-
The Female Fighter Collective – we are now 6 The Female Fighter Collective was borne out of the idea that women’s voices are out there, they’re just not being shared. For many of us, we are the minority in our gyms and so the shared experiences with other women might come from other gyms, with women who are across the world. But how do you make those contact points? My friend Emma lives in Bangkok and during our friendship I’ve lived in Chiang Mai and then Pattaya. She and I...
-
Bid on this incredible Dieselnoi autographed book In starting the Muay Thai Library – Preserve the Legacy project, the initial impetus was to document not only a vanishing knowledge of techniques, but also documenting the men who know those techniques in their bodies and minds, who have expressed themselves through the vocabulary of Muay Thai for decades. You can see how wonderful their Muay Thai is when you watch them in old fight videos, but you really get a sense for how it all fits together when you see...
-
Sign up for the Muay Khao Summit now – deposit or full payment (here) It’s hard to describe all the influences that went into the idea of bringing together the greatest collection of Muay Khao (knee fighting) legends to one seminar-type event. But surely the seeds were buried in my own frustrations from the early part of my career of training in Thailand, when it was seemingly impossible to even find decent clinch training. Here I was in Thailand, and I couldn’t learn clinch. My size, my gender, my age, my relative inexperience, and...
-
Like all great things in history, there may be a few versions of the exact number of fights documented in Len Wickwar’s professional fighting. “He killed a bear with his bare hands;” “No, he killed 3 bears!” BoxRec sets Len Wickwar’s never-to-be-broken record at 470. So I’ve decided I’m going to go and break it. But, also like all great things in history, I aim to break it as a means to honor it, and the countless men (and some women) who have fought incredible numbers of bouts. The unsung Travis Fultons’s of MMA,...
-
Just under a month ago, I came home from fighting in Chiang Mai and training with Langsuan for the Muay Thai Library project. When I got back to my regular gym for training, I was committed to the #Langsuan1000 challenge of completing 1000 knees and 1000 teeps at each session, every day. This meant I was kneeing or teeping the bag pretty much any time I wasn’t in the ring doing padwork, clinching or sparring. When I skinned my knees from sweating and kneeing the bag, I had to...
-
The total hours of free video clips that are found below, just by themselves, are some amazing resources for some of the best Muay Thai technique available online. But they don’t stand on their own, as they represent the over 50 hours of training sessions I’ve had with legends of this art in my Muay Thai Library documentary project – the most updated list is found here. There is nothing else like this archive of Thai techniques, most of these krus and legends seldom or never filmed before, an archive...
-
Guest Post Lists and rankings are good for a sport, and female Muay Thai on the world spectrum dramatically lacks any kind of cohesive vision of even who the best fighters in the world are (a bit on world titles, and other measures below). If you can’t even picture who is really, really good, and think about who might be better than whom, a large part of ambition and dreaming is lost on fighters, and on youth entering the sport aiming at excellence. The purpose of this list is...
-
Train Like a Legend – For The Love of Muay Khao I’ve vlogged about how when I trained and filmed with legendary Golden Age knee fighter, and Fighter of the Year Langsuan he told me that to properly train as a Muay Khao fighter I should be doing 1,000 knees and a 1,000 teeps per session. Which was frightening. But as usual, I just dove right in. Dieselnoi, the King of Knees, had also told me something similar, that Muay Khao fighters have to train like nobody else, heaping...
-
The Keto Diet, ketogenesis: The keto diet features very low carb (- 20 g), moderate protein, and high fats, designed to switch the body from sugar-burning to ketone-burning, with suggested benefits of mental clarity, recovery and anti-inflammation, and weight loss (for those that need it), making use of hormone and metabolic responses evolved in humans through long periods of fasting or lean eating. What follows is not an expert telling, you can Google about and find more on all the things I bring up, but it is my telling....
-
Above is an video excerpt from an 18 minute interview I did with the immortal Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn, the greatest knee fighter in history, who ultimately was stripped of his Lumpinee Belt and forced into an early retirement because nobody would fight him. He remains an absolute pillar of the Thai legends in Thailand’s Muay Thai community, and a fixture of what Muay Thai means in Thailand. In this clip he is expanding on a complaint echoed by many veterans of the sport: that Muay Thai scoring has damaged the sport...
-
I open this vlog (above) by saying that if you train in Thailand, for any amount of time honestly, you have a possibility of acquiring a Staph. infection, or what in Thailand is called “fee“. This isn’t because Thailand gyms are filthy, this is because this climate and the conditions of contact with other bodies and equipment, the propensity for getting small scratches from Velco on gloves or shinpads, from shaving, from scratching at a bug bite or the bug bite itself… it all just helps infections thrive. In the...
-
The Piano and the Drum Karuhat glances behind his shoulder to check how close the nearest ear is, then leans in toward me and lowers his voice to say something along the lines of, “I could totally take him; he’s not fit, just look at how tubby he is.” There’s an earnestness in Karuhat’s voice that’s a little surprising, as the man he’s talking about is a friend of his and they’ve been talking shit to each other across the ropes, while Karuhat trains me in the ring, for...
-
watch the full hour of this study here listen to the study as a podcast here This is a new endeavor for Patreon content. The “Slo-Mo Geek Out” title is pending, but right now it’s super accurate because we’ve taken an excerpt from a regular Muay Thai Library session and slowed it down (slo-mo), in order to really see how everything flows out and in, and then Kevin and I do voiceover and “geek out” over how incredible all this movement, technique and continuity is from the best practitioners and...
-
My husband is a metaphysical thinker; an endless analyzer; a lover of maps, graphs and diagrams; and a beautiful writer. He also happens to have been with me since day one of training Muay Thai in Master K’s basement and is, in fact, the person responsible for me ever having seen Muay Thai in the first place. While he is not himself a fighter, he has seen and experienced all of this Muay Thai journey with me. And, as such a prolific thinker and watcher, what he sees and...
-
above is a 5 minute trailer for episode 1 of my new Patreon series Kaimuay Diary – I don’t write about my home gym, Petchrungruang, very often, given how much I have written on Muay Thai. Part of this is that I’m 6 years into my fulltime life as a fighter in Thailand, now with over 200 fights in the country, and the day-t0-day has become a little invisible to me, so I don’t think to post about it at all. At the beginning, everything is remarkable. But over the...
-
Pattaya, Thailand – This isn’t a lecture from on high on how you should be, we all come to Thailand for different aims and purposes. It’s about how you might be offending your Thai instructor without realizing it at all, and a little on how you can re-balance the situation. Kru Nu is sitting on the dark, polished wooden bench that runs the length of the far side of the gym. He’s pinching the skin of his stomach between his fingers and frowning while I finish my set of...
-
February 25, 2017 – Nongbuacoke, Isaan, Thailand This fight was 5 days after my loss to the World Champion Thanonchanok, going from urban Chiang Mai to a festival fight in the middle of Isaan. This is the amazing thing about how I’ve been able to fight in Thailand. You can be fighting surrounded by bars, and be facing a world champion, and then in fields, facing another experienced fighter just a few days later. There are wonderful distinctions to fighting in Isaan, like the kind of unassuming but very skilled...
-
Let me preface this – this post is directed in particular to small-bodied fighters, and perhaps especially women. Thai clinch is one of the hardest things to learn no matter where you live in the world. Outside of Thailand it is difficult because there are so few high level clinchers, nor are there many instructors with lots of experience in it. It’s often taught and practiced in a very narrow scope, that is far from its Thai origins. In Thailand it can be even harder to learn, and that is...
-
Injuries and illnesses both large and small I’m often asked whether or not I’ve experienced a particular type of injury that the person asking is currently suffering from, generally seeking advice on how to deal with it. I’ve been very lucky in that I haven’t suffered any large, chronic, or debilitating injuries throughout my 6 years as a full-time fighter, only very rarely taking time off from training, and fighting over 200 times in the country. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had any. I realized recently that I...
-
February 20, 2017 – Loi Kroh Stadium, Chiang Mai full fight above – This was my third time facing Thanonchanok in as many months, which for me was a great signal of my growth. I had fought her twice before but many years ago. The first meeting, I had no business being in the ring with her at all. She was a world champion, I was just learning the ropes of being a fighter in Thailand really. The second time was so close I could have won with a...
-
I recently discovered and been diving into a mindset podcast – largely for women – by a woman named Kara Loewentheil: “Unf*ck Your Brain.” It’s a big recommend. She’s a mental coach and offers tons of really insightful tools and explanations for free on her podcast and I’ve been getting a lot out of each and every one. In the last year I’ve been full-on committed to making the mental adjustments that not only will help me succeed in the ring, but also live a happier life, doing 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 20, 2018The Female Fighter Collective – we are now 6 The Female Fighter Collective was borne out of the idea that women’s voices are out there, they’re just not being shared. For many of us, we are the minority in our gyms and so the shared experiences with other women might come from other gyms, with women who are across the world. But how do you make those contact points? My friend Emma lives in Bangkok and during our friendship I’ve lived in Chiang Mai and then Pattaya. She and I...
September 17, 2018Bid on this incredible Dieselnoi autographed book In starting the Muay Thai Library – Preserve the Legacy project, the initial impetus was to document not only a vanishing knowledge of techniques, but also documenting the men who know those techniques in their bodies and minds, who have expressed themselves through the vocabulary of Muay Thai for decades. You can see how wonderful their Muay Thai is when you watch them in old fight videos, but you really get a sense for how it all fits together when you see...
September 5, 2018Sign up for the Muay Khao Summit now – deposit or full payment (here) It’s hard to describe all the influences that went into the idea of bringing together the greatest collection of Muay Khao (knee fighting) legends to one seminar-type event. But surely the seeds were buried in my own frustrations from the early part of my career of training in Thailand, when it was seemingly impossible to even find decent clinch training. Here I was in Thailand, and I couldn’t learn clinch. My size, my gender, my age, my relative inexperience, and...
September 4, 2018Like all great things in history, there may be a few versions of the exact number of fights documented in Len Wickwar’s professional fighting. “He killed a bear with his bare hands;” “No, he killed 3 bears!” BoxRec sets Len Wickwar’s never-to-be-broken record at 470. So I’ve decided I’m going to go and break it. But, also like all great things in history, I aim to break it as a means to honor it, and the countless men (and some women) who have fought incredible numbers of bouts. The unsung Travis Fultons’s of MMA,...
September 2, 2018Just under a month ago, I came home from fighting in Chiang Mai and training with Langsuan for the Muay Thai Library project. When I got back to my regular gym for training, I was committed to the #Langsuan1000 challenge of completing 1000 knees and 1000 teeps at each session, every day. This meant I was kneeing or teeping the bag pretty much any time I wasn’t in the ring doing padwork, clinching or sparring. When I skinned my knees from sweating and kneeing the bag, I had to...
August 20, 2018The total hours of free video clips that are found below, just by themselves, are some amazing resources for some of the best Muay Thai technique available online. But they don’t stand on their own, as they represent the over 50 hours of training sessions I’ve had with legends of this art in my Muay Thai Library documentary project – the most updated list is found here. There is nothing else like this archive of Thai techniques, most of these krus and legends seldom or never filmed before, an archive...
August 17, 2018Guest Post Lists and rankings are good for a sport, and female Muay Thai on the world spectrum dramatically lacks any kind of cohesive vision of even who the best fighters in the world are (a bit on world titles, and other measures below). If you can’t even picture who is really, really good, and think about who might be better than whom, a large part of ambition and dreaming is lost on fighters, and on youth entering the sport aiming at excellence. The purpose of this list is...
August 15, 2018Train Like a Legend – For The Love of Muay Khao I’ve vlogged about how when I trained and filmed with legendary Golden Age knee fighter, and Fighter of the Year Langsuan he told me that to properly train as a Muay Khao fighter I should be doing 1,000 knees and a 1,000 teeps per session. Which was frightening. But as usual, I just dove right in. Dieselnoi, the King of Knees, had also told me something similar, that Muay Khao fighters have to train like nobody else, heaping...
August 12, 2018The Keto Diet, ketogenesis: The keto diet features very low carb (- 20 g), moderate protein, and high fats, designed to switch the body from sugar-burning to ketone-burning, with suggested benefits of mental clarity, recovery and anti-inflammation, and weight loss (for those that need it), making use of hormone and metabolic responses evolved in humans through long periods of fasting or lean eating. What follows is not an expert telling, you can Google about and find more on all the things I bring up, but it is my telling....
July 25, 2018Above is an video excerpt from an 18 minute interview I did with the immortal Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn, the greatest knee fighter in history, who ultimately was stripped of his Lumpinee Belt and forced into an early retirement because nobody would fight him. He remains an absolute pillar of the Thai legends in Thailand’s Muay Thai community, and a fixture of what Muay Thai means in Thailand. In this clip he is expanding on a complaint echoed by many veterans of the sport: that Muay Thai scoring has damaged the sport...
July 16, 2018I open this vlog (above) by saying that if you train in Thailand, for any amount of time honestly, you have a possibility of acquiring a Staph. infection, or what in Thailand is called “fee“. This isn’t because Thailand gyms are filthy, this is because this climate and the conditions of contact with other bodies and equipment, the propensity for getting small scratches from Velco on gloves or shinpads, from shaving, from scratching at a bug bite or the bug bite itself… it all just helps infections thrive. In the...
July 15, 2018The Piano and the Drum Karuhat glances behind his shoulder to check how close the nearest ear is, then leans in toward me and lowers his voice to say something along the lines of, “I could totally take him; he’s not fit, just look at how tubby he is.” There’s an earnestness in Karuhat’s voice that’s a little surprising, as the man he’s talking about is a friend of his and they’ve been talking shit to each other across the ropes, while Karuhat trains me in the ring, for...
July 12, 2018watch the full hour of this study here listen to the study as a podcast here This is a new endeavor for Patreon content. The “Slo-Mo Geek Out” title is pending, but right now it’s super accurate because we’ve taken an excerpt from a regular Muay Thai Library session and slowed it down (slo-mo), in order to really see how everything flows out and in, and then Kevin and I do voiceover and “geek out” over how incredible all this movement, technique and continuity is from the best practitioners and...
July 6, 2018My husband is a metaphysical thinker; an endless analyzer; a lover of maps, graphs and diagrams; and a beautiful writer. He also happens to have been with me since day one of training Muay Thai in Master K’s basement and is, in fact, the person responsible for me ever having seen Muay Thai in the first place. While he is not himself a fighter, he has seen and experienced all of this Muay Thai journey with me. And, as such a prolific thinker and watcher, what he sees and...
June 14, 2018above is a 5 minute trailer for episode 1 of my new Patreon series Kaimuay Diary – I don’t write about my home gym, Petchrungruang, very often, given how much I have written on Muay Thai. Part of this is that I’m 6 years into my fulltime life as a fighter in Thailand, now with over 200 fights in the country, and the day-t0-day has become a little invisible to me, so I don’t think to post about it at all. At the beginning, everything is remarkable. But over the...
June 13, 2018Pattaya, Thailand – This isn’t a lecture from on high on how you should be, we all come to Thailand for different aims and purposes. It’s about how you might be offending your Thai instructor without realizing it at all, and a little on how you can re-balance the situation. Kru Nu is sitting on the dark, polished wooden bench that runs the length of the far side of the gym. He’s pinching the skin of his stomach between his fingers and frowning while I finish my set of...
June 5, 2018February 25, 2017 – Nongbuacoke, Isaan, Thailand This fight was 5 days after my loss to the World Champion Thanonchanok, going from urban Chiang Mai to a festival fight in the middle of Isaan. This is the amazing thing about how I’ve been able to fight in Thailand. You can be fighting surrounded by bars, and be facing a world champion, and then in fields, facing another experienced fighter just a few days later. There are wonderful distinctions to fighting in Isaan, like the kind of unassuming but very skilled...
June 4, 2018Let me preface this – this post is directed in particular to small-bodied fighters, and perhaps especially women. Thai clinch is one of the hardest things to learn no matter where you live in the world. Outside of Thailand it is difficult because there are so few high level clinchers, nor are there many instructors with lots of experience in it. It’s often taught and practiced in a very narrow scope, that is far from its Thai origins. In Thailand it can be even harder to learn, and that is...
June 1, 2018Injuries and illnesses both large and small I’m often asked whether or not I’ve experienced a particular type of injury that the person asking is currently suffering from, generally seeking advice on how to deal with it. I’ve been very lucky in that I haven’t suffered any large, chronic, or debilitating injuries throughout my 6 years as a full-time fighter, only very rarely taking time off from training, and fighting over 200 times in the country. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had any. I realized recently that I...
May 28, 2018February 20, 2017 – Loi Kroh Stadium, Chiang Mai full fight above – This was my third time facing Thanonchanok in as many months, which for me was a great signal of my growth. I had fought her twice before but many years ago. The first meeting, I had no business being in the ring with her at all. She was a world champion, I was just learning the ropes of being a fighter in Thailand really. The second time was so close I could have won with a...
May 19, 2018I recently discovered and been diving into a mindset podcast – largely for women – by a woman named Kara Loewentheil: “Unf*ck Your Brain.” It’s a big recommend. She’s a mental coach and offers tons of really insightful tools and explanations for free on her podcast and I’ve been getting a lot out of each and every one. In the last year I’ve been full-on committed to making the mental adjustments that not only will help me succeed in the ring, but also live a happier life, doing the...
January 17, 2016Pain and Laughter Scene 1: a pain shoots through my right leg, right down the nerve that runs from the outside of my hip to my knee, and without any drama on my own part my leg simply gives out and I collapse to the floor. It hurts a lot and I honestly have to take a second, rolling on my belly to try to get back up and limp toward my adversary for revenge. But first I have to catch my breath because I’m laughing; and I have...
January 1, 2016Part of my husband’s job is finding things for us to watch on the computer because at night I just want to shut down and rest. His track record is pretty good, with an occasional big hit. Many of the hits have been anime, actually. But just recently we’ve started watching “One Punch Man,” which at its surface seems like it couldn’t possibly be good. A guy who can defeat any enemy with a single punch. How boring. In fact, the character himself is bored because he wants someone...
December 24, 2015Petchrungruang, Pattaya – Technique and Fear Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a 1 hour private lesson with Yodkhunpon, nicknamed “Elbow Hunter of 100 Needles (stitches)”. His fight name the first part, is basically “the ultimate warlord.” Both are appropriate names for his fighting style and persona. When you watch his fights you see this relentless man, always walking forward (like he’s cruising down the street) and then just shredding his opponents with elbows and knees. He was champion at 118 lbs at both Rajadamnern and Lumpinee – holding...
November 22, 2015One of a fighter’s greatest and most difficult tasks is dealing with fear. I always get nervous before fights and at the beginning of my fight career I rejected the word “fear” to describe what I was experiencing. I didn’t want to acknowledge it I would shut it out – because I shouldn’t be afraid, because a fighter should be fearless. In truth, I was shutting down that feeling in order to pretend that I was calm and focused; and while I was calm, I was entering into fights “too low,” or...
October 16, 2015What makes a good day good or a bad day bad? Some days, everything goes right, and on some really horrible days everything goes wrong. But generally speaking, it’s one thing that flavors your interpretation of an entire day. Yesterday was like this for me. In my mind, it was a hard day and I failed. When I really stop and go through everything that happened, it’s about 10 minutes that made the day a failure; literally every other part of it was pretty good. I was pretty good,...
October 7, 2015I’d love to be the person who genuinely only thinks that whether I do the best I can in a fight is what’s important, and winning or losing is secondary to that. That if I fight well, fight hard and with heart, and do what I’m able, that this is all that should matter to me. But, the fact is, losing sucks. And winning even when you haven’t done your best feels better than just not having done your best. Last night was the fourth fight I’ve lost in...
April 15, 2020
March 17, 2020
January 21, 2018
June 25, 2017
September 8, 2016
August 5, 2016
August 1, 2016
June 14, 2016
December 1, 2020
November 8, 2019
January 8, 2019
October 29, 2017
September 22, 2017
September 11, 2017
June 15, 2017
May 24, 2017
November 24, 2019
August 13, 2019
February 18, 2019
January 27, 2019
January 23, 2019
September 20, 2018
October 5, 2017
August 26, 2017