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

Quick Intro: This post is about my latest Sylvie’s Technique Vlog, sharing on the benefits of super high repetition training of an isolated technique. Every week I publish a new 1 minute technique vlog on my page Muay Thai Techniques – Preserver The Legacy, and a much more extensive vlog on that technique on Nak Muay Nation in the VIP course section. Once a month I share the entire vlog, just to let everyone know what’s happening over at Nak Muay Nation, and this is one of those. At...

I’ve got my arms wrapped around the back of the driver’s seat, one hand resting flat against Kevin’s back. The other his holding our phone, which is set to a map to bring us back to the opposite end of Bangkok still hours away. The car is dark, outside is darker, and each face is illuminated by the individual phone screens (and the dashboard for Kevin) keeping us occupied. Golden Age legend Karuhat is in the passenger seat. He looks up for a moment and points to the right,...

The street is still wet from the rains throughout the night, but the sky above is black and clear and starless as always. It’s quiet, but the doors to the front of the gym are open and a couple of familiar bodies appear out of the shadows of the garage as I park my motorbike. If there are boys around, it means we can run. I get off my motorbike and carry my helmet and keys into the gym, leaving them both on the side of the kid’s ring....

So starts my path to enlightenment. Kevin and I turn down the street indicated on our Google Map directions and it’s pretty clear, immediately, that this isn’t what we’re looking for. Kevin immediately suggests we ask someone, which is super easy for him to suggest because he doesn’t speak Thai, so he never has to do the asking. I’m shy, so I decide to creep down the street on the motorbike first, seeing if maybe, somehow, this street lined with bars might suddenly turn into the kind of street...

This post is about the “Thai Kick” or the “Thai Round Kick,” of which there are many versions, not only in Thailand but also in how the kick is taught all over the world. What I’m writing about might very well be the kick as it was taught to you by your trainer, but a lot of people have not been taught these important aspects/details of the Thai Kick as it was used, especially, in the Golden Age. This is a very particular set of principles still used by contemporary...

I’ve introduced meditation into my practice many times. I’m not consistent with it, so usually it’s trying to get 10 minutes per day, or at least 2 minutes before practice, or maybe 5 minutes during an emotionally tumultuous stretch in training. Basically, I just think that quieting your mind and learning how to breathe can’t ever be a bad idea. But I’ve also never done any formal practice with it. I’m a very fair-weather meditator. Just after my 200th fight – literally the next morning – I woke up...

I’ve been called a man twice in the past month – something I’ve experienced many times in Thailand and in the past largely read as a mixed insult or at best a backhanded compliment. It’s not unusual in Thailand for people to make blunt comments about your appearance. But these two have been some of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. I’m not ashamed to be a woman, so what’s with the pride in these two instances, what made the difference? And why were these important to me? The...

Our rental car is rolling slowly down these narrow side streets. So narrow, in fact, that we often have to pull all the way over to the side and stay still while another car eeks past us, the mirrors threatening to brush each other as each driver cranes their necks to watch whether or not it clears. I’m in the passenger seat, rolling the air-conditioning vents closed on my side of the car because I’m freezing and Kevin is always hot. Jaidee is panting in my ear and my...

I’m seated, hunched over on this plastic bench at the far end of the gym and dripping sweat into a puddle at my feet. Angie is sitting on the wooden chair next to me, our knees almost touching and forming a “V” as we try to face each other. She’s soaked with sweat as well, which gives her this kind of glow in orange light of sunset that shoots through the gaps in the tin roof. Angie is slowly wrapping her hands as we chat, each of our voices...

Below is my husband Kevin’s entry in his journal which is now following his attempt to get in shape and finally train in the Muay Thai that he loves, starting at 279 lbs. You can read the full journal here. 10/5 Okay, a great week of just pushing through the pads with Pi Nu. It’s so strange to be doing this physically when I’ve been watching it first hand, so closely, for 5 years+. I’m really adept at physically imagining movement, so in a certain sense I feel that...

I’m combining these two weeks and assignments because they are hugely contrasting with each other, but also go work together in tandem. Week 10 is sorting your life into categories that you can break down and identify individual plans for how to manage, track and improve them: finances, relationships, health, fitness, business, etc. Basically, how to run your life like a Fortune 500 company. Then week 11 is reconnecting with your ultimate vision and creating an ID card for your ideal self. You have to do the categories in...

read the lead up: Making History: Angie the 1st Transgender fighter at Lumpinee On September 19th, 2017 I made my first trip to the new Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok. I’d been to the old Lumpinee, this ratty old building that was just steeped in history. That night years ago Kevin and I sat in an almost empty area across from the side of the stands packed-to-the-rafters with gamblers, all shouting in unison. The wooden benches beneath us were soft, almost as if permanently damp from sweat and beer and...

Angie’s beverage shop is on the side of a road that cuts between the very busy Thepprasit and equally busy Pattaya Tai roads. There are constantly motorbikes and cars wizzing past, occasionally pulling to the side to shout a drink order to Angie and then jet off somewhere for a minute before returning to pick up. Today it’s oddly quiet and tons of shops around Pattaya are closed, so the traffic is minimal and Angie is sitting with her back to the street. I’m facing her, seeing the slowness...

This week is a continuation of last week’s emotional focus. The first step is awareness, so tracking our emotions throughout last week allowed us to be aware of tendencies, patterns and thought traps. I’ve never really kept a food diary, but I imagine it’s much the same in terms of realizing you are mindlessly eating extra sugar or snacks that you weren’t aware of, or that maybe the “about 2 cups of coffee per day,” estimate you rattle off is, in fact, more like 3-4 cups per day and...

Email subscribers, see the interview here Almost two years ago I interviewed Angie in anticipation of her first Muay Thai fight, after only a few months of training in Muay Thai. Remarkably, two weeks from now Angie will be having her debut fight at the legendary Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok. A historic fight. She will be the first kathoey (Trans) fighter to enter those ropes. The famed Nong Toom “Beautiful Boxer” fought at Lumpinee and was a kathoey, but she didn’t fully fight as a “kathoey fighter”. She fought to afford sexual...

January 24, 2017 – Kawilla Stadium, Chiang Mai – Live on Channel 3, three round fight A few days before this fight I got a message from Kru Daeng, who usually corners for me, that he wasn’t able to come to the fight. That’s not really a problem, I’ve become quite comfortable and happy with finding a corner for myself at the fight in a kind of improvised manner. It would be a bit different in Chiang Mai rather than out in a rural field kind of fight, but...

Week 8 of Niyi Sobo’s “Lucky 12” mental training group is all about the “emotional playbook.” In short, you become aware of your habitual or patterned emotions, figure out why they’re happening and then map out a plan for how to stop and ultimately replace them. Like wearing new grooves or cutting new paths so you don’t mindlessly or habitually keep following these unhelpful paths. I’ve been tracking my emotions for over a year already, which was of my own design. I decided to start writing down what I...

January 7, 2017 – Thapae Stadium, Chiang Mai – full fight video Oh man, this fight. I don’t have a whole lot to say about the fight itself, it was very short and I was basically rag-dolling Nang Hong, who I’ve beat before. She can’t clinch with me. But she followed some very good advice and used a front elbow to dissuade me or punish me on my clinch entry. You can barely see the elbow that cut me, it’s her left side as I’m reaching around her and...

This is a portion of a longer conversation going on in Our women only forum thread on my Body Conscious article in the Muay Thai Roundtable forum. The women only section is a semi-private space for women to feel more comfortable to discuss among ourselves all kinds of topics, but generally the internet is an incredibly unfriendly place to women and this section of the forum has proven itself to be a relief to just give women a place where we can more openly express ourselves. This excerpt is my own...

Below are three fights from Thailand’s Golden Age or so, a period of time which featured some of the best fighters Thailand has ever produced. One of the things I’m doing on my new Facebook focused on technique “Preserve the Legacy” are these short podcast like looks at great fights of the past. These aren’t breakdowns, they are in the vein of just passionate fan viewings. We more or less just give a little background on the fighters or the match up and let the tape roll. One of...

This is part of a weekly series where I write about my experiences in Niyi Sobo’s 12-week Mental Training group. This is week 7. This week’s assignment is filling out an Alter Ego ID Card. The idea is to create an “alter ego” that allows you to take care of business in your actual business, in meetings, or in your sport. You’ll see this a lot with Thai fighters, who are ruthless in the ring but very quiet and sweet outside of it. I don’t think they actually develop alter...