Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Thanks dtrick for linking it, it's in my signature, so I thought it's visible :) :)

And I'm glad you enjoy reading it, I try to really think deeper than usual when I write it, it helps me get things in order and the cool thing is, I'm learning a lot about myself by writing it! :) and I'm still working on the visual side ;) I don't have much good pictures from training I can use, but I will sort it out sometime ;)

Today I went to class and as it's a holiday long weekend, I was the only one there, so I basically had a private class with my trainer :) :) The best thing was, he pushed me to do sommersaults (I hope it's the right word, like you roll over you head to the front or back, or over your shoulder and so on) and he also has shown me some new types of sommersaults. He knows I'm not comfortable with rolling over my head, so it was nice to practice it in peace and quite on my own with his guidance. I learned a lot! :)

Micc, glad to hear your forward rolls are getting better. It's just a matter of repetitions. It might help to know why sports like judo and bjj practice forward rolls... it's essentially the same movement as a forward breakfall. If someone was to throw you over your hip, you could fall/land safely, instead of like a sack of potatos, which hurts a lot more.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gavin, thanks! 

I really don't like anything related to falling, mostly because of my weight, so I try to avoid it during practice, even when we do clinch I always say "please no throws to the ground". I'm not ready yet. I hope that one day when I loose weight it won't be as scary, but maybe with practicing these forward rolls I will get better at handling the falling to the ground part! :) 

Of course I get thrown to the ground a lot, but they do it gently ;) ;)

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm over 200lbs too, so I understand to a degree. Here's another interesting tidbit about being thrown - when you resist and tense up it oftens hurts more than had you gone with it and accepted the throw. It will always hurt taking a big throw, but you get conditioned to it over time and just accept that it will hurt somewhat.  If you really want to work on this, you can have people throw you onto a crash mat. It doesn't hurt at all, and will allow you to learn to fall naturally and safely without tensing up. I used to take dozens of falls a night on these when I did Judo... Anyway, enough about this.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey sorry for the delay in response. I wasn't searching for a southpaw friendly gym (though it is true no one likes to really practice with a person in southpaw I've noticed.. I get a lot of complaints) per se.. Just one where the coach isn't being a douche.

 

I've still not talked to the coach about the way he has been treating me yet. But in my defense, I've been sick off and on for the past two weeks, so I've not really had the energy to deal with him.

 

BUT that being said, I have tried a gym last week (right before I got sick.. Again) and it was a much smaller place, about 10 mins from my apartment, and I thought it had its pros and cons. The coach was nice enough.. He didn't discount me, which was lovely, and even came to talk to me afterward and set up some extra practice drilling. However, I found his style... A little more aggressive? If that's a thing ? And he's more of a go getter than maybe I'm used to. (That probably makes zero sense, but I don't know how else to describe it.)

 

BUT. he worked on my left kick with me (the one I struggle with, as well as injured myself with), and he really was a seemingly nice guy. I had a better vibe with him than I have with Coach in a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

my biggest accomplishment so far is to have trained 4 fighters that had win tournament in Mexico couple weeks ago.

four of kids that I train won that weekend, that was amazing. Such a incredible feeling to see your fighter won a championship. it's amazing.

 

I'm not a good fighter myself, so it's great to be able the share my knowledge with kids who gonna be so much better than me in the ring.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not being told you're good at something isn't always bad.

Actually I had this discussion at my gym before, they were saying if you always compliment someone it can prevent them from improving. If I was to get told my body kick was perfect everyday, I'd probably start slacking on the technique.

But it works both ways, if someone was to tell me it was bad/sh*t everyday, I'd get frustrated and upset with myself and that would also prevent me from improving.

The discussion ended with giving subtle compliments or backhanded compliments the best way to go, so that it raises your confidence but you still know you have to improve.

Hopefully this was relevant... :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, but the other thing is that, you can try find to find ways to see that you've improved. For example, if the trainer always corrects your right punch and you find one day that he didn't correct it, maybe because it was good! Maybe you clinched and didn't get threw today, all things like this are signs that you're improving. Sometimes you don't notice your improvements that's why you need someone to remind you to keep yourself positive, as you train the best when your positive.

Also you said people complained about sparring you because you're a southpaw. Are they complaining because you're a southpaw, or because you're tricky? I've sparred many southpaws, and although you have to adjust I certainly wouldn't complain about it (though I might moan about a tricky fighter), also when you spar a southpaw it also makes some things easier, rear roundhouse becomes harder to block for yourself and for the southpaw, so maybe you can land more of them.

Anyway, try to realise when you're improving yourself but as your thread is about, it helps you mentally if your trainer can be positive, he doesn't have to tell you that it was a perfect or amazing kick but he could just say that it was a hard kick, or it was quicker, which is what I was saying before about complimenting without making you feel like you don't need to improve. 

Also, another thing is, but you might not want to do it or you might already do it, is to record yourself on the pads or sparring, maybe just once a month, and when you feel low, just watch last months or watch 3 months ago and compare it to now. You're going to see improvements and that will make you feel good, also laugh at your old mistakes (watching my first fight is always funny), and seeing where you can improve yourself.

 

But on the topic of your trainer, if you have a few gyms in your area, it won't hurt to try some out if you feel like you're not improving like you should be at your current gym.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thailand,

My issue with my current gym isn't with the lack of positivity. It's him being rude and disrespectful to me. There's a fine line of being tough but encouraging, and just being a douche, and that line has been crossed more times than I care for. I can't even get him to talk to me about it because he won't return my messages or phone call.

 

As for training southpaw, it's not sparring, it's practicing combos in class. I've only in the past month switched because of a shoulder injury that is having trouble healing. And because everyone in that class is a beginner, they don't understand how to practice with a southpaw. Hence they don't like it. But I can't do the advanced class because, according to coach, I'm not good enough. So, caught between a rock and a hard place. And where I live, there aren't many muay thai gyms at all. The one I go to is already About an hour drive from me.

 

And if I could, I would record, but I don't have a way to do so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK that's just me reading incorrectly. Yeah if you're getting mistreated, you should leave for sure, because the problem is if you get treated like this for a long period of time then you will start to dislike muay and maybe lose trust.

I feel like people shouldn't complain about the combinations though, if they want to be fighters then they will someday have to fight a southpaw, and if they're there for fitness it doesn't make a difference or not.

To be honest, the gym sounds like it has a bad atmosphere which may stem from the trainer, if he's being a dick to people then its going to rub off onto others or make it a place full of dicks. 

Finding a gym, search facebook/google/youtube/rankings, I would assume you've tried all of that already though. The only other thing I can suggest is asking on forums with a wide audience in your country, maybe Sherdog or others. There are a lot of gyms that don't have a website.

Good luck on the gym search. What country are you from?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I was wondering if maybe I hadn't fully explained or something. I'm from the US. I have tried searching online. Authentic muay thai that doesn't have other shit mixed in is basically nonexistent. Another reason I am hesitant to leave altogether. And it doesn't appear that he has a nasty attitude with anyone else. That's why I'm feeling really singled out. The other instructors are great, but he's the owner and the coach of the fight team, which is my ultimate goal to be a part of. I really need to talk to him, though. I really want to find out what his issue with me is. I just don't understand it.

 

On a more positive note.. After two weeks of being sick I went back to the gym today. Just some cycling and a little bit of ab work. But it felt good to burn energy. Hopefully by next week I'll be able to start going to class again. And then maybe talk to Coach finally.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah I know the US has a problem with those 'mcdojos' or whatever you want to call them, but I've noticed some really good gyms in the US now, and quite a lot of Thai's teaching there. What's the style of the gym you're at now then?

Anyway, if you're thinking about leaving then talking with the coach can only go well I think, if you're thinking of leaving anyway then he will either say something that'll make you want to leave even more or make you consider staying.

 

Hope you get well quicker... :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

So I went to go and edit my blogs a bit today and do some updating, and in the process (and feeling slightly forgetful as to the last things I wrote.. haven't been on my blog in a while) I came across this piece that I wrote back in February, a few days after my shoulder surgery. I found that, especially after the last few months of medical drama in my life and not being able to train and go after my goals like I wanted, that it was helpful to me to read again. I hope that someone else might find it useful. 

 http://crazyallyrose.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-big-picture.html

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Most Recent Topics

  • Latest Comments

    • Some notes on the predividual (from Simondon), from a side conversation I've been having, specifically about how Philosophies of Immanence, because they tend to flatten causation, have lost the sense of debt or respect to that which has made you. One of the interesting questions in the ethical dimension, once we move away from representationalist thinking, is our relationship to causation.   In Spinoza there is a certain implicit reverence for that to which you are immanent to. That which gave "birth" to you and your individuation. The "crystal" would be reverent to the superstaturated solution and the germ (and I guess, the beaker). This is an ancient thought.   Once we introduce concepts of novelness, and its valorization, along with notions of various breaks and revolutions, this sense of reverence is diminished, if not outright eliminated. "I" (or whatever superject of what I am doing) am novel, I break from from that which I come from. Every "new" thing is a revolution, of a kind. No longer is a new thing an expression of its preindividual, in the ethical/moral sense.   Sometimes there are turns, like in DnG, where there is a sort of vitalism of a sacred. I'm not an expression of a particular preindividual, but rather an expression of Becoming..a becoming that is forever being held back by what has already become. And perhaps there is some value in this spiritualization. It's in Hegel for sure. But, what is missing, I believe, is the respect for one's actual preindividual, the very things that materially and historically made "you" (however qualified)...   I think this is where Spinoza's concept of immanent cause and its ethical traction is really interesting. Yes, he forever seems to be reaching beyond his moment in history into an Eternity, but because we are always coming out of something, expressing something, we have a certain debt to that. Concepts of revolution or valorized novelty really undercut this notion of debt, which is a very old human concept which probably has animated much of human culture.   And, you can see this notion of immanent debt in Ecological thought. It still is there.   The ecosystem is what gave birth to you, you have debt to it. Of course we have this sense with children and parents, echo'd there.   But...as Deleuze (and maybe Simondon?) flatten out causation, the crystal just comes out of metastable soup. It is standing there sui generis. It is forever in folds of becoming and assemblages, to be sure, but I think the sense of hierarchy and debt becomes obscured. We are "progressing" from the "primitive".   This may be a good thing, but I suspect that its not.   I do appreciate how you focus on that you cannot just presume the "individual", and that this points to the preindividual. Yes...but is there not a hierarchy of the preindividual that has been effaced, the loss of an ethos.   I think we get something of this in the notion of the mute and the dumb preindividual, which culminates in the human, thinking, speaking, acting individuation. A certain teleology that is somehow complicit, even in non-teleological pictures.   I think this all can boil down to one question: Do we have debt to what we come from?   ...and, if so, what is the nature of that debt?   I think Philosophies of Immanence kind of struggle with this question, because they have reframed.   ...and some of this is the Cult of the New. 3:01 PM Today at 4:56 AM   Hmmmm yeah. Important to be in the middle ground here I suspect. Enabled by the past, not determined by it. Of course inheritance is rather a big deal in evolutionary thought - the bequest of the lineage, as I often put it. This can be overdone, just as a sense of Progress in evolution can be overdone - sometimes we need to escape our past, sometimes we need to recover it, revere it, re-present it. As always, things must be nuanced, the middle ground must be occupied. 4:56 AM   Yes...but I think there is a sense of debt, or possibly reverence, that is missing. You can have a sense of debt or reverence and NOT be reactive, and bring change. Just as a Native American Indian can have reverence for a deer he kills, a debt. You can kill your past, what you have come from, what you are an expression of...but, in a deep way.   Instead "progress" is seen as breaking from, erasing, denying. Radical departure.   The very concept of "the new" holds this.   this sense of rupture.   And pictures of "Becoming" are often pictures of constant rupture.   new, new, new, new, new, new...   ...with obvious parallels in commodification, iterations of the iphone, etc.   In my view, this means that the debt to the preindividual should be substantive. And the art of creating individuation means the art of creating preindividuals. DnG get some of this with their concept of the BwOs.   They are creating a preindividual.   But the sense of debt is really missing from almost all Immanence Philosophy.   The preindividual becomes something like "soup" or intensities, or molecular bouncings.   Nothing really that you would have debt to. 12:54 PM   Fantasies of rupture and "new" are exactly what bring the shadow in its various avatars with you, unconsciously.     This lack of respect or debt to the preindividual also has vast consequences for some of Simondon's own imaginations. He pictures "trade" or "craft" knowledge as that of a childhood of a kind, and is quite good in this. And...he imagines that it can become synthesized with his abstracted "encyclopedic" knowledge (Hegel, again)...but this would only work, he adds, if the child is added back in...because the child (and childhood apprenticeships) were core to the original craft knowledge. But...you can't just "add children" to the new synthesis, because what made craft knowledge so deep and intense was the very predindividual that created it (the entire social matrix, of Smithing, or hunting, or shepherding)...if you have altered that social matrix, that "preindividual" for knowledge, you have radically altered what can even be known...even though you have supplemented with abstract encyclopedic knowledge. This is something that Muay Thai faces today. The "preindividual" has been lost, and no amount of abstraction, and no about of "teaching children" (without the original preindividual) will result in the same capacities. In short, there is no "progressive" escalation of knowledge. Now, not everything more many things are like a fighting art, Muay Thai...but, the absence of the respect and debt to preindividuality still shows itself across knowledge. There are trends of course trying to harness creativity, many of which amount to kind of trying to workshop preindividuality, horizontal buisness plan and build structures, ways of setting up desks or lounge chairs, its endless. But...you can't really "engineer" knowledge in this way...at least not in the way that you are intending to. The preindividual comes out of the culture in an organic way, when we are attending to the kinds of deeper knowledge efficacies we sometimes reach for.
    • "He who does not know how to read only sees the differences. For him who knows how to read, it all comes to the same thing, since the sentence is identical. Whoever has finished his apprenticeship recognizes things and events, everywhere and always, as vibrations of the same divine and infinitel sweet word. This does not mean that he will not suffer Pain is the color of certain events. When a man who can and a man who cannot read look at a sentence written in red ink, they both see the same red color, but this color is not so important for the one as for the other."   A beautiful analogy by Simone Weil (Waiting for God), which especially in the last sentence communicates how hard it is to discuss Muay Thai with those who don't know how to "read" its sentences. Yes, I see the effort. Yes, I see the power. Yes, I even see the "technique"...but this is like talking about the color of sentences written out at times.
    • from Reddit discussing shin pain and toughening of the shins: There are several factors, and people create theories on this based on pictures of Muay Thai, but honestly from my wife's direct experience they go some what numb and hard from lots of kicking bags and pads, and fighting (in Thailand some bags could get quite hard, almost cement like in places). Within a year in Thailand Sylvie was fighting every 10 or 12 days and it really was not a problem, seldom feeling much pain, especially if you treat them properly after damage, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzTmHfae-k and then more advanced, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcWtd00U7oQ And they keep getting harder. After a few years or so Sylvie felt like she would win any shin clash in any fight, they just became incredible hard. In this video she is talking about 2 years in about how and why she thought her shins had gotten so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXCmZVXeGE she shows in the vid how her shins became kind of permanently serrated, with divots and dings. As she discusses only 2 years in (now she's 13 years of fighting in) very experienced Thais have incredibly hard shins, like iron. Yes, there are ideas about fighting hard or not, but that really isn't the determining factor from our experience with Sylvie coming up on 300 fights and being around a lot of old fighters. They just can get incredibly tough. The cycles of damage and repair just really change the shin (people in the internet like to talk about microfractures and whatnot). Over time Sylvie eventually didn't really need the heat treatment anymore after fights, now she seldom uses it. She's even has several times in the last couple of years split her skin open on checks without even feeling much contact. Just looked down and there was blood.  
  • The Latest From Open Topics Forum

    • Hi all, Does anyone know of any suppliers for blanks (Plain items to design and print a logo on) that are a good quality? Or put me in the right direction? thanks all  
    • The first fight between Poot Lorlek and Posai Sittiboonlert was recently uploaded to youtube. Posai is one of the earliest great Muay Khao fighters and influential to Dieselnoi, but there's very little footage of him. Poot is one of the GOATs and one of Posai's best wins, it's really cool to see how Posai's style looked against another elite fighter.
    • Yeah, this is certainly possible. Thanks! I just like the idea of a training camp pre-fight because of focus and getting more "locked in".. Do you know of any high level gyms in europe you would recommend? 
    • You could just pick a high-level gym in a European city, just live and train there for however long you want (a month?). Lots of gyms have morning and evening classes.
    • Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?..  Appericiate all responses, thank you! 
  • Forum Statistics

    • Total Topics
      1.4k
    • Total Posts
      11.5k
×
×
  • Create New...