learned the most. It was not an easy decision to make, but I was lucky and it all played out well for me. I wanted to get a taste of "exotic island", but in the end I only went once to the beach, once to a spa and 3 times to the seashore. Sooo...not too much exotic going on here. There is usually no training on Sunday, so you might plan to go somewhere and sightsee on that day.

I could second everything everyone said above. I started out as the only girl in the gym and it was like that on the most part. Sometimes there would pop up a girl for 2 or 3 months, just to dissappear again. I only met a few girls at interclubs and training camps that had a good technical level and were better than I am. But then again, I am much heavier than them, so it was not like we were equal. I know of two clubs around where I live, where there are really good girls, but it's too far for me to go there. My "perfect" partner is a guy who's around 15kg lighter than me and has the same experience as I do, but is challenging me at what I'm bad at, and I'm challenging him at what he's bad at. Yeah, I actually have a guy like that in my gym! :) Apart from that perfect description, I like to spar with guys who are my height or a few cm shorter, and between 10-20kg lighter than me. Their punches still hurt, but I can try and deal with it. As for girls, I don't really have much experience with training on an everyday basis with girls. I am the more experienced and bigger one usually. So I end up teaching them and trying to work out at what I can in that situation. I feel I'm not really welcoming and warm towards the new girls, but they usually come in pairs or groups anyways, so they're not interested in making friends with the odd one out - me. And yeah, they chat a LOT. I hope training with me has helped the other guys to get used to training with girls, so now that we have a lot of girls they can adjust to them better (it's a 50/50 ratio I'd say). From my experience, there is a always one restless-type guy, who will get annoyed at having to slow down or soften down for a beginner girl or a guy. I feel he has a right to an attitude like that, too, because it's his time he pulls out of his schedule to spend and train hard at the gym...can't really judge that. So I think it's best if you can do most of your training with someone on the same level of experience and some percent of it with someone weaker or beginnerish to get a look at things from that perspective. I have days when I want to go as hard as I possibly can, and then I'm annoyed at people struggling to hold pads for simple jabs or middle kicks. There are some days though, when I'm the one struggling ;) Basically, I prefer training with guys, but if there were girls my size and at my level at my gym, I'd like to try training with them and see what kind of emotions we will have to deal with. :)

I'd advise you to just as Maiko said - go find a good therapist and let him apply kinesiology taping. It basically "gives" you additional tendons in the form of the tape. It will help to speed up the healing process, especially if the ankle is swollen, s/he can make you a drainage-kind taping before making it a stability one. So, check it out for sure!! Flora, I'm sorry to hear about your broken finger. To still work out the arm muscles you might add sth like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJA_K4n-5bA (yeah it looks a bit silly, but hits the muscles hard! :D) Take a look at 5:05 min - we do that in training with weights (0,5kg or 1kg or more if you can handle :D) and hold up the arms for a minute or a few minutes. You can start out holding a dumbbell 0,5kg and if it gets to hard let go of the weight and just hold up the arms. Without letting go! It's a killer! :D

I kinda like the look, interesting if the padding is really thicker to block kicks. Looking forward to someone reviewing them :) I think it's a "special edition" just as Kevin said :)

I hope they're not bad people, either. It just seems that the "big stars" of Lion Fight are not as enthusiastic about the promotion itself, so for me that's just the polite way of not talking about the bad stuff and just waiting things out while looking for better opportunities financially speaking. It would be great if the promotion could make ends meet for themselves as well as for the fighters. Jorina Baars, also a Lion Fight Champ speaks practically nothing about Lion Fight, but speaks a lot about needing sponsors, fights and catching all oportunities that come her way besides Lion Fight... I mean, I don't want to sound judgemental, beause I have no right to do so. Since I first heard about Lion Fight my opinion was not entirely "yay, Muay Thai show", rather "I have a weird feeling about it". Maybe it's just not my cup of tea, but surely, I wouldn't have heard about Tiffany or Jorina Baars if they wouldn't be Champs there ;) I hope they get everything together nicely!

no way! I hope she will make it into a promotion that PAYS her!! Lion Fight doesn't seem to care about the fighters...

I'll speak from my (small) experience. Each brand has their own sizing, and the sizes are usually smaller than you would expect. Fairtex has the most "western" sizes, so they are always bigger (Fairtex M would be another brands' L most likely). Prices differ A LOT. I went to Action Zone in Bangkok, it's the cheapest place and the prices were from around 350 Baht for a local Thai brand and good quality, around 900 Baht for Fairtex and over 1100 Baht for Twins. Twins, Raja, Yokkao are from what I know the most expensive. On Phuket in Fightlab, cheapest I found were 650 Baht discounted shorts and "normal" prices around 1100 - 1400 Baht, the most expensive being in quality similar to Twins. I was looking mostly for the quality to price ratio and I'm happy with my Fairtex shorts. If they had the local Thai brand in my size, I'd take lots of them, coz the quality was really good too! It would be best if you could try on different brand sizes back at home to give your friend an idea of what size you need. Or let your friend try on your shorts, so that they can remember how it fits them - I used this method to get shorts for some people. I knew more or less where they want it more loose or tight after I tried on theirs. If you look on Google you should find size charts of different brands, this will give you an idea of how the sizes differ ;) Keep in mind that not everything you see on the website or in the catalog might be available in the shop... Places to check out in Bangkok for Muay Thai gear can be: Boon Sport (near the BTS) ThaiSmai shop (Sylvie was vloging about it recently) Fairtex (list of shops) ActionZone (near National Stadium BTS)

I watched Rena's fight, she's got skills, whoa! But to have time in the fight to be fixing your bangs...that's a level that blows my mind ;) ;) It was a surprising fight for me, I didn't expect it to finish the way it did. Looking forward to her next fight now :) Gabi's fight was definitely crazy, but I anticipated more ground game with Gabi being the BJJ Champ and the opponent being a judoka... It just..for me it was evident that both of them are still learning the stand up game, so I felt a bit embarassed for them to be swinging around crazy... I like when the fighters in MMA show their strenghts and use it in the fight - but I'm aware that's what I like and what entertains me, doesn't mean the fight was good or bad. ;) AND the huge factor being RIZIN introducing a 90kg female MMA weight class, which is an enormous thing for female martial arts in my eyes!! So I want it to be legit, not a freak show. I follow Gabi on Facebook and she trains really hard, she's ripped like omg, so I KNOW she's serious, I want people to treat her and the weight class seriously!

No, I didn't, I only checked out Gabi's, I will check it out now. :) Are there already opponents set up or not yet?

I still don't really know if this is a legit show, or a "freak show"/wrestling-style...or it's just "Japanese MMA" in the stereotypical sense. I'm keeping an eye on this promotion because Gabi Garcia is one of their fighters, her debut was on New Years and it ended like a freak show, so I was dissapointed. Let's see what this even will bring. Are the matches already decided?

Just when I thought I don't really need one, coz I veeeery rarely get kneed to that region, I recieved three knees in one training. Guess I do need one. Will be buying it next month, hopefully the discount will still be valid :)

I don't understand the "early imprints" concept. It's too speculative for me to be true and scientific. And I also do not agree with free diving bringing yourself close to death and reliving. This is a theory that seems to be put together to match the authors philosophy. Freedivers dive, because it's only then - without masks and all the equipment - that you feel truely free and have a kind of katharsis looking at the beauty hidden from most of the people underwater. Some say it's like connecting with God. Diving down into the water - they never even come close to their breath-holding limits. Of course the amount of time you can spend without breathing while holding still in a pool is different to when you have to dive down and up with a weight around your neck and underwater currents. The death he had mentioned in the post - I'm not sure who he refers to. There was a close-to-death situtation in a small competition last month which I can think of - but it was because of the underwater currents that were irregular and the diver couldn't dive up. She was resusciated and brought to the hospital immidately and as far as I know, she's okay. There was actually a death of a world-class famous diver recently: Natalia Molchanova, which was a huge loss to the freediving community. She went missing during a dive she had done outside of competition - where she was actually believed to dive without a safety diver (a second, experienced person keeping watch over your dive) on her own and was probably swept away by underwater currents. She was doing it on her own, an exception of the rule, which resulted in a fatality, unfortunately. The only thing that might be controversial about freediving are blackouts that happen in competitions, but mostly it happens if the diver surfaces too fast - yes, it can be a shock to the body to suddenly have air again and can result in a blackout even to world-class divers. It's still not a "close to death" experience. The top world class divers are used to different waters and are really all-around trained athletes, they can handle most of the situations in competition perfectly and I assure you, they don't do it for the thrill of "almost dying" - I'm sure they are a scared, but it's with respect to the force of nature they are standing face to face with. Yeah, so maybe I went a bit overboard in explaining all that, but I feel people shouldn't write about freediving when a) they never experienced it, b) they never spoke with anyone who does it. I have the honour to work with one of the top 3 freedivers in the world and thanks to that I learned a lot about freediving and the misconceptions. I also got rid of my fear - the first movie I watched, I was literally scared to having goosebumps on my skin seeing him dive down. Now, I understand it better. Regarding fighting: I don't know, do rich Westerners want to fight? I don't know, like Justin Bieber wants to fight? Let's ask him, he'll probably do it, because it would make him look brave and manly, so from my understanding, they do it because they want to be seen as though badasses. I think your question need to be more precise - what do you consider a rich Westerner for example?

From what my knowledge about Japanese culture is, you are totally right. And my knowledge comes mostly from animes, so bear with me - but I think it also reflects a kind of view on how "things should be". It's mostly that way that a woman works, but her "goal" should be to marry. And she's expected to quit her job after marriage. Still, I think this is starting to change as the culture gets "westernized". I'm actually really curious on how it works in real life and if it's changing and how it is in Thailand. From what I can say about Poland is that it's extremely rare that a female fighter is married and still active. There are exceptions from the rule and mostly it's when she earns a lot or has a fighter/ex-figher as a husband/boyfriend OR even bigger exception when the husband is really supportive of her. In Poland there is a big group of people caring for family bonds and family continuity religiously, so women are expected to get married and have children at a certain age ("what?! 30yo and single?! go make a baby right now! So what if you have no husband! You should have a baby, who's going to work for your pension?! when I was your age I already had 2/3 children!") - but I think that's similar everywhere. Of course there's also understanding and acceptance of being 25+ and single, but I think most of the society still thinks, something's wrong with you. So here's where the pressure of quitting martial arts and starting a family comes from, when you're "lucky" to find a husband. I'd love to have more to tell about it, but from my personal experience my ex-partners were never supportive of me pursuing my martial arts dreams and when I try to date now, guys seem to dissapear when I tell them I do martial arts (or maybe it's because I'm fat and ugly and have a bad or childish personality, but I'm positive it's more about the martial arts part) :D On the other hand I also know girls who train and compete in martial arts and still date, so... it depends on the person, I think. The culture adds pressure to it for sure.

bakpao, I feel you're not too happy about choosing the MMA option, but it's still a place where you will get some exercise, so it will keep you in shape. And who knows, maybe you'll catch the MMA bug? :D I can relate to your situation, as I will have to let go of my really great MT trainer in just a month, coz he's going abroad for half a year. So my option is to go back to a trainer I previously trained with, who is really into teaching MMA-style Muay Thai. There are differences in style. He corrects my cool low kick or totally effective leg block. Because it's not effective in MMA. So it's a difficult situation for me AND the trainer, coz I'm there only for Muay Thai and he's aware of it and partly okay with it, but he's so fascinated with MMA, that at the same time he seems a bit pissed off at me doing it the "traditional" way and tends to neglect me in training. Oh and he doesn't like my super great trainer that I love for his Muay Thai! XD I don't know if this works out in the long run, but I have to give it a try. Which I would advise you to do, too. So, all in all. Depending how the trainer at your new place will put emphasis on the "usefulness" of Muay Thai in MMA, you'll either learn Muay Thai or MMA-style stand-up ;) But in the end, you still learn combinations and work out. So it's better than doing nothing. And in Thailand they will change your technique anyway, regardless of what you've trained back home ;) ;) XD

Topic suggestion Based on the advertisment I get on my Instagram and Facebook after coming back from Thailand I started to wonder about the importance of 'romantic love' and marriage in Thai culture. I made Facebook friends with some of the trainers from the gym I was staying at and when I looked through their profiles they had these gorgeous wedding pictures (mostly western-style clothes) or sweet couple pics EVERYWHERE. So, knowing that "first girlfriend is the wife, second gf is best friend, third gf is cousin and fourth is acquiantace" as I heard in Phuket, how does it relate to the "romantic love" and showing off their wives to people on Facebook? On one hand, they show their lovey-dovey relationships with their wives, but are still ready to cheat on them? Or does it depend on the person? I have to add that most of the guys I speak about where aged 25-35. I mean, are they players or not? I read a blog post - I think it was Milk.Blitz.Street.Bomb about the "wife" and "girlfriend" aspect of Thais, so I'm not really sure how this relates to reality now. I also heard stories of girls coming to the camp and sleeping with most of the trainers during their stay. I can't wrap my mind around it - like, how is it even possible?! If you know something about this topic, I'll be happy to hear about it.

I think she mellowed so much due to the whole boyfriend drama...She was totally NOT in top mental frame when she took this fight and it showed. I think the suicide talks are fuel for the Ronda haters - I'm not sure if it's the truth. Although she does give the vibe of a pretty polarized person - she's sensitive and emotional, cries a lot, but on the other had, she's a hard worker and grind through every painful aspect of training. That makes me a little bit more prone to believe she actually could have suicidal thoughts. I'm in no position to judge her and if her motherly instinct awakend in such a situation and made it better for her - great for her! Although my fangirl heart cries at the thought that she might already be pregnant or get pregnant before her rematch with Holm... But of course, whatever makes her happy...I'll respect that. She did great until now, even if she lost to Holm. She still has a legacy that can only continue to go on.

Wow, your eyes seem to be enduring a lot! I noticed that I tilt my head to the left, which is "not beautiful" in the Muay Thai world - as the trainer in Thailand told me :D He was fixing it a few times, reminding me to keep my head straight and I just keep on tilting it. I think this is connected to my eyesight as I have astigmatism (which comes and goes), so maybe this is how it affects my Muay Thai :)

Thanks for posting the picture! I'm slowly getting back on track with the forum, so I just saw this! :D It was GREAT meeting you and Kelly, as well as training with you. It means so much to me to be welcomed so friendly and openly by you! :) Was a great night out with you guys and funny fact: as I was going back I only then realized that I have no idea when's the last BTS train back to my hostel as I had to change trains in Siam, but fortunately they were still going! :D Stressed out for a moment though!

That's the price at most of the gyms, unfortunately. Phuket is so much more expensive than Bangkok!! There's a place called Fightlab in Rawai, where you can buy a lot of gear, but the price was also around 2000 Baht (depends on the size of course). Here's the address: 50/37 Soi Saiyuann,T.Rawai,83130, Thailand http://www.fightlab-global.com/

Emma, I'm looking forward to how your "story" unfolds, but I think it's great that you managed to start acting on changing your situation. It's a bit funny, but serious at the same time - we go through very similar (if not the same) things all around the world. I'm no pro in accents, but I did notice after a while of listening that yours is not a classic British accent. It has a kind of international feel to it and it's def easier to understand by not natives ;) When I went to London three years ago (this being my first time ever going to the UK) I couldn't understand a word the waitress at the restaurant was asking me. Null. And I studied English for 5 years.... T_T It was pretty disheartening. But then Bastille (the band) went big and I spent hours watching interviews with Dan and came to love the British accent (crushing for a British guy makes you change your view on languages and accents) :D

I think if my eyesight gets any worse than it is now (I have like -2 on both eyes) AND I find a brand of contact lenses that don't make my eyes dry out I will definitely train and spar in lenses. There is of course the whole lot of other things you can learn and practice without them, but I want to lear a lot and I feel without seeing it won't happen ;) Maya, that's actually really nice of the guy to be giving you advice and reaching out. Sweet!

That's such a cool interview! First, because we rarely get to hear Emma talking :) But secondly, the things you talk about are exactly the things a lot of people think about and are scared to ask. I was like that too, until I found your blog Sylvie, and later through your blog - Emma's, Kelly's and other blogs. Suddenly I had access to formulated thoughts about things I was going through and had noone to talk to about until now. Reading and hearing about other's experiences really help to gain that confidence you are talking about. Now I know that if something doesn't feel right, it probably is not right. This confidence that I slowly gained allowed me to "spread my wings" this year and go to a second gym where I loved the training and I hope it won't go into the "down" cycle anytime soon - but you never know. PS. I love Emmas' accent, it's perfection! :D :D

I would try two big things apart from pills and soaks. It will propably cost a bit, but if you don't know what to do, it won't hurt to try it. 1) massages by a knowledgable practicioner - I'm no pro, but from what you describe the cause could be in your back or hips, not necesserly your foot. it could be a nerve being pressed by something in your back, or a strained tendon. Try finding someone who does sport massages/rehabilitation. Of course you should describe your case beforehand, but if they don't even touch your back, they're not good and you should look for another one. They should give you an overall body check, pressing various trigger points during the massage - not only on the foot, but also leg, hip, back. Maybe someone at your gym can recommend you a good sports masseur? (From my experience: I went to a few different fully-qualified masseurs, but only when I found a guy you massaged a football/soccer team in his younger years was where I found my match - it hurts like hell, but helps. I never go to anyone else for a back massage :D He has clients who come from the USA to visit their Polish families from time to time and they book a few sessions with him, because they say there's noone who massages as good as him overseas, so...I'm sorry :P :D :D) 2) Instep (I'm not sure the word is right?) - like, inner shoe soles. Find a place that analyzes your feet and the way you move with a computer programme and then prepares individualized insoles. It might hurt to wear them for the first 2-3 weeks, but it pays off. Also, if you find a place that makes pressed copies of your feet to make insoles - that's even better! This way with the insole you compensate various distabilized parts of your feet - and lift pressure from areas that are not well because of that pressure. (I found a place that does the computer programme ones in an orthopeadic center. It wasn't covered by my health insurance, I paid the equivalent of 60$ for everything: the feet examination and analyse, as well as the insoles itself - but I assume it will cost more in the US) I'm not sure this post is understandable in English :D :D but I tried my best to explain!