Things I’m Learning About Muay Thai – A Husband’s Point of View

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.

Kevin when he started Muay Thai a little over a month ago – he’s already lost 10 lbs.

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’ve been “doing” Muay Thai for all these years…all the movements are so familiar to me. But it also feels like I’m in rehab after a spinal injury, and my body parts aren’t doing what I know they are supposed to do. It’s like a virtual knowledge trying to map on physical capability.

First Realization: This is something I think I knew, but today it hit me like a ton of bricks. Like I suddenly really knew it. Pi Nu is just an amazing padholder. It struck me today just how much he is teaching rhythm, really his own little style of a kind of music. Techniques are like notes, and yes, you need to play them right, but what is really important is how you play them together. Certain notes belong together, and there are common melodies that can be played within any particular natural group. And yes, the tempo can be changed to produce expressions, and qualities of experience, but it’s the rhythm that holds it all together. And he teaches this rhythm over and over and over, pulling knees and elbows into percussive beats, teeps to jabs, checks to kickbacks, uppercuts to hooks, and back. And he runs you through this music, over the fatigue, until you just start to hum it…you can’t help but hum it. That’s why he was so puzzled when an enthused westerner once asked him: What is your favorite combo? It’s not like that. It would be like asking what are you favorite musical bars? Yes, it’s something that might be answerable, but it isn’t the right level of description. It’s not the level of music.

And, as I climbed out of the ring this morning, armed with my new and weighty realization, I realized another thing. Sylvie often gets the question: How do you not get confused when legends all train you different, sometimes conflicting techniques? She usually answers this by saying she just takes the things she needs or feels attracted to, and leaves the rest. But what struck me was how Pi Nu’s music, which is a certain basic structure of Muay music, is sympathetic to for instance Karuhat’s music, which at surface value is quite different, more lyrical, more sudden. But they kind of harmonize together. It struck me how all of these legends, men who feel Muay Thai in their bones because they have warred it out at Lumpinee and Rajadamnern with huge pressures in the Golden Age, each have a music. And they are all different. What Sylvie has been doing is a kind of DJ-ing these musics into a style she is finding herself, ultimately toward her own music. So creatively, strains of one might sample into another, one harmony might morph into another, beats may syncopate across others. Yes, some music may be jarring to mesh with another, but not really. Not if you really feel the qualities of each. All music can be joined to other music, given the right transition and context. And this just blows my mind.

Second Realization: This came earlier in the week. I was truly struggling with my front leg teep. Being substantially over-weight didn’t help one bit. Being fairly immobile for this half-decade certainly was no boon to my balance. But somehow I was just all wrong about. Nothing made sense. Come on Kev, what are you doing? You know what a teep looks like. But then an interesting thing happened. After several more very confused teeps Pi Nu demonstrated how it should be done. I don’t have to explain how beautiful his was. But, what is interesting is that he didn’t pull the teep. He made it jab right into me. And then again. I’ve seen him do this to Sylvie. Not pull the teep. He doesn’t rocket it, but he makes sure that it has a pointed sting. Now she’s only 105 lbs so she regularly is knocked back, and I’ve noticed that she kind of has gotten into the habit of becoming really passive to this slight bit of aggression, like: If I just melt and fall away…submit…maybe he’ll stop. And he usually doesn’t. I’ve got more than 150 lbs on Sylvie so I decide to take the teep (my gloves were a makeshift pad), in fact after two, I’m going to lean into it, crowd the space. I’m basically not going to be teeped off, at least not effectively. And this changed the whole lesson. Pi Nu felt my resistance, so when he then called for me to try, once again, he resisted. He leaned into it. Suddenly I was banging my foot into his pad, trying to move him. I was no longer teeping “to the pad”. I was actively trying to use my weight against him. And given my size I sent him flying a few times. It’s enough to say Pi Nu was really happy. It wasn’t just that I was able to move him. It was suddenly I was using much better technique. I wasn’t a complete spaz about it. Such a big deal. It made me realize that “copying” or “imitating” a technique really can send you down the wrong alley. You might very well get to a very nice approximation, but if you aren’t using the technique to do what the technique is for, first and foremost, you are kind of wasting your time. Since this moment of realization I’ve had mixed results. Isn’t that the way that it is. Your epiphany is never as clear as when you first have it, but it fuels me, and my teep is definitely working towards a fun and meaningful technique. Now I try to pop him back, let my weight do the talking, and let Pi Nu do his magic and complicate the task with context.

Third Realization: There are two basic footwork patterns in Muay Thai. Not to oversimplify it, but there are two. In one weight goes to the opposite side foot when striking. In the other weight goes to the same side foot when striking. I had gotten into a bad habit during my few months of hitting the bag at Lanna (I didn’t really take an instruction then), years ago. I got pulled into the Dempsey jab which involves a deep “falling step” sending your weight forward onto the lead leg. This set up a basic weight transfer for me, same side weight transfer on all hands, and it kind of got into me somehow and hibernated all these years. This is the exact opposite of the weight transfer Chatchai Sasakul taught Sylvie. I don’t want to go too far into this with examples, but I can feel that these form two different kinds of “walking”. So, in shadowing elbows in a really informal, light way I started experimenting with walking with the opposite side weight transfer. It took me a couple of days before I really started to feel the way that this kind of transfer creates a twisting, elephant-walk-like, basic rhythm. I also realized that it’s really important not to blur these two kinds of walking, at least when distinguishing them in your body. It’s the reason why in the classic right cross you are told to nail your back foot to the ground. You don’t want to slur them. Yes, there are moments when you want to walk with same-side weight, but this holds it’s own purity. It counts as a counter measure. Of course there are many way to blend footworks, but this, at a basic level, felt like a profound element. So, I’ve been working to make sure my weight transfer is opposite, slowly growing to that rhythm. Today I realized how this kind of weight transfer can have a big effect on elbows, allowing them to be married to the basic “cutting off” gallop of a fighter like Yodkhunpon. Each gallop holds it’s own elbow at the ready. Side to side one can move, taking elbows off the typically linear, right in front of you elbow striking practice that is common. It opens angles.

Fourth Realization: This is also something I kinda knew, but as with all these things experiencing it really made a difference. Contrary to some fears of those who have not yet been to Thailand to train: It doesn’t matter how good you are to be taken seriously. No honestly. Yes, a lot of things do matter, and yes, this applies to what I might call “true teachers” of Muay Thai, but you can be the worst example of an athlete – look at me, vastly overweight, in his 50s, almost no training experience – and you can still be pretty interesting to a “true teacher”. The reason for this is found in Sylvie’s 2 part article on Beetle Fighting. In the Muay Thai world there is just an elemental – I’m tempted to call it pure – love of the battle, of the clash. In beetle fights it doesn’t matter how good or bad your beetle is, or how likely he is to not be good, the whole game is to find someone who might be a good match…and to have a battle. At any level. There are champion beetles that may be worth thousands of dollars (I’m assuming), and there are beetles you just find on trees. All of them battle, or can battle. If you find one that doesn’t really like the fight, won’t engage, no problem, he probably isn’t made for the clash. I think, after watching Muay Thai for these 5 years, this is a fundamental grounding ethic of Muay Thai.

There is another part to this though. True Teachers are a bit like Real Mechanics. Real Mechanics are fascinated by any kind of mechanism. How to make it work better? You see this with car guys. Guys have the car up on blocks trying to make it better. It can be a rare model, or it can be a Pinto, its the same ethic. What can I turn this Pinto into? Teachers like Pi Nu are exactly like this. All their students are like projects. They are thinking: Hmmm, what can I turn this into? Yes, the main business and pre-occupation is building Thai boys into stadium fighters and even champions, but deeper, below all of that, there’s a deeper morality. Everyone can be improved. What can I make this fighter into? Humble beginnings don’t really matter much at all. In fact, in some ways it’s more interesting. Pi Nu took Angie, a trans Thai woman with zero Muay Thai experience in her 30s and through matching effort and focus helped turn her into the first trans-woman to fight at Lumpinee. Not because that was any kind of aim of his, I’m very sure that when he picked those pads the first time it was the farthest thing from his mind, but it was because he looked at her and said: What can I improve? I say all this because I can see in his eyes that he’s thinking the same thing when he’s holding pads for me (and really probably anyone who wants to learn). I have no intention of fighting, but already he’s thinking of possible opponents for me, starting to joke about them. When my teep sent him flying he thought: Hmmm, we can do something with that. When he felt how I kind of love knees and elbows together he thinks: Hmmm, we can do something with that. For these kinds of pure teachers everyone is like a stock car whose engine he wants to work on, and that he’d like to maybe race. Not on some amazing, famous track, but on the neighborhood drag strip against another car around it’s same capacities. See what this can become. Of course not every kru is like this, and some gyms have real bottom lines or business aims, but I’ve seen this in several krus in different camps and it’s a beautiful thing.

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A 103 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100 fights in 3 years here, my new goal is to fight an impossible 200 times in Thailand, as much as I possibly can, and to continue to write my experience.

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Sylvie’s Tips – Muay Thai Techniques

The cloth training wraps that are so common in the West aren’t necessarily all over the place in Thailand. You can buy them at virtually any shop that sells equipment, sure, but they’re not used by all the Thais training at the camps. A lot of Thai boys don’t wrap their hands at all. Those who do, in my experience, often favor these cloth “fight” wraps that are more like gauze-linen and don’t have a thumb loop or Velcro. The western boxing style training cloth wraps we’re used to are expensive and, the more I’ve trained, the more they seem

Kick Where it Hurts This is another installment of Sylvie’s Tips where I seek to share some of the things my Thai trainers are teaching. The other day Kru Nu landed a couple leg kicks on my right (back) leg during padwork. He’s got a good low kick and his Thai students have really whippy, nasty low kicks as well. The first one hurt and all, but the second one – which was a good 10 minutes after the first – landed on just such the perfect spot, with just enough force, and while my weight was on it that

This above is a little video help to Benjamin who wrote me about a basic problem he was having in sparring. It seemed like the best way to answer him was in a quick video. I try to help people who write in to me as best I can. Once I filmed it I realized that this is something a lot of others are probably having issues with. I know I still run into it after 3 years here, so I thought to turn it into a “Sylvie’s Tips” video. Hopefully it helps others. Benjamin asked about how his knee

I learned a ton training with Sakmongkol in Pattaya for 7 weeks, as well in my time at Petchrungruang Gym. You can see my daily blog posts of my time with Sakmongkol here if you want to dig into the evolution of my lessons, the posts are pretty detailed with lots of video. Below are the lessons I learned, in particular the lessons or techniques I’m going to consciously work into my training at Lanna, now that I’m back in Chiang Mai. I’ll try to tell you why they were important for me and maybe they could help you, too.

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Just a little bagwork drill/game that I ran into in the gym by one of my favorite young fighters, Jatukam. Jatukam is 14 or 15 years old and just crushes his competition at Lumpinee and Rajadamnern. He’s one of the best fighters at 40 kg (88 lbs) and has a really clever, muay femur style, which is the tricky and evasive style mostly associated in the west with Saenchai. He’s Southpaw and has a nasty teep, but that doesn’t stop him from getting in close and smashing my face with solid left crosses when we spar. He’ll smile the

n Sylvie’s Tips I try to capture on video various small techniques that I run into while training. The way that it happens in Thailand, things are seldom taught to you in the form of formal instruction, rather they come up suddenly in training and then are gone. I’m pretty shy, so it’s hard actually go around and request these things; I don’t want to stop everyone and have them repeat things for the camera. In this case though we arrived at O. Meekhun gym to find organized instruction being given to Phetjee Jaa and one of the boys named

The real instruction doesn’t come until minute 1:40 but the thought to record Bai jumping in to practice knees with the boys was simply because it was pretty cute. Then her dad came over to correct her form (she was imitating the boys, mostly one who is a few down in the row). Bai is 9 years old and has a few fights; this drill is something all the kids do at the start of training as a warmup and conditioning drill. I’m pretty sure they do a thousand repetitions. As Bai first starts out, her father Goh (who is

“Play Knees” – Sylvie’s Tips video above The other day I put up a video of “play knees,” bagwork that Muay Thai legend Sakmongkol taught me at WKO, here in Pattaya. He was displeased with me merely doing counted, repetition knee drills, the traditional Muay Thai camp endless knees on the bag that everyone knows. (These are still good and useful, by the way, just for stamina.) He wanted me to do play knees, to move the bag around in fight simulation action and energy. It was something I’ve never seen before, but I did my best to adopt it.

I’ve never really had opponents catching my kicks in fights, but that’s partially because I don’t really mid-kick. So, the reason I know that I suck at responding when my kick is caught is almost entirely through padwork, where I topple over like a kicked-over bicycle. Which is to say that I don’t really practice against this and only get reminded of how unpracticed I am when my trainer occasionally wants to mess with me. I do know how to handle the caught kick – I’ve been shown techniques from various sources – but I never drill them. When I visited

Below is a long technique vlog, basically explaining an adjustment I’ve made to my training in the last couple of weeks. Usually my training consists of things that promote my conditioning and lots of work focused on specific techniques that I want to develop. These can be techniques or tactics I’ve picked up from legends while filming my Muay Thai Library project, or things I already do that I think I should sharpen up for my particular fighting style. I’m always working on something and it’s always hard, always with the aim of development. As with all training regimes, repetition is

Sylvie’s Tips: The Floating Block Sakmongkol was the first person to tell me not to turn around on kicks. He was adamant about it. It’s very awkward when you first try and your kick can be really flicky and horrible, but the more you get it under control the more you realize how much this increases power. Basically you want to have confidence that you can control your kick at any time, so if you miss your target you’re not going to spin all the way around. Honestly, you’ll seldom if ever see this in a Thai fight and when

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 become a favorite technique, and it didn’t become that way because

Some of My Best Posts

I’ve written before about how Muay Thai and fighting, to me, isn’t “violence.” My argument was that I have experienced real violence, the above is the story of my rape as a child, and that the consent and preparation involved in fighting isn’t the same. There is, however, a flavor of violence in Muay Thai – it is, as my old boxing coach Ray Valez would say, “the hurt business” and ultimately any fighter pushing for the highest form of the art of Muay Thai has to embrace this. Yesterday there was a young woman at my gym, Petchrungruang, who

I just had to do my annual visa run, which requires sitting in a van full of total strangers for the 11 hour drive up to the border with Laos, an overnight stay, then the 11 hour drive back down to Pattaya. It’s grueling. Sitting in a car or a plane for this number of hours takes a toll on anyone. It’s astonishing how tired sitting on your ass makes you. I’m not very social, so I always put as many hours of podcasts and audio books as possible on my player so I can leave my headphones in the

Apologies to my younger readers, this post is laced with profanity. Sometimes profanity has a special power to describe things in ways other words can’t. The plastic stool underneath me is too far out from the actual corner and my body kind of tips backwards as my cornermen lift my legs into their hands and rub icy cold water on my thighs and shins. I try to balance myself on the ropes but it’s more awkward and I reposition my forearms to the tops of my thighs; the cold water is going over my head now, which feels nice because

This article is about the flourishing Muay Thai of Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, becoming the best female fight city in the country and very possibly in the entire world. No other city boasts such a complete native female Thai fight scene: it’s fed by side-bet (gambling) fights in the outlying provinces, stabilized by Sports Schools, hosted at a large number of local stadia (all of which allow women to fight in them) which hold fights every night of the week, and supported by the Thai Muay Siam media coverage. If you are a female Muay Thai fighter, this

Stephan Fox is the General Secretary of the International Federation of Muaythai Amateur (IFMA) and the Vice-President of the World Muaythai Council (WMC). He is a huge figure in the recognition and development of amateur Muaythai in Thailand, as well as international competition with both the IFMA and WMC. After 20 years of work, the International Olympic Committee has just given provisional recognition for possible inclusion in the Olympics – let me repeat that: 20 years of work for that, and Mr. Fox’s response is, “right on schedule.” above, the full 30 minute interview with Stephan Fox We cover a range of

What follows is not authoritative, it is just the things I’ve gleaned in my nearly 5 years of full time training at my various gyms, and in traveling around and taking privates from some of the best in Thailand. You can get access to my growing Muay Thai library with legends for a suggested pledge of $5. I read a rant on Reddit that, despite its intense language, does open up that some people do get frustrated training in Thailand, finding a lack of instruction and padwork that be repetitive. I do believe there is no better place in the

Alex and Note are standing on opposite corners of the ring, wearing shinguards and gloves, hanging out like they’re about to do anything other than sparring. They’re totally relaxed, laughing, joking. Kru Nu is pacing around and there’s a buzz around the circumference of the ring while the remainder of the boys all takes their positions along the ropes as spectators and Goh – one of the padmen for the kids – is hollering for Chicken Man. Kru Nu squats down with his hands on the top rope, peering under the staircase and out into the chicken farm, the most likely

First off, let me say it: weight, its not that big of a deal. There is a strong caveat to this, which is that it is a definite advantage, but so is height, or knowing the scoring system, or fighting since you were 10, or having a fight on your home turf, and so many other things. So while weight is always a potential advantage, it is just one among many possible advantages. You can beat people who have the weight advantage over you, just like you can with any of those other advantages. I know that in the West

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 led me to this is a very particular quality many serious

Below is meant to be a helpful guide, something that I wish I had when I first came to training Thailand. These are just things I’ve noticed in my 4 years of training and fighting here and are not hard and fast rules to follow. If you want to be polite in Thailand gyms, in a culture that is different than your own, these are just a few things to look for. There are of course a wide variety of gym experiences in Thailand, and things that are impolite in a small, family Thai-style gym might very well be common

A lot of us feel that aggression comes with an “on/off” switch, and that we should be able to flick it back and forth based on context. Many of us who are learning Muay Thai struggle with aggression, perhaps because we don’t feel that we are “naturally aggressive,” and it’s frustrating to watch those who are seemingly naturally gifted with aggression succeed in ways that we don’t see in ourselves. But aggression isn’t natural, even if it does seem innate in some more than others. I contend that aggression feels natural to some due to having spent years cultivating it before they

First a Little Bit About Daeng Daeng is one of the most fight-focused trainers I’ve trained with. When I was training at Lanna Muay Thai in Chiang Mai, it was Daeng who invested the most in diagnosing and fixing weaknesses in my fighting. He wasn’t my main trainer, but he’s a very good teacher and has a keen eye for finding how to improve on existing strengths and correct errors. I’d initially gotten a bit stuck with a technically brilliant but lazy and unmotivated trainer – that guy was a great trainer for some, just not for me – and Daeng

Join and Study my Muay Thai Library of Legends This is a full video of a private I took with Arjan Surat, Head Coach of the Thai National Team, and owner of the esteemed (but lesser known to the west) Dejrat Gym in Bangkok. I did a short review of the gym when I interviewed female fighter Kaitlin Young, and it was then that I met Arjan Surat for the first time: an absolutely extraordinary teacher and life-force of Muay Thai. The man is Old School-Old School, telling me that he’s been holding pads longer than I’ve been alive (he’s

The Gendered Experience

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Growing up in Colorado had innumerate perks that I only came to appreciate long after I took them for granted. City kids in New York and Philadelphia learn how to handle themselves on public transportation from an early age and kids like me in the wilds of mountains and deserts learned how to “pack out what you pack in” with equal diligence. The first rule of backpacking in the mountains of Colorado and deserts of Utah is to leave no trace of yourself, the foremost lesson being to preserve the world you’re exploring. When I was maybe 12 years old

Either Side of the Ropes Something happens when a woman steps into the ring. It’s not universal and I cannot speak for everybody, but I’ve both witnessed this phenomenon on many occasions in other women and I’ve experienced it myself. Women who are fantastic in training – padwork, bagwork, shadowboxing all with really sharp technique – seem to fall apart in sparring or in fights. I’ve seen men do the exact opposite, looking pretty sloppy and borderline bad in training and then suddenly get it together when within the ropes of the ring. What the hell is this? The most

above: Saya Ito, me and Phetjee Jaa I’m standing outside the ring in the late evening, maybe around 7:30 PM, watching Japanese world champion Saya Ito crawl under the bottom rope to stand next to Phetjee Jaa. I’ve got stitches in my head, so I’m not allowed to clinch yet but I’m staying to watch. Saya has been training at the O. Meekhun Gym for a couple weeks now. It’s her second time at the gym since I’ve been training here and she’s gearing up for a WPMF title fight in Japan on April 5th (today!). She’s not good at

This is something of a personal response review of Fight Like a Girl, written as a female fighter. Jill Morley’s film “Fight Like A Girl” opens with a bare-bulb lighting figures as they spar in a ring. Their white gloves and headgear swing and bob out of the darkness as a voice-over initiates the thesis of the film: people always want to know why female fighters want to fight. Throughout the rest of the documentary, Jill Morley points her camera at her training partners, her family and herself as they all shadowbox around that question. Nobody ever seems to hit

The Inherent Nature of Thai Clinch This video was shot about 25-30 minutes into a clinching session at the tail end of afternoon training. Initially, everyone jumped in to help Big with his clinch because he has some fights coming up, but by the time we get to this video everyone is working with “Godzilla,” who is significantly bigger than all the other boys and Den. They’re doing a “round robin” type drill with “last man standing” rules, so that two men are clinching and whoever gets thrown is “out” and whoever is still standing is still in, so the

above, video interview with Loma and Chommanee One of the things that is surprising every single time I witness it is how humble, kind, and open fighters are outside of the ring. Even the superstars. I remember early in my career being thrown off by how nice my opponents seemed to be before a fight, I thought maybe they were tricking me by smiling and being sweet but then kicking my ass in the ring… but it’s not a front. That’s just actually how people are. The 16 Female Muay Thai Fighters I’ve Interviewed Loma Lookboonmee and Chommanee Taehiran are

To begin, these are my observations as a female fighter in Thailand who has pursued learning clinch for 3+ years. Other female fighters may have had other experiences, but difference of experience does not mean that the theme of what I write about here is not true or relevant. It also does not mean that what other women experience, if different, is false – there is room in the world for a plurality of experiences. What I’m writing about here is not meant to scare anyone away from training in Thailand or pursuing clinch with the men in their gyms;

– This is part of what is likely a series of articles on western female sexuality in Thai gyms – it’s a big topic and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and this seemed like the best place to start. This view comes from my personal experience, and reflection, but also from conversations I’ve been having with women who have trained or are currently training elsewhere in Thailand. How Are You Drawn? There’s a stereotypical role that is in male-driven teen comedies – you know, the kind that are about the conquest of losing one’s virginity or

Anniversary – 1 Year April 6th was the one year anniversary of our arrival in Thailand. It feels quite monumental, which is perhaps both strange and ordinary since I don’t really pay a great deal of attention to anniversaries (ordinary) but this one feels like it marks the accomplishment of both goals and dreams that seemed at a time unattainable (strange). What is most peculiar about the feelings I have surrounding this anniversary is how fast it seemed – it’s like the calendar is lying to me that it’s been a whole year and yet when I look at how

This is a photo of Nam, the wonderful girl I wrote about in Expect the Unexpected two weeks ago. I went to the gym this afternoon (Sunday, “off day”) for some light training in the afternoon and about 20 minutes in a car pulled up. I’d hoped Nam and her sister would be there training again and when the girls spilled out of the car Nam gave me this very excited wave and smiled, saying in English sing-song voice, “Hello!” I asked her how she was and she had to calm down real quick before delivering a perfectly rehearsed, “I’m

the above photo is of my mother and me laying on a mat for hours in the middle of Isaan, under the stars, waiting for my fight to come up on the card For two weeks at the end of October and beginning of November, my parents came out to Thailand for their second visit since I moved here. The first visit was up in Chiang Mai last year and now they came to Pattaya, where we’ve lived since June of this year. My parents loved Chiang Mai. They had mixed feelings about Pattaya. Part of the timing of this

Feb- 2014 – Here are a few thoughts on the Muay Thai meme that grew out of a photo a follower made of me from my last fight on Yokkao 7, about the meaning of the meme, the nature of the Thai exclusion of women at certain rings like Lumpinee, and what it meant to me. Let me also say that this from my limited perspective as having lived and fought here in Thailand for nearly 2 years now. Farang notoriously don’t get the whole picture. But more of the picture is better than less, and this is what I