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The more I watch Muay Thai, the more I fall in love with the stillness of it. The explosion of movement and the collision of limbs and trunks and bodies is exciting in contrast to that stillness. More and more I seek to bring cohesion between what my body does in the ring and what those bodies I so admire are doing – and more now than ever it’s in trying to adopt that stillness, rather than to imitate the powerful, smooth, slick strikes. Take Karuhat for example. I...
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Up in the mountains of Khao Yai Thiang, a 4 km climb up a narrow road lined with bushes and branches which reach out and brush the open windows of the car, is the Kem Muaythai Gym. In this hideaway is some really great Muay Thai training, and like a treasure within a treasure, Yodwicha trains there. You can read about Kem’s gym here. Yodwicha is an incredible clinch fighter and was named “Fighter of the Year” along with Sangmanee Sor. Tienpo (a truly opposite style femur fighter) when they...
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The first side of this coin is always present, like an undercurrent that you can kind of push out of your conscious mind for periods of time before it flares back up and forces you to reckon with it. It’s the side of the coin that lets you know how shitty being “unique” can be. At my gym in Pattaya, Petchrungruang, I am the only woman who trains there. Not only the one western woman, the only woman at all. There have been women there before and every now...
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My first job was over the summer when I was 13 years old, employed by the City of Boulder to build trailheads, plant shrubs and restore an historic ranch up on the mountain. It was thankless, hot, physical labor and I loved it. For one week we were out in this field where the mud had dried out into ankle-breaking knobs and clots of dirt. There was nothing in the field, nothing, but part of it belonged to the city and part of it didn’t, so our job was to...
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From the moment you turn off the highway it’s an uphill climb to Kem Muaythai Gym. The road is paved, but barely wide enough for cars to squeeze by one another if there happens to be someone on the way down at the same time. And it strikes me as we navigate the narrow path that it seems a single heavy rain could wash away the road all together, although that clearly hasn’t happened. My first thought is, “what an awesome run this would be.” One of the western...
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read my guest post articles a Husband’s Point of View A Husband’s Point of View – Consider this a working theory. I’ve written about the uniqueness of Thai style training before, in The Slow Cook vs the Hack, and this article can be seen as something of an extension of that. But as Sylvie’s husband watching her progress through very earnest training and a hell of a lot of fighting, and seeing numerous westerners come through her Thai gyms, I’ve come upon something I think is pretty important. What...
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Part of what makes Jaidee such a good companion for me is that he sleeps on an Olympic Gold level. He can nap and laze around for hours and when it’s time for me to nap in the day between sessions he’s a real champ of a partner, curling up with me and stealing my pillow. But what’s really amazing about Jaidee is his running. He’s not a “good” runner by any means, when I try to run with him in the mornings he rarely makes it a few...
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You can read my original review of the Lobloo Areoslim for Women here You can save 10% on all cups and accessories on lobloo.com with the promocode SYLVIE-PROMO Lobloo is helping get the female Areoslim to female fighters in Thailand I’m a big fan of the female groin guard by Swedish company Lobloo. I reckon it’s accurate to refer to it, really, as the female groin guard, because I’ve never seen any others that are as practical, functional and comfortable. When I first started talking about the Lobloo, the overall...
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This is the first 7 minutes of a 30+ minute private session with Pi Earn Petchrungruang. This post is to give you all an idea of the kind of content I’m going to be doing regularly for my Patreon supporters, who generously help keep all the content that is available for free on 8limbs.us going. It’s a way to say “thank you” to those supporters who make it possible for everyone. The complete video of this session is available to active patrons and runs about 34 minutes with commentary,...
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We got a question on the Muay Thai Roundtable forum the other day that I reckon is a pretty common issue. When I first started taking Muay Thai from Master K, he described the teep as the “electric fence” around every other technique. Teep comes first, basically – the first line of defense and keeping your opponent out of your space until you want them there. And I sucked at teeping for a really long time. It’s only fairly recently, in the last 1.5 years maybe, that my teep has...
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supporter content only $1 a month We’ve hit a bit of rough patch, possibly a very rough patch. My fighting and journalism here in Thailand has always relied on my husband Kevin’s income as a consultant, but only last week he lost his biggest client due to corporate downsizing, and we’re faced with truly having to make 8limbs.us self-sustaining. To add to this stress, we have maybe 6 months to figure this out and make it sustainable or face the reality of all of this ending. All this time I’ve...
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The Venum Training Camp in Pattaya is a brand new facility, a huge training space which already offers a variety of options including Muay Thai (primarily), MMA, “Combat Fitness”, and CrossFit. The floor is fully matted all the way throughout the space and there’s a kind of felt-like covering in the areas with hanging bags, which is a great option for preventing slippage from dripping sweat. This is the kind of thing you notice when you’ve been in Thailand for a while because what the floors are made of...
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As the story goes, I was 2 and a half years old and my oldest brother Gabe – then probably about 9 years old – was finishing up his violin lesson. I stood up from whatever wooden blocks or plastic toys were keeping me occupied on the floor of the practice studio and crept up to my mother’s knees. She couldn’t hear my meek, mousy voice (my nickname back then was “Miss Mouse”) and leaned down to hear me better, and I repeated my question, “When do I get...
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You can watch my video interview with Angie here. I’m watching Angie smash the pads with Pi Nu. She becomes very still when he tags her legs with kicks – they don’t look hard from here, and they’re definitely not full power, but I’ve been on the receiving end of them and they fucking hurt – but she stays strong. She pauses after the strike, the expression on her face becomes hardened and she comes back with a full-power strike and a grunt, almost a growl, in return. She’s...
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June 1, 2016 – Thapae Stadium It was difficult to get a fight booked up in Chiang Mai. After winning the Northern Title off of Faa Chiang Rai (How I won the Northern Championship Belt, a Belt No Westerner Can Hold), I could not get a fight in the North. I don’t know that it’s related, but it was a very clear correlation that could have had to do with promoters getting slapped on the wrist for having me fight for the belt in the first place, or nobody...
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Sean “Muay Thai Guy” Fagan invited me to the August Nak Muay Nation training camp at Khongsitta Gym in Bangkok. We scheduled two days, allowing me to take part in 4 sessions with the group that has been training at the camp for the month of August (and some of them carrying over from the previous training camp in July). The camp was being hosted by American Fighter Muay Thai Athlete Paul Banasiak. This would bring 3 Muay Thai bloggers together! My taxi picked me up at my apartment...
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above, YouTube video of Andrew Zimmern receiving his Sak Yant You can read about my own Sak Yant experiences here Since the airing of Andrew Zimmern’s Driven By Food I’ve already received a lot of questions about how to get a Sak Yant from Arjan Pi Bangkating, so this post is a basic 101 on how to get in touch with him so you can arrange a Sak Yant session. Arjan Pi moves between locations in rotation. Most of his time is spent in Chiang Mai and in...
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I descend the steep stairs at the front of WKO, holding on to the handrail as the deep drop between each metal platform is designed for someone taller than I am, and feel the hot afternoon air rush into me as I open the glass door and exit the air-con. The metal of the lock I use on my helmet is hot to the touch as I unchain it from my bike and I have to carefully angle the helmet as I pull it over my head, to avoid...
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Training with the legend Karuhat is some of my favorite time spent doing anything. There’s something about his energy that really speaks to me. There simply is nobody else who fights like Karuhat, whose name means a fortress and that’s pretty much how he looks when he’s checking kicks faster than my eyes can read them on the screen. But it’s not as though he never gets hit – he stands in and that means taking strikes – but it’s as if they don’t register at all. Occasionally he...
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May 27, 2016 – “The Verona” at Prachin Buri – the video above has some audio problems This was one of the rare occasions where I got to fight with other fighters from my gym. I love that opportunity, it’s very rare for me, but it also creates a bit of pressure because there’s so much going on and even if it has nothing to do with me, the results of your teammate’s fights can affect the mood. We happened to have tons of fighters on this card, which meant...
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It’s very hard to learn the clinch anywhere in the world outside of Thailand. Truth told, it’s hard in Thailand also. Part of that is that the clinch is not really instructed so much as learned through hours and hours of simply doing and figuring out for yourself what works and all the many things that don’t work. Because it requires so much time and trial and error, most of us simply don’t get the exposure – we just don’t have that kind of immersion and time – to really learn the...
Sabai I focus fiercely on the pads strapped to each forearm of my trainer, Kru Den, as he calls...
The first time I met Dieselnoi for real, meaning I got to talk to him rather than just a...
I’m not a Kru. I’m not a teacher. I’m still a full time fighter, I’m still a student, I’m...
The work we are doing with the Preserve The Legacy project not only includes the building of the immense...
September 27, 2016The more I watch Muay Thai, the more I fall in love with the stillness of it. The explosion of movement and the collision of limbs and trunks and bodies is exciting in contrast to that stillness. More and more I seek to bring cohesion between what my body does in the ring and what those bodies I so admire are doing – and more now than ever it’s in trying to adopt that stillness, rather than to imitate the powerful, smooth, slick strikes. Take Karuhat for example. I...
September 25, 2016Up in the mountains of Khao Yai Thiang, a 4 km climb up a narrow road lined with bushes and branches which reach out and brush the open windows of the car, is the Kem Muaythai Gym. In this hideaway is some really great Muay Thai training, and like a treasure within a treasure, Yodwicha trains there. You can read about Kem’s gym here. Yodwicha is an incredible clinch fighter and was named “Fighter of the Year” along with Sangmanee Sor. Tienpo (a truly opposite style femur fighter) when they...
September 23, 2016The first side of this coin is always present, like an undercurrent that you can kind of push out of your conscious mind for periods of time before it flares back up and forces you to reckon with it. It’s the side of the coin that lets you know how shitty being “unique” can be. At my gym in Pattaya, Petchrungruang, I am the only woman who trains there. Not only the one western woman, the only woman at all. There have been women there before and every now...
September 20, 2016My first job was over the summer when I was 13 years old, employed by the City of Boulder to build trailheads, plant shrubs and restore an historic ranch up on the mountain. It was thankless, hot, physical labor and I loved it. For one week we were out in this field where the mud had dried out into ankle-breaking knobs and clots of dirt. There was nothing in the field, nothing, but part of it belonged to the city and part of it didn’t, so our job was to...
September 19, 2016From the moment you turn off the highway it’s an uphill climb to Kem Muaythai Gym. The road is paved, but barely wide enough for cars to squeeze by one another if there happens to be someone on the way down at the same time. And it strikes me as we navigate the narrow path that it seems a single heavy rain could wash away the road all together, although that clearly hasn’t happened. My first thought is, “what an awesome run this would be.” One of the western...
September 17, 2016read my guest post articles a Husband’s Point of View A Husband’s Point of View – Consider this a working theory. I’ve written about the uniqueness of Thai style training before, in The Slow Cook vs the Hack, and this article can be seen as something of an extension of that. But as Sylvie’s husband watching her progress through very earnest training and a hell of a lot of fighting, and seeing numerous westerners come through her Thai gyms, I’ve come upon something I think is pretty important. What...
September 15, 2016Part of what makes Jaidee such a good companion for me is that he sleeps on an Olympic Gold level. He can nap and laze around for hours and when it’s time for me to nap in the day between sessions he’s a real champ of a partner, curling up with me and stealing my pillow. But what’s really amazing about Jaidee is his running. He’s not a “good” runner by any means, when I try to run with him in the mornings he rarely makes it a few...
September 14, 2016You can read my original review of the Lobloo Areoslim for Women here You can save 10% on all cups and accessories on lobloo.com with the promocode SYLVIE-PROMO Lobloo is helping get the female Areoslim to female fighters in Thailand I’m a big fan of the female groin guard by Swedish company Lobloo. I reckon it’s accurate to refer to it, really, as the female groin guard, because I’ve never seen any others that are as practical, functional and comfortable. When I first started talking about the Lobloo, the overall...
September 11, 2016This is the first 7 minutes of a 30+ minute private session with Pi Earn Petchrungruang. This post is to give you all an idea of the kind of content I’m going to be doing regularly for my Patreon supporters, who generously help keep all the content that is available for free on 8limbs.us going. It’s a way to say “thank you” to those supporters who make it possible for everyone. The complete video of this session is available to active patrons and runs about 34 minutes with commentary,...
September 8, 2016We got a question on the Muay Thai Roundtable forum the other day that I reckon is a pretty common issue. When I first started taking Muay Thai from Master K, he described the teep as the “electric fence” around every other technique. Teep comes first, basically – the first line of defense and keeping your opponent out of your space until you want them there. And I sucked at teeping for a really long time. It’s only fairly recently, in the last 1.5 years maybe, that my teep has...
September 6, 2016supporter content only $1 a month We’ve hit a bit of rough patch, possibly a very rough patch. My fighting and journalism here in Thailand has always relied on my husband Kevin’s income as a consultant, but only last week he lost his biggest client due to corporate downsizing, and we’re faced with truly having to make 8limbs.us self-sustaining. To add to this stress, we have maybe 6 months to figure this out and make it sustainable or face the reality of all of this ending. All this time I’ve...
September 4, 2016The Venum Training Camp in Pattaya is a brand new facility, a huge training space which already offers a variety of options including Muay Thai (primarily), MMA, “Combat Fitness”, and CrossFit. The floor is fully matted all the way throughout the space and there’s a kind of felt-like covering in the areas with hanging bags, which is a great option for preventing slippage from dripping sweat. This is the kind of thing you notice when you’ve been in Thailand for a while because what the floors are made of...
September 3, 2016As the story goes, I was 2 and a half years old and my oldest brother Gabe – then probably about 9 years old – was finishing up his violin lesson. I stood up from whatever wooden blocks or plastic toys were keeping me occupied on the floor of the practice studio and crept up to my mother’s knees. She couldn’t hear my meek, mousy voice (my nickname back then was “Miss Mouse”) and leaned down to hear me better, and I repeated my question, “When do I get...
September 2, 2016You can watch my video interview with Angie here. I’m watching Angie smash the pads with Pi Nu. She becomes very still when he tags her legs with kicks – they don’t look hard from here, and they’re definitely not full power, but I’ve been on the receiving end of them and they fucking hurt – but she stays strong. She pauses after the strike, the expression on her face becomes hardened and she comes back with a full-power strike and a grunt, almost a growl, in return. She’s...
September 1, 2016June 1, 2016 – Thapae Stadium It was difficult to get a fight booked up in Chiang Mai. After winning the Northern Title off of Faa Chiang Rai (How I won the Northern Championship Belt, a Belt No Westerner Can Hold), I could not get a fight in the North. I don’t know that it’s related, but it was a very clear correlation that could have had to do with promoters getting slapped on the wrist for having me fight for the belt in the first place, or nobody...
August 31, 2016Sean “Muay Thai Guy” Fagan invited me to the August Nak Muay Nation training camp at Khongsitta Gym in Bangkok. We scheduled two days, allowing me to take part in 4 sessions with the group that has been training at the camp for the month of August (and some of them carrying over from the previous training camp in July). The camp was being hosted by American Fighter Muay Thai Athlete Paul Banasiak. This would bring 3 Muay Thai bloggers together! My taxi picked me up at my apartment...
August 30, 2016above, YouTube video of Andrew Zimmern receiving his Sak Yant You can read about my own Sak Yant experiences here Since the airing of Andrew Zimmern’s Driven By Food I’ve already received a lot of questions about how to get a Sak Yant from Arjan Pi Bangkating, so this post is a basic 101 on how to get in touch with him so you can arrange a Sak Yant session. Arjan Pi moves between locations in rotation. Most of his time is spent in Chiang Mai and in...
August 29, 2016I descend the steep stairs at the front of WKO, holding on to the handrail as the deep drop between each metal platform is designed for someone taller than I am, and feel the hot afternoon air rush into me as I open the glass door and exit the air-con. The metal of the lock I use on my helmet is hot to the touch as I unchain it from my bike and I have to carefully angle the helmet as I pull it over my head, to avoid...
August 28, 2016Training with the legend Karuhat is some of my favorite time spent doing anything. There’s something about his energy that really speaks to me. There simply is nobody else who fights like Karuhat, whose name means a fortress and that’s pretty much how he looks when he’s checking kicks faster than my eyes can read them on the screen. But it’s not as though he never gets hit – he stands in and that means taking strikes – but it’s as if they don’t register at all. Occasionally he...
August 27, 2016May 27, 2016 – “The Verona” at Prachin Buri – the video above has some audio problems This was one of the rare occasions where I got to fight with other fighters from my gym. I love that opportunity, it’s very rare for me, but it also creates a bit of pressure because there’s so much going on and even if it has nothing to do with me, the results of your teammate’s fights can affect the mood. We happened to have tons of fighters on this card, which meant...
August 19, 2016It’s very hard to learn the clinch anywhere in the world outside of Thailand. Truth told, it’s hard in Thailand also. Part of that is that the clinch is not really instructed so much as learned through hours and hours of simply doing and figuring out for yourself what works and all the many things that don’t work. Because it requires so much time and trial and error, most of us simply don’t get the exposure – we just don’t have that kind of immersion and time – to really learn the...
August 10, 2012Ever since Den hit my nose in padwork and it started spurting blood like a B-movie, he’s been asking me before every training session whether I think I can fight on the 17th. “If not,” he says, “we wait.” I always say, “I think the 17th is fine,” and when he stares at me flatly I offer, “but we can confirm on Friday.” Den explained to me that the promoter wants to make a poster for the 17th and so Den doesn’t want to offer him my name...
July 24, 2012Brother My brother Shane and I are close in disposition and age; he is two years my elder. As the younger siblings we were subjected to both the physical maturity and emotional immaturity of our older two siblings and, though I have written here about my difficulties in being the youngest and the odd girl out, I think Shane had it harder in some ways as the youngest brother. Our similarities, however, have always allowed us to learn from one another in a way that I feel is deeper...
June 5, 2012One of the more difficult aspects of adopting a consistent mental training regimen is being able to identify and acknowledge the numerous ways in which one has been already training negative mental practices. It’s actually the cliche that “the subject has to want to change” in order for any positive training to take place at all. Take for instance the fact of conscious mental training by itself. I have attempted to adopt practices before and usually gave up really quickly because I didn’t feel that it meant anything to...
January 25, 2010Today was utterly disorienting. It began with a restless night and ran straight into a quiet, but difficult day of training. I felt okay during the morning session and even going into the afternoon with a good nap under me and a little energy to carry me through the padwork in the ring. I’d spoken with my husband over breakfast about my increasing discomfort with not having much of the Thai language under my belt and, with my increased sleeping between sessions during the day, I was feeling ever...
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