Documenting my journey as a female Muay Thai fighter in Thailand, sharing techniques, culture and personal perspective - over 250 fights fought

https://8limbsus.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/episode-10-E10_2ITK_Podcast_-_Emma_and_Sylvie_Updating_Female_Muay_Thai-compressed.mp3 subscribe on iTunes There’s actually been quite a lot going on in Female Muay Thai, which Emma and I get to go over. We cover quite a lot and we’ve tried to be conscious of giving a bit of reference to names we mention, and I’m pretty excited by how much we were able to cover in this podcast. As a bit of a footnote, we do sound a bit disparaging when discussing the shit-show that is disorganized shows, bad matchups, poor media coverage and the meaninglessness of a...

This post is about an Instagram photography project that gives light to the female Thai faces of Chiang Mai Muay Thai (and male faces too). You can check out that Instagram here. This post is also about the streaming of those fighters in fights. Little known is that you can, for free, watch streaming live female Thai fighting every single night of the week from Thapae Stadium. Tune into livebox.me at about 9pm Thai time and check out the Chiang Mai fights. There are two female bouts on every...

above: one of the clinch drills Arjan Surat used, my partner Tessa Simpson I went over to Dejrat Gym to have a private session and film for Patreon with Arjan Surat, who is an amazing “time capsule” type trainer of Old School technique in a Draconian method – he’s in charge of training the Thai National Team for IFMA and SEA world competitions. He’s awesome, you can see my first 1 hour private with Arjan Surat here. It didn’t quite work out that way, just because sometimes these things...

December 5, 2016 – Lumpinee Park, Bangkok – above, full fight with commentary This fight was just an incredible opportunity. There was nothing in the fight itself that looked good on paper for me: it was a WMC title fight at 52 kg (more than 3 weight classes and 7 kg – 15 lbs – above my fight weight) against a good opponent, Mary Verona Farm. I’d met Mary before at a previous event (I wasn’t fighting her) and she’s incredibly sweet. One of my favorite fighters just as...

November 17, 2016 – Loi Kroh, Chiang Mai – full fight video above Having just beaten the champ, Thanonchanok, the night before in a somewhat un-credible and unexpected experience for me, I was riding pretty high getting back into the ring with Kwangtong. My lower leg still hurt from our last fight together, which was only 8 days prior, but I just made my peace with the fact that she was likely going to go after that leg again and I could do my best to try to block...

Dean Potter was one of those rare men who found himself inextricably drawn to the world of what lay people call “extreme sports.” In an interview I watched with him, he said he doesn’t like the term BASE jumping, an acronym that stands for the four categories of objects off of which you can make your jump: Building, Antenna, Span and Earth (a cliff, for example). Dean was less romanced by whatever it was he was jumping off of and focused a great deal of developing technologies for “wingsuits,” basically...

I’m stopped on the side of a street off a main road, On Nut Road, in Bangkok. There are small shops, a lot of large residential buildings, and some very loud construction that I’m trying to plug out of my ear so I can hear Attachai on the other side of a phone call. It’s a sometimes narrow street like can be found on any other Bangkok side soi. “No, go more,” he says. So I get back in the car and Kevin and I creep down the road, all...

As the gym grows quiet with all the boys chittering fading away as they leave for the night, I sit on the edge of the ring with Pi Nu and listen to his woes. He loves Muay Thai, it’s his whole life. And he’s a simple kind of man, only “wanting enough” and nothing more. So, the business side of Muay Thai, which is all talking about money and grappling for power and working in the dark, all that is stuff that Pi Nu would rather just leave to the...

Kem’s gym in the Khao Yai mountains of Khorat is just an incredible place. It’s beautiful, it feels remote and like the “middle of nowhere” locations for training montages in movies like “Kickboxer” or old Kung Fu movies. And Kem himself is this very stoic, very keen-eyed trainer who watches closely and makes super fine-tuned and detailed corrections to technique. For this reason, he’s great for beginners and experienced fighters alike. I like Kem very much and was fortunate enough to have him corner for me at a fight...

above: Gwangtong, me and Phetlilaa When I have a few days in Chiang Mai, I like to head up to the Pettonpung Gym in Mae Rim for a little clinching with their fighters. It’s an all-female gym and home to the best female clincher in the North (Phetlilaa), so I have an affinity for the fact of it (all-female is so cool), as well as wanting to work with their fighters as a way to allow all of us to get better together. It is the case that many...

Listen to the Muay Thai Guys Realities of Being a Sponsored Fighter podcast here The recent Muay Thai Guys podcast covers the realities of being a sponsored fighter at a small sample of gyms in Thailand. Sean and Paul have both been sponsored at Khongsittha in Bangkok, where the “Muay Thai Training Camp” retreats are hosted, and Paul recently had a few months at the brand new Namsaknoi gym on Koh Phan-Ngan. I don’t know how illustrative it is of sponsored fighters – I’ve never been a sponsored fighter,...

my YouTube over 2,500 videos my Patreon On April 5th, 2017, it will be five years since my husband Kevin and I arrived in Thailand. The next day, April 6th, marks the day we arrived at Lanna Muay Thai in Chiang Mai, our ultimate destination when we decided to move to Thailand in an effort to get as much time training and fighting and writing about it as possible. Incidentally, I’ll be arriving in Chiang Mai this April 6th for a fight, bringing it around. above – this was...

A reader recently asked me if I’d ever written a post on what Thai trainers say during padwork. Obviously trainers are not all the same, but knowing the Thai words for basic commands, as well as what is meant by less-basic commands, seems like a good thing to compile into a list. To be clear, when coming to Thailand to train many, many trainers will have at least some basic English vocabulary, and in western oriented gyms may have quite a lot, and even if they don’t have English...

I was sitting on the blue mats in the weight room of my gym, creating a pool of sweat around myself as I dripped from training. My thumbs slipped and smeared droplets of sweat on the surface of my phone as I tried to type notes from my conversation with Pi Nu, who was sitting with his back to the mirrored wall, facing me, taking the opportunity to stop his own workout in order to chat with me. I was trying to get the biography of one of his...

my vlog from yesterday, talking about my training, and the If/When difference in Mental Training Recently I’ve been listening to this podcast by former pro-NFL player Niyi Sobo. It’s an excellent mental training resource and I highly recommend you all start listening to it. He approaches the concepts and practices of “mental toughness” in a relate-able and easy to understand way, which makes his methods immediately practical. You can check out his entire podcast library at Sports Motivation Podcast, and the episode I reference in this vlog is #118:...

above, 5 minutes of my 56 minute session with Andy Thomson. The full Muay Thai Library can be immediately accessed for a suggested pledge of $5. Andy Thomson is a legend in the North of Thailand. He and his partner Pom started the Lanna Muay Thai camp (Thai name Giatbusaba) over 20 years ago and are responsible for the first wave of western fighters having the Thailand training/fighting experience up in the North. They also brought up Thai boys, who have achieved titles and fame (Nong Toom, the “Beautiful...

above is one round of The Burn, taken from the full session breakdown for Nak Muay Nation members, in the running series PhD Padwork When Pi Nu has a conditioning idea, it’s always going to be really difficult and, yes, I am often his Guinea Pig; he tests the routines out on me and then, when it inevitably passes that test, he brings it to the boys and tells them, “Sylvie did it, so you can do it.” I hate this burn routine. It’s actually a development off of...

I am through and through a “country mouse.” Having grown up in Granolaville (Boulder, Colorado), moving to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand wasn’t too far of a stretch for me. Yes, sure, lots of exotic and amazing differences between cultures and people and what I’m doing with my life with Muay Thai, but the number of barefooted, harem-pants-wearing backpackers and hippie ex-pat professors was very familiar, indeed. Chiang Mai is a University town, which gives it a kind of middle-class feel and there is always someone around...

The Annual Wan Wai Nai Khanomtom festival takes place in Ayutthaya, amidst the beautiful ruins and chedis of the old capital of Siam. Nai Khanomtom is considered the “father of Muay Thai,” a legend who fought for his own freedom when he’d been captured by the invading Burmese army and defeated a number of their best fighters in Muay bouts for the Burmese king. He’s a historic hero and this event is a day to pay him respect and also just a huge cultural display of crafts, Yantra writing,...

a note: if you live in Thailand you will find that antibiotics are heavily prescribed, and because they are available over the counter they are also widely taken. I’ve found many Thais who don’t really understand how antibiotics work (i.e., in cycles), so off-hand advice, even from trainers, is probably best to question. Eventually, everyone gets sick. In some cases, you can (and should) stay away from the gym and get some rest, but in some cases you can’t (and don’t need to) refrain from training. I happen to...

Team, a Thai boy who is my more or less regular clinch partner these days, is a good 3 inches shorter than I am, but he’s all muscle. When we clinch, I can use my reach to snuff him in the face and kind of spoil his entry, which is a rare treat because I’m not longer than anybody else who I train with or fight. He uses the same clinch entry all the time, which is reaching wide with his right arm, like a hook, and purposefully over-turning...