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March 12, 2014
Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
Blog-muay-thai, Featured, Mental Training for Muay Thai, Muay Thai, My Best Posts

Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control – Neurology and Muay Thai

Boxing in a Mirror - Sparring Out of Control

We all know the bro (or the female version) who says “Let’s go light” in sparring, and then whacks you. Or, when you get a hit in they suddenly step it up two notches in a way that seems inordinately ego-driven, like they’re trying to “win” at sparring. What’s up with these people? Don’t they know how to spar? It turns out that although there indeed may be all kinds of psychological reasons why people just hit back harder than they are hit – not understanding their own size, or just being a jerk – there also may be a neurological reason: our brains don’t experience the levels of intensity accurately.  Even with our highly sensitive fingertips we cannot accurately feel just how hard we are pushing and being pushed.  In reality, it’s all in your head.

Force Escalation - Sparring Too Hard

A very interesting study was conducted in 2003 called “Two Eyes for an Eye: The Neuroscience of Force Escalation” (illustration above) – you can download the short study here. In it they describe the testing of our powers of judging how hard we are pushing back when we are pushed. It was a very simple study using force transducers which push against fingers. Subjects are asked to push back against the transducer with force equal to that they received. The transducer then returns a push with the same force at which it was pushed, but mathematically, rather than through subjective experience. If humans were good at this the transducer and the subject would push back and forth with a mirroring force that would not change over time. Under variable conditions though one thing remained constant: the shoving match between finger and transducer quickly became a runaway event, with the subject pushing back harder and harder, trying to match the perceived escalation of the transducer.

As it turns out the efference copy of our motor actions – the body imaging we use to predict and gauge our effect on the world –  is inherently sensorally dulled, while when things happen to us they feel amplified.  Simply put, you might feel like you’re taking up very little space on the bus the guy next to you is taking up the exact same amount but it feels to you like he might as well be lying down with his feet up.  It is built-in that we experience the world impacting us more forcefully than how we are impacting the world, at a very basic touch level. Several writers have connected this hardwired escalation to the reason why shoving matches get out of control. One can see how it would affect sparring as well.  You feel like you’re going light, then you feel like you got hit harder than what you perceive you’re giving out, so you go a bit harder – but you’re hitting a person with the same subjective ability to judge intensity, not a machine with mathematical algorithms, so your partner goes harder, too.  Real escalation.

Thais Do Spar Differently – Psychology and Culture

Dominance, not Aggression

It takes just 1o minutes in most Thai gyms to see that Thais spar differently from westerners. There is a myth going around out there that Thais don’t “spar hard,” and that the reason for this is because they fight so frequently. This may be the case in some gyms, but from what I’ve seen and experienced at a few different gyms and youtube videos out there of champions sparring, there is indeed hard sparring in Thailand among Thais.  What’s universally “light” about Thai sparring is the attitude brought by the guys engaging in the play fight.  In Muay Thai the hardness of the strike is a demonstration of domination, not of aggression, at least not as we’d recognize the concept in the west. The difference is glaring. Let’s assume that like the subjects of the study, Thais also experience the dis-equal force of an opponent sparring for neurological reasons. The way that they respond to this experience is very different. You do not show what affects you in Muay Thai, you don’t acknowledge it visibly and the escalation is absolutely not manifested with an emotional burst.  Rather, the escalation is theatrical, not even necessarily with greater force, and it’s used to re-set the equality between the two sparring; to correct or calibrate the dominance scale. Once that is done (or failed) things settle immediately back down to sanook, to play. If there is a point still to be scored or neutralized it is kept in the mind, for retribution.

Getting Objective About It

When I hung out with fighter Amy Davis at Lion’s Fight in Las Vegas several years ago I remember her relating a story about how her husband and trainer Darrin Davis hits her in practice. She talked about how during the session she was getting pissed because it felt like he was clobbering her and hitting unnecessarily hard, especially given their size disparity (Amy is much smaller, even though she’s strong as hell).  Later, when she looked at video of the tape she saw how Darrin was barely touching her – like just kind of patting her with the glove or focus mitt or whatever.  I can attest that there is an emotional component when a spouse or “significant other” is training you – I take everything personally when Kevin works with me, the exact same stuff I would tolerate much better from a trainer or practically anyone I’m not sexually and emotionally invested in – but it would seem that the dis-equal perception of striking strength also plays a strong part. More or less objective tools like video tape can let you know if you are experiencing these things with distortion.

Sparring too Light – If you are someone who somewhere in their lives resists escalation instinctively – I think women can be like this, in particular if they experienced violence on a personal level, but also just because, culturally, we are taught to be more passive – how does the mis-perception of contact strength affect you? It may mean that even when you are sparring at equal force, you are experiencing it as your sparring partner going harder than you are. You may find yourself reducing the force of your strikes over and over, trying to “turn the heat down”, when in fact it already had begun at equilibrium. This, unfortunately is to some degree the opposite instinct one wants in a fight. You can find yourself training non-escalation, or even de-escelation of force, while experiencing dis-equal striking.  In a fight, you want to end up on top, or as the final word, on every escalation.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say that there aren’t sparring partners who quite frankly are going too hard, when it stops being beneficial for both parties.  There are also just bullies – people who have to “win” at practice.  It’s also rare to have a sparring partner who is your same size – we don’t weigh in for training and generally we come in all different shapes and sizes – so you’ll end up being much bigger, or much smaller, or at a different proficiency level than your sparring partner.  We do our best to take our strength up or down accordingly, to try to make it helpful for everyone.  But it’s likely that the miscommunication between sparring partners is taking place at a neurological level as well.   As much as we give conscious effort to create equality between two dis-equal partners, our brains are also working against us by distorting our perception of what’s taking place, often to our disfavor: we’re hitting with perfect power but this jerk-wod just keeps hitting too hard.

It’s hard to know how to solve this.  Just knowing that your mind is perceiving things other than how they may actually be can make a big difference in creating better communication between partners.  There are jerks, but maybe it’s you.  In the same way that Thai sparring is seen as “light” because of attitude, the perception of intensity is, I believe, largely influenced by emotional components – something Thais are not immune from experiencing but are very adroit at not expressing, culturally.  I think that by understanding the neurological distortion of perception can help us to avoid becoming emotional about what we see as going on in sparring.  Get the point back by all means, but do so to bring it back to an equilibrium, rather than the run-away escalation of trying to match the physical intensity of your partner, which may be far different from how it is registering to your brain.

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Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

The Author Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

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.

7 Comments

  • Lindsey Newhall
    March 13, 2014 1:17 pm

    Such an interesting subject. I love your posts about Muay Thai as seen from a scientific/cultural/historical/social perspective.

    I totally see what you’re saying about perception and emotion playing into sparring intensity, as I myself have felt this many times at the gym and have only recently begun to understand and deal with.

    Thanks for talking about this subject, looking forward to reading more about the scientific side of MT!

    Reply
  • Boxing scientist
    March 13, 2014 9:01 pm

    I found this post really interesting. Do you have any scientific background? If not, that makes your perceptiveness even more remarkable.

    When i was boxing we sparred three times a week (more often if you wanted -I did). We were expected to spar hard, on the grounds that you had to learn to control your reaction to a hard punch <em) before you got into the ring for a real fight. There’s a lot of truth in that, I think. But sometimes it would escalate in exactly the way you describe. I’d always attributed the escalation to a lack of self-discipline -the very thing that you were trying to learn. if you didn’t take a punch calmly a natural reaction was to hit back harder. But your post casts a new light on the phenomenon. Thanks for that.

    Reply
    • Sylvie
      Sylvie
      March 14, 2014 12:03 pm

      Thanks for your reply. I don’t have any formal background in science but it makes for good reading. Especially when considering something so subjective as perceived intensity – I certainly experience “body dismorphia” in the context of Muay Thai, thinking that I look or perform FAR differently from what it looks like from the outside. So it makes a lot of sense that we all experience this to some degree. Couple that with how you “feel” someone else is performing and the distortion makes the whole experience like walking through the “fun house mirror” maze.
      I think the message in sparring remains the same from when you were a kid. Be calm, be cool, be self-controlled. This neurological information just helps us keep it in perspective when it feels like someone else is out of control.

      Reply
  • Ryan Hamze
    March 14, 2014 6:53 am

    Well, that explains a lot. Thanks for surgically explaining this… I never understood why sparring partners felt the need to win hit harder.

    Reply
  • Jonathan
    March 20, 2014 7:19 am

    I’m going to start referring to this post for a few people I think could benefit from some of the information shared. Thank you Sylvie!

    Reply
  • Jiu Jiu
    April 3, 2014 9:21 pm

    Another knock-out article! I just posted my own reaction to it (and directed some folks here!).

    I have found that what, OVERWHELMINGLY, has been helpful to me is the idea that we are in this together – that dude is my teammate, and he has NO CLUE what he’s doing or how hard he’s doing it. For the most part that has cured the super frustration. Then again, every so often someone will come at me (in my perception) extra hard – much harder than all my other sparring partners, and my feeling will be “okay dude, you wanna go hard, I’ll show you hard – if I can get on top.” I get on top and just drive my shoulder into their chest, or my entire weight on their face and think “Yeah dude – how you like me now.”

    I swear I’m not a bully or a meaniehead. Usually I’m cool and the one with a freaking knee on my face thinking “how much am I paying to have this happen to me? Ah well – at least I can survive against this storm.”

    Your post reminded me to remind myself that they’re like overzealous labrador retrievers who have no clue that their tail wagging just knocked over your vase – even though we are convinced the dog did it on purpose. The bullies are the cats who actually jump on the table, look you in the eye, and knock the vase down while maintaining eye contact.

    Hmmm my metaphor got a little away from me. In any case, fantastic article!

    Reply
  • Marco
    June 25, 2015 2:42 pm

    Hi, I think the same thing can happen during a match. The perception of the opponent being much stronger than yourself, while maybe he or she is thinking exactly the same. Interesting thought to have for my next match: ‘Although it might look like he’s being stronger or better, it’s my perception of him. Now go and kick some ass.’ Big thumbs up for the article!

    Reply

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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

interview-with-ifmas-stephan-fox

Interview with IFMA’s Stephan Fox | Muaythai in the Olympics and More

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

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The Secret to Great Muay Thai Padwork in Thailand – Get the Most Out of It

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

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“This Is Business” | The Imitation Game, Playing to the Gamblers

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

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Female Fighters | Fighting Above Weight in Thailand & How to Win

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

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Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training

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

Guide to Muay Thai Gym Etiquette - Not Offend

Guide to Thailand Muay Thai Gym Etiquette – How to Be Polite

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

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Fear of Escalation in Sparring and Training Aggression as a Skill

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

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Padwork with Daeng at Lanna – Dracula Guard (Long Guard Variation)

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

Arjan Surat - Dejrat Gym in Bangkok - Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

Arjan Surat of Dejrat Gym – 1 Hour Private | Coach of the Thai National Team

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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Bad Feminist | All the Fighters That Inspire Me Are Men

I don’t have female role models. I don’t look at other female fighters and think, “I want to fight like her.” But I have strong examples of both that are men, and intellectually that makes me feel a little guilty. As a Feminist through and through, as someone who believes that women cannot afford to not support one another, that’s a shitty thing to admit: that I don’t look up to women as idols, people I want to be like. And if I’m being completely honest, I never have. I admire individual women and I’ve written at length about the political or

The Bloodied Faces of Women - Women's War Face - New Beauty

Celebrating the Female Face – Bloody Face Photos from Female Fighters

Ladies, Send in Your Bloodied Face Fighter Photos This is a call for female fighters to send me photos of their own bloodied face, to join a wall of women who have had their faces bloodied in fights. This is really in answer to the absence of the bloodied female face in fight media, something which actively works to segregate women, aesthetically, as something less than “real” fighters. The bloodied male face is celebrated in media; it symbolizes male toughness, aggression, commitment. But to a large degree the female fighter face has been whitewashed in a sea of beauty shots

Emma Thomas Female Muay Thai Fighter - Interview-w1400

My Interview With Female Muay Thai Fighter Emma Thomas

Surfing the Chaos I’ve known Emma for a few years now. We actually met through online communication and I forget that we didn’t actually meet each other in person until a little over a year ago. I really like Emma and recently I was scrolling through a feed of our private messages on Facebook in order to show something she’d sent me to my Thai friend and my friend remarked, “wow, you write so much! It’s like a book!” Yeah, we talk a lot. Which made me realize with surprise that I’ve not yet interviewed Emma. I’ve certainly thought to

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Body Language – Clinch, Thailand and Gender

There are complications to being a woman - or more specifically, having a female body - in a male dominated sport.  As a fighter you are using your body to perform an art and you must use it, hard, on a daily basis in order to insure that it will take care of you in the ring.  There is no room for half-hearted efforts; it's just too frivolous when every mistake has so high a cost.

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Making History: Angie First Transgender Fighter at Lumpinee Stadium

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 reassignment surgery, would fight wearing lipstick in the ring, but fought

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Training At O. Meekhun Muay Thai Gym with Phetjee Jaa – Pattaya

I was very excited and shocked to learn that my Muay Thai hero, the 12-year-old phenomenon Phetjeejaa O. Meekhun, trains at her family gym just a 30 second walk through a chicken farm from where I’ve been training every day for the last month here in Pattaya.  I got to visit their gym and meet PJJ and her family a few days ago and got to actually go and train with the kids this past Monday. While en route on the big highway that runs through Pattaya and connects my two gyms, I was weaving between cars to sneak up

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Reading Notes “Toms and Dees” by Megan Sinnott – Part 1

Why Toms and Dees? On more than one occasion I’ve heard from one of the men or teenaged males who corner for my fights that I will be fighting, “a tomboy.”  This information is always delivered with a smirk or mocking gesture or laughter as if it’s a joke that I’m in on.  The word “tomboy” for me holds a western connotation of a girl who likes to play with boys, masculine toys, play rough and usually dress in pants and a T-shirt.  It’s not a suggestive of a sexual orientation where I come from and, generally, it’s either something

Lommanee - Tom Beauty - Muay Thai

Lommanee Tom Female Beauty – Muay Thai Angels Shows Support

About a year ago I wrote about the mixed blessing of attention that the World Muay Thai Angels show was bringing on female Muay Thai in Thailand: World Muay Thai Angels and the Benefit for Women.  At the time, the tournament was brand new and is still to date the biggest production for an all-female tournament. As I said then, I was concerned that the new “sexy” image of Muay Thai was specifically aimed at erasing the observably pervasive among male Thais’ idea that only Toms or “butch” women fought Muay Thai. (For more on Toms and their counterparts, Dees,

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“Why This PTA Mom is Hooked on Muay Thai” Guest Post – Laurie Berenson

Laurie Berenson is a student of Casey VanBrookhoven in New Jersey, USA.  While I’ve never met Laurie, she wrote to me through my Facebook Muay Thai page and it turns out we know and have trained with many of the same people (including Casey, who was a favorite sparring partner for me back in Jersey because, despite his being so much bigger than I am, he sparred hard and made me work for anything I landed). When I first heard from Laurie I was taken by how similar her seemingly-instantaneous affinity for Muay Thai was to my own.  Once you

Hyper-Masculinity - Muay Thai

Do Women Have a Commitment Advantage in Muay Thai? – Hyper-Masculinity

The responses to my latest article The Fragility of Western Masculinity has been very interesting and somewhat unexpected. It has been, already, my most widely read article, and surprisingly has been embraced by a lot of men, a group that I’d anticipated would take offense. There have been the usual “shut up! you don’t know what your [sic] talking about!” comments with more or less expletives to add flavor, but they’ve been largely drowned out by sincere male fighters who recognize something in both kinds of masculinity examined in the post and who want to push themselves for more.  (I see

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Can Bleed Like a Man – Lumpinee, Muay Thai, Culture, Sexism and Meme

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

Fight Like a Girl - Female Boxing Movie

Fight Like A Girl: My Review of Jill Morley’s Documentary on Female Boxers

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

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