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finding a gym by MuayFarang


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"Arjan" is a term used mostly for westerners or by westerners. The presence of a stick wielding "master" as a major sign of an organized camp seems absurd to me. Hierarchy is very important in Thai settings, but most Thai gyms are informally organized, and have a casual feeling to them. This seems like a fantasy scene out of a Kung Fu movie. There is lots of good training in Thai gyms without "Arjans" walking around barking orders. Sylvie's gym Petchrungruang is a wonderful family run Thai gym that raises Thai kids into Lumpinee fighters, there is no "Arjan" master correcting people left and right.

Sylvie's getting ready for a fight, cutting weight, don't think she'll hop on right now.

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ok, cheers, it was a set up scenario, but dont you think is important that someone is watching you as you are doing paos, for example? Formally or informally I mean.

 

Honestly, it isn't how most Thai gyms are. There is very little direct correction in Thai style gyms, either for westerners or for Thais. But I can see how as a westerner it is something you might want or need. Muay Farang has created a gym for westerners, so it makes sense to sell it that way. But to couch the whole thing in some kind of traditionalism feels wrong to me.

But hey, there are all kinds of flavors in Thailand, in a way it is just another one.

I wrote this guest blog post about the difference between the Thai way and the Western way.

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Anyways, I stayed in 7muaythai and the training is directed and done with thais (sparring, clinch, paos) maybe they are trying to mix both approaches... Adittionally when I met Sylvie in Petchrungruang, I felt that "family thing" that I love as well, by the way were you one of the farangs watching the training? ( :unsure: ) Thank you and chok dee mak to Sylvie!

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Anyways, I stayed in 7muaythai and the training is directed and done with thais (sparring, clinch, paos) maybe they are trying to mix both approaches... Adittionally when I met Sylvie in Petchrungruang, I felt that "family thing" that I love as well, by the way were you one of the farangs watching the training? ( :unsure: ) Thank you and chok dee mak to Sylvie!

 

I should have been more generous with this, but it irks me a little when Thailand is packaged in a fantasy tradition way, it's my hang up. Sylvie already recommends Master Toddy's in Bangkok and Santai in Chiang Mai when people coming to Thailand ask without much experience because they both put emphasis on technique and correction. Most westerners come to Thailand thinking that there is going to be lot of correction and technique and they just aren't prepared for the long, slow "do your own work" approach that most Thai gyms operate under. They can feel under-attended and ignored, and if they don't already have solid self-driven work skills can be left out of what is really happening. You can get correction, but you have to ask.

So places like Master Toddy's, Santai, maybe some Phuket gyms (don't know, haven't been), and Muay Farang's gym, if they too focus on technique and correction, can be really rewarding. It's just that that's not how most Muay Thai is taught.

But westerners don't have the years and years to take the long way, so especially if you are going to be in Thailand for shorter periods of time, they may pay off. I just take issue with the marketing of the article, as if it is proposing some kind of "guide" to Thailand gyms. Just come out and say "This is what is great about Club 7 Muay Thai".

 

I wasn't there when you visited Petchrungruang, but I indeed have been a farang watching training for a very long time. Learned a lot from quietly watching.

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I agree, we as westerners can´t appreciate the slow cook they use. Maybe, it is our menatlity or it is because we can only spend one month there... But as they say, "sabai, sabai" Such a good article on the topic, by the way. Thanks and very kind.

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Im not saying that you have to join Muayfarang, (I am not working for them, I swear :smile: ) but just to pay attention to the points they say.

 

 http://www.muayfarang.com/en/how-to-chose-best-muay-thai-camp-gym-thailand-13715/

 

Hope, it helps!

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.

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    • As Thailand's Muay Thai more and more turns its face toward the World and the West increasingly those coming to Thailand to seek out, experience, train in, fight in, even commit to and honor authentic Muay Thai will have a hard time finding it. In this brief article I want to point out the two biggest areas of difficulty. Keep in mind, I'm writing this from the perspective of having witnessed my wife who has fought more times in Thailand than any non-Thai in history, coming up on 300 times, as a fighter who has steered as clear as possible from aspects of the sport which are arranged or made for you, and become perhaps the foremost documentarian of the sport and art. Everything I describe is from often repeated things we've encountered, found ourselves in, worked through, and what we've learned from the experiences of others. Importantly, pretty much everyone who has been in the country a long time has their own experience and understanding of authenticity, and this is just ours. Thai culture, and Muay Thai culture is also a very complex and woven thing, it is not homogeneous or made in one way, so these are benchmark ideas and there are many exceptions. Authenticity, that which is not made for us.   1. Increasingly Thailand's Muay Thai is made FOR you One of the first challenges is honestly that of recognition. Because Thailand is so culturally different, and Thailand gym training not that of than Western and international gyms, whatever you are experiencing is going to feel authentic. Its authenticity will come through in everything that is different. It must be authentic because I'm not used to this. And because we can only judge from our own experiences, and from what we see and read, this is difficult to overcome. After 3 months in the country you are going to feel like you have really penetrated to the heart of something really new. After a year, you really will feel like you know what's going on, and if you have gravitated toward "authenticity" you'll probably feel like you are in a pretty "real" place. My caution is: Nope. You probably don't realize how much of Muay Thai has been turned toward YOU. And if it wasn't turned towards you, you wouldn't be participating in it. This is going to sound harsh, but pretty much ALL Western/International Muay Thai experiences are something like an elephant ride. The elephant (Muay Thai) is very real, and there is great privilege and beauty in being on an elephant. You're touching a living, breathing, REAL elephant...but you are on an elephant ride, made FOR you. Now, there are all sorts of elephant rides. There is the one where they walk in a circle and you get off, and another where you bathe and then bareback like a "real mahout" would, and then maybe all the way up to 10 day safaris, trekking on elephant back (is there such a thing?). But it's still an elephant ride. You get in the ring, its real...even if its arranged for you, its intense and real. You hit the bag, you burn the kilometers in road work, its real. This isn't to say anything is inauthentic. All of Muay Thai in Thailand will change you. This is about reaching, as passionate people will, those aspects of the sport and art that are unique to Thailand itself, that may fall from view as Thailand turns its face toward you. The Rules, For You How do I mean this? The rules of the sport have been changed so that you (in a less skilled way) will win fights, or perform well in fights you might not otherwise in the traditional Thai version of the sport (there is a full spectrum of this, stretching from RWS entertainment Muay Thai to ONE smash and clash). This is a fairly recent transformation, covering perhaps the last 10 years. The sport itself has been altered for you...and, as it has been altered for you, this also has washed back onto trad Bangkok stadium Muay Thai, which has absorbed many of the entertainment qualities which are pervading social media and gambling sites. In some sense the "authentic" traditional Muay Thai of Thailand doesn't really exist in promotional fight form anywhere in the halo that tourist and adventure tourist has reached. It's just a question of degree. The issues and influences behind this in trad stadium Muay Thai are more complex than this, but it too has turned its face towards "the foreigner". Some of this is just what people like to call "progress" or "the force of the market place" or others might call the "deskilling of Capitalism", but just know that in the fights themselves, they are by degrees turned towards YOU. It really might only be in the festival fight circuits of the provinces where you will still will find the culture and aesthetics of the sport and art FOR Thais. To be sure in festival fights there can be matchups that favor a larger foreign student of a local gym, which has relationship ties with the local promoter, especially if there is no sidebet. But the EVENT isn't for you, designed around you, catering to you or people like you. You're the oddity, and the rulesets and aesthetics have been less altered if at all. The Training, For You On a deeper level, the training in gyms is also made FOR you. The traditional pedagogy of Muay Thai, the manner in which it was developed through youthful circuit sidebet fighting, the kaimuay culture of non-correction and group dynamic sharing of a grown aesthetic, has been seriously eroded, supplemented and sometimes just outright replaced. You are (likely) not learning in the manner of the Thais that produced such acute excellence so many decades ago. Yes, there will be obvious things like farang krus and padmen in some gyms (many of them quite devoted to Muay Thai, but not produced by the subculture), something that is increasing in the sport, but, subtly, even if your padman is Thai, he may not even be an experienced ex-fighter, as mid-so Thais are holding pads now in the growing commercialization. Muay Thai is experiencing a gentrification and an internationalization at the gym level. Beyond padmen, the very manner of instruction and fighter development will have been changed in some sense for you. For one, increasingly you'll notice "combo" training, memorized strike patterns, which is both a deskilling of the sport (making it easier to teach, replicate and export), but also is training that is geared towards the new Entertainment trade-in-the-pocket patterns and aesthetics, made for tourists and online fandom. The change in the rules of the sport over the last 7 years or so, also is reflected in a change in how the sport is actually taught...even in spaces that feel VERY Thai. The sport is bending to the "combo" because it is signature to Western and international fighting aesthetics, and it can be taught by less skilled/experienced coaches. Fighters did not train like that, nor did they fight like that. As the sport has become deskilled the combo has taken an increasingly important role. Added to this, gyms have had to accommodate the expectations of Westerners and other non-Thais, as the weakening of the sport economically has turned almost every gym in the tourism halo towards at least a hybrid relationship to tourism...it needs to give the Westerner something they recognize and expect...and, because tourists and adventure tourist come with all sorts of investments and motivations, on different timescales, a lower common denominator works itself into the equation. Group "classes", organized drilling of groups, increased conceptualization and rationalization of techniques involving verbal correction and demonstration, even foreign coaching, these are FOR YOU changes in the sport. Sometimes these trends and aspects will only be subtly present, sometimes they will characterize the entire process. This is an elephant ride. And often it is difficult to distinguish where the elephant ends and the ride begins. Even "Fighter Training" Isn't The Process Along these lines of hunting the "authentic" training in gyms you'll run into this difficulty. You may be in a gym full of Thai fighters, even very active Thai fighters. There aren't many combos being held for. No real "group classes". A lot of Thai culture is going on, or seems to be. You are doing the work of fighters, real fighters, right there next to you. It's by Thais its for Thais and its pretty authentic...but for these things. For one, this gym if it's not a kaimuay in the more grassroots sense, all these fighters were made somewhere else. They were bought and brought into the gym, to be part of a stable. So what you likely are seeing, and doing, isn't actually how they became what they are. They are in the polishing, or add-a-level stage. The heartbeat of what made them is elsewhere. Even if you are a developed, accomplished fighter, and you too are in the "polishing" stage, you don't have what they have, which is a very different history of training, fighting and development. They are made of a different material, so to speak, and in truth that "material" is the actual "stuff" that everyone comes to Thailand looking for, that is where the "authenticity" is in their movements, vision, rhythms, stylistics. You can do all the padwork, all the clinch rounds, all the runs, all the bagwork, all the sparring, and you'll get better, in fact a LOT better...but, you'll be missing that "authentic" piece, the thing they got before they came to this gym. To add to this, if you did seek out the kaimuay that grows fighters in the principles of the sport, and their fighting circuits, these are not economically robust spaces, they are no longer teeming with fighters, and they're not focused on the tourist. They are part of a fragmenting economy of largely provincial fighting, and in which is difficult to find one's place, especially as an adult, as they are made for youth. The best you might find are hybrid spaces, kaimuay on the low ebb, which also are run by a great kru, making room for non-Thais, but even these spaces are a kind of bricolage of culture, knowledge and practice. There is no pristine location for the "authentic". "Treated Like a Thai" A layer even further down in terms of authenticity, it's not uncommon to feel that if you've stayed a lot, trained a lot, fought a lot, that you are being (more or less) "treated like a Thai". This is a big desire in the reach for "authenticity", and that experience of being "treated like a Thai" is therefore quite meaningful. But you aren't. You are still likely on an elephant ride, in a certain regard. And that's become Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is culturally founded on intense social power disparity. It is strongly hierarchized, and hierarchies vie against other hierarchies constantly in a political struggle that the Westerner, even the Thai-speaking Westerner, largely cannot see...and if they see them, they cannot care about them in the same way a Thai does and would. This is a continuous struggle for social "position" in which the Thai fighter has almost always has almost zero power. They are bound not only by contract obligation (contract), but more significantly by strong mores of social debt and shame, and the networks of hierarchy which make up gyms, community and promotion. They are in a web with constant top-down and lateral pressures, with very limited choice, you are not. You do NOT want to be treated "just like a Thai"...and honestly, you probably can't be, even if you want to be brought into the same workouts or expectations of a fighter. The reason this is important is the almost all of the motivations you have as a fighter, to become better, to win, to be acknowledged are very, very VERY different than the Thai fighter kicking the bag right next to you...and their motivations are actually the "authentic" part of Thailand's Muay Thai. Stadium Muay Thai is not the free agent professionalism that non-Thais aspire to. It is intense social stigma straining under a culture of obligation. You can do all the work, mirror it beat for beat, but you are not in the affective position of Thai fighters, and so in some sense cannot fight like them, for their alliances and values, the things which bring the strikes out, are largely invisible to the Westerner. All these things: that they've changed the rules so Westerners can win or perform well, and will enjoy watching, that they've changed the way Muay Thai is trained, that you aren't likely exposed to the actual processes that made stadium fighters who they are today, and even that you cannot experience the disempowerment, position and dignity of Thai fighters themselves, all cut off aspects of "authenticity", much sought by those that travel in earnest. This is leaving behind all those more common internet concerns like fake fights, dives, bad match making. It's in the actual fabric of the sport itself, as Westerners reach for it, and as it has turned its face toward the Westerner, making itself for the Westerner...and others. 2. The Fighters Aren't the Same The second difficulty in reaching for "authenticity" is that even if you get through all those layers. If you shun the rehearsed combo, you identify living threads of kaimuay culture and its values and ways of life as much as possible, if you fight five round trad Muay Thai fights, don't take weight advantages when you can, if you emotionally connect with the low social position of the Thai fighter, all the things, and then make it to the ring where "authentic" Muay Thai is "happening"...it's not even happening there. I mean this in this sense. Aside from the erosion and deskilling of the sport due to new promotional motivations, tourism and market pressures, Muay Thai itself has been eroding on its own within the country. The rising economic standard out of the classes of people who traditionally fought it have changed many of the motivations and commitments of the fighters themselves, and the talent pool of fighters has dramatically decreased. I'm going to throw a wild number out, but I'm just guessing in an educated way...maybe the talent pool is 10x smaller. Leaving aside that combos and entertainment aesthetics are now working their way into more or less "Thai" gym spaces, the fighters themselves just are not that good, not as developed, complex or accomplished by the time they are in Bangkok rings. Big name gyms grab up local kaimuay talent earlier and earlier (green fruit off the tree before ripe), the developmental fighter classes (informal groups within gyms) that grow the skills are seriously on the decline. A kaimuay may have had 20 fighting boys, now may have 3? Traditionally there was a stirring of the pot that was cooking a very deep stew of skills, more and more its a process just a few ingredients heated over a short time. This is to say, even if you can get all the way to the "authentic" rings, the quality and sophistication of the Muay Thai you will be facing will lack something that "authentic" dimension that characterized the freedom and expressiveness of skill of past generations. You may in fact fight a Thai who will fight quite like a farang (as far as it goes). They may end combos with a body shot, or throw endless elbows, be unable to defend well in retreat, have a muay of one or two weapons, or be limited and simplistic in the clinch. Not only is the skillset diminished, but in new generation fighters the rhythms and shapes of fighting that are "authentic" may not be there in full force. In some ways the Westerner may encounter a dim mirror of themselves. I'm writing this because this quest for authenticity is seriously meaningful. It's meaningful to us, those of the West who love Thailand's Muay Thai, and it's also meaningful to Thais as well, who have great esteem for its legacy. The only way to significantly engage in the question of authenticity is to acknowledge that it is already substantively hybridized. You and everyone else may be on elephant rides. It's only by identifying the aspects of Muay Thai that are not made for the tourist and adventure tourist, the threads of culture and practice that developed without your presence, or others like you, and nurturing with respect those aspects, that will the authentic journey begin. You may be in a very commercial gym, full of combos and group classes, but your padman probably grew up in kaimuay culture. It's in him. It's what made him. Find ways to connect to that. There are also at times "Thai gyms" (mini-kaimuay) inside commercial gyms, which operates under a different code than the gym for customers. You may be in an Entertainment fight promotion, fight in the traditional style, try to win in the traditional style, even if the ruleset doesn't favor it. Push back against what has been made for you. Learn and identity the lineages of cultural practice that have defined Muay Thai, and connect to those purposely. In a sense, if we all realize we are on elephant rides, at a certain point you have have to love and care for the elephant itself, which is the beautiful, mysterious, almost-like-us, powerful, magical creature. This is the art of Muay Thai. And even if you aren't on the best ride, you are on a mother-effin elephant. Find the culture of the elephant. Find the elephant's history among the people. Find what the elephant needs. Find what is natural to the elephant. Protect and honor the elephant. we wrote a manifest of our values here    
    • As Capitalism deskills and enshittifies (this is pretty clear now), how come people don't realize that this is happening in Muay Thai? It is not "progress". It is the grinding down of skills and our capacity to perceive.
    • Watched this fight the other day, and as much as Wangchannoi is known as a hard-hitting Muay Maat, his hidden art is really the art of spoilage. Watch him spoil one of the great clinch attacks of the Golden Age. Among the many things that he is doing is that his punching and pinning Langsuan's collarbone on his right hand side grab (unusual for an orthodox fighter).
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