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August 3, 2012
Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
Muay Thai

First Rule of Fight Club: Unspoken Methods and Medicines in Muay Thai

Ya Nam La Damphon - Muay Thai - Fairtex

The Ubiquitous Remedy

Before my first fight upon returning to Thailand for this year-long stay I was told by one of my trainers that I had to go to the pharmacy and pick up some things.  I was told to get some kind of electrolyte and/or peptide concoction for before the fight, basically to stay hydrated, and to get a second medicine for after the fight to “clean my blood.”  Both medicines were given to me with their Thai names, so I had no idea what they were and I had to ask him to repeat the names a number of times so I might remember how to ask at the pharmacy.

After some questioning it was finally revealed to me that the second medicine is actually a laxative.  Upon hearing this I assumed that this trainer was playing a practical joke on me, but he kept repeating how important it is to take it after every fight; he said it would help me recover faster and I wouldn’t have bruises or lumps to deal with for days afterward.  I’d never heard of it before – fighters taking laxatives after fights – and nobody had mentioned this in my shorter stay in Thailand two years ago, so I double checked with Andy and sure enough he told me, while being careful to say, “some fighters” do indeed methodically take this laxative after every fight in order to expedite recovery.  He said that you can get boils under your armpits if you don’t take it.

I’m a good student.  If my trainers tell me to drink a raw egg every morning I’ll give it a go.  This seemed odd to me, but after doing some research online and finding at least a few corroborating articles (including a well-described experiment by Muay Thai blogger Laura dal Farra here) I decided to try it.  Apparently laxatives are a panacea in several countries for everything from ear infections to acid reflux, so there’s at least some cohesion here.

The most common tincture is called Ya Nam La Damphon (“ya nam” is liquid medicine and “la damphon” is a call to arms… serious stuff) and I asked for it everywhere.  None of the pharmacies within my little 4 kilometer habitat had it in stock, meaning it’s either not as popular as I assumed or it’s even more so and was sold out.  So I had to settle for a pill form, which lists “muscle aches” as one of the symptoms it addresses.

My husband kept making fun of me, telling me I’m not doing it for real until I take the liquid form.  This Ya Nam La Damphon is everywhere supposedly and Chantal Ughi in Bangkok, when mentioning that she no longer takes the medicine on her facebook (unrelated to my own experience; totally coincidentally), was absolutely astonished that I was having difficulty locating it.  But the pills work well enough in accomplishing what their meant for and after about 4-6 hours your system is being cleaned out pretty thoroughly.

I would take the pill directly upon my return from a fight so that I could go to sleep and wake up to the gut punches the next morning and hopefully be done with it all by early afternoon.  The effects last for a while, so there’s no training the same day you’ve taken the medicine, unless you want to be running to the toilet every 15 minutes during your workout.

I can’t say for sure whether the pills make a big difference.  My trainer would always ask me when I got back to training (or before if he saw me walking down the street) after a fight whether or not I’d taken the pill.  I always answered to the affirmative and more often than not he’d tell me to take it again.  “Clean your blood,” he’d say.  If I got hurt in training after a fight – you know, basic stuff like a bruise on my shin or my forearm from a kick – he’d yell at me for having not taken the pill, or not enough times.  I never lied to him; I did actually take the damn pill after every fight and I still get hurt in training, usually in the first few days upon my return.  Never badly; never enough to stop training.  Shins are mushy after fights no matter what and that’s going to lead to bumps and bruises in the days after.  That’s why some trainers won’t hold pads for a fighter for days after a fight, whether or not they’ve spent a day cleaning out their guts.  Truth is, the more you fight and bash your shins the tougher they become, so eventually my “baby shins” as Den calls them will give way to iron-bones like Master K has – regardless of the after fight medicine, I think.

 

In Case of Flu

In my 21st fight I got cut in the second round and it has seemed more and more over the days after the fight that my nose might have been broken as well.  At first I thought it most certainly wasn’t broken – it wasn’t swollen, the cut was the thing.  But the next day my nose was very swollen at the bridge, so that I looked like a puma, and I developed black eyes on either side.  The swelling has gone down and the cut is healing nicely, but the sensitivity remains.  I can mess around with the bridge and feel a little “crunching”, which is good that it’s not a lot, but the pain is intense at even light touch – such as pulling a shirt over my head and the collar grazes along the bridge of my nose.  Hurts more than seems reasonable.

I didn’t take the pills after this fight, mostly because I forgot to buy more.  I’d been experimenting with ice-baths after training the week prior to the fight and had great results.  Purchasing ice on the way home from the gym and filling my little tub to about waist-high when seated was doing wonders for the recovery of my legs.  So I happily repeated this process after the fight, icing my mushy, bruised up shins (from blocks) and getting all the lactic acid out of my muscles was surely a splendid thing.  Next day I felt great.

The afternoon after the fight I went to the gym and did some joint rotation and shadow just to get moving – that felt good.  Then on Sunday afternoon I returned to the gym for more shadow and a little bagwork, again feeling good.  Tuesday I trained hard, getting really good boxing work in with Neung in the morning and JR in the afternoon (no kicking yet as my shins are still sensitive) and felt really stoked for the three weeks of training I’ll have before my next fight.  (Den encouraged me to take an extra week before getting back in the ring to let the cut on my nose heal completely.)  I felt a little achy in my joints on Monday night, nothing terrible but certainly noticeable, and was a little chilled even with the comforter on the bed, but I get cold pretty easily now days.

Wednesday morning I met Andy at the gym and drove up to the lake for a run.  I wasn’t feeling great, but decided nonetheless that instead of running the 3.5 km around the lake I’d run up the mountain.  It’s about 1 km of flat road to get to the base of the incline and then I have no idea the actual distance up the mountain but it’s straight up with no breaks in the incline.  The road is creased with tire-tracks from muddy days that reach as deep as 18 inches in some places.  The mud dries enough to give solid support underfoot but it’s completely smooth, like the thick muscle of a snake all across the width of the drive until you reach the edge which either shoots straight up as a wall on one side or straight down as a nasty fall on the other.  And you share the road with motorcycles and trucks, mostly coming down the mountain, but everyone pulls to one side where the tire tracks are less deep, so everyone is jockying for space on about 4 ft width of a 10 ft wide road.  Fun!

I ran until the road plateaued and then turned around.  The way down is not much easier than the way up, but you’re working more for balance rather than fighting to keep moving forward.  We got back to the gym and I did my knees on the bag, wrapped my hands, finished a few rounds of shadow and started into my second round on the bag when my knuckles started groaning.  I felt achy in my shoulders and my stomach hurt in patches like it had rocks in it.  I slowed down, gave some consideration to the thought of padwork under these conditions and decided to go back to bed on the chance that I could come back strong in the afternoon.

On the way home I stopped by the pharmacy and lo and behold they had the ubiquitous/elusive liquid version of the laxative pills, so I picked that up along with some ibuprofen.  I’d read somewhere that squeezing a lime into your mouth after swallowing the liquid medicine helped with the awful taste, so I bought a lime and headed up to the apartment.

Home Remedies

So, I inspected the label on the bottle for anything I could understand.  I can read Thai pretty well but don’t have the vocabulary to know what I’m reading.  But I found numbers and was able to work out the dosage somewhat.  The liquid is cloudy and brownish, maybe like the sediment at the bottom of apple cider.  The aroma is not strong, kind of a mix of floral and vegetal.  And for all the whiny descriptions I’d read about how awful the flavor is – how there’s nothing so terrible in the world – it really isn’t so bad.  If you grew up with Hippie remedies like liquid echinacea you’ll have an idea of the taste; and echinacea is much, much worse in that the flavor doesn’t dissipate and the alcohol-base stings the tongue.  This stuff has a quick finish and the lime kills any lingering flavor on contact.

I drank some water and went to bed.  I was full-on passed out for a good 5 hours before I woke up to drink more water.  Then I was down again.  I slept hard pretty much through the whole day and when the liquid started taking affect it was much milder than the pills ever were.  I didn’t have stomach cramps that I had with the pill always and the “active” time of flushing the system seemed much shorter, although to the same degree as the pills.  I much prefer the liquid given this one experience to hold against the many experiences with the pill form.

I wasn’t able to eat much on Wednesday, although I did try to get something in my system so that I would have fuel for the next day.  I woke up Thursday morning and got out of bed, but the movements of preparing to go to the gym proved too arduous and my exhaustion threw me back into bed.  My husband let me sleep late – he has a keen awareness of how hard I’m sleeping and can tell when it’s repairing me; he’s better at it than I am – and we went to breakfast when I was able to sit up.  I couldn’t really eat the oatmeal I’d ordered and we decided I’d take another day to rest so that I can come back strong tomorrow.

After resting in bed a bit more I got up and went across the street to a massage parlor that has a sauna in it. I’ve been told by my trainers that I should use the sauna because I fight so often and it’s a treatment that one of my trainers uses himself on a near-daily basis.  This sauna is brilliant. It’s about the size of an average (non-NYC apartment) shower/bath and is constructed of wood with benches forming an “L” shape inside.  I can lie with my knees bent a little across the longer side, which I did for most of my time inside.  The heat is produced – this really is so clever – by a large crockpot that is plugged in to keep water boiling with some herbs in it and the steam fills the tiny space and brings the temperature up impressively high.  As I was waiting for the room to heat (meaning for the water to boil, I guess) the operator brought me a small cup of sweet ginger tea and rubbed what smelled like tea-tree oil on the base of my neck.

I worked up a really good sweat in that little sauna and dripped for about 40 minutes before the lady told me to come out.  I toweled off, got dressed and headed back home while drinking a big bottle of cold water.  I felt great.  In the sauna I’d thought to myself, “wow, I’m going to go train this afternoon!” and I noted in the elevator mirror on the way up to my apartment (this is where I really see myself most often – elevator narcissism) how much clearer my eyes looked, how awake I looked after the sauna.  The urge to power over to the gym gave way to fatigue soon after I got in the door and I was happy to shower and get back into the bed.

Ice or Spice – Shins

Something that has continuously surprised me in home-treatments here in Thailand is how much heat is used as a cure for injury.  In America we like to ice everything and that is a good way to reduce swelling, but out here it’s only the first 12 hours that ice has any purpose in treating anything.  After that it’s all hot water.  Hot water massages are used for bruises on the shins: you soak a towel in incredibly hot water – Kaensak described it well when he said that it should hurt your hands to wring it out – and then put the hot towel on your bruise, applying enough pressure for some of the remaining water to eek out of the towel.  You do this until the water is no longer hot and then you do it again.  It’s incredibly affective in curing lumps and bruises on the shins and it’s probably what caused the swelling in my nose to go down after the first 48 hours.  Gets the blood moving, I guess.

I can’t say for sure that these laxatives have a great affect in helping recovery after fights, but the liquid version certainly seems to have helped in my recovery from a flu-like illness and the time in the sauna made a huge difference.  I can’t advocate for it with the enthusiasm that my trainers have for “cleaning your blood” via laxatives after a fight, but if it’s the tried and true method of the fighters around me, it’s likely going to remain part of my regimen until I can’t stand it anymore.  But the hot water massage, the sauna and the ice-baths are keepers.

 

 

 

 

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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.

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Capture2

The Fighter and Unconscious Tension – Recognize and Release

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

Mental Training - People Pleasing and the Fighter

How Many Fucks? Zero. The People Pleaser and the Fighter

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

Chiang Mai Best Female Fighting in the World

Why Chiang Mai Has the Best Female Muay Thai Fighting in the World

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

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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

the-secret-to-padwork-in-thailand

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

fighting-above-weight-in-thailand

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

perfect-muay-thai-technique

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

Pitbull - Fear and Agression in Muay Thai

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

Dracula Guard position - Muay Thai

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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Pumping Iron II: The Women – The Markers of Gender and The Problems of Definition

Earlier this week I watched “Pumping Iron II: The Women,” a counter-part of sorts to the Arnold Schwarzenegger versus Lou Ferrigno docu-drama from 1977, focusing on the 1975 IFBB Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia competitions.  “Pumping Iron II: The Women” focuses on the 1983 Caesar’s World Cup, a competition that is staged for the film and introduces the Australian phenom Bev Francis, a former Power Lifter making her debut in the US female body building competition circuit.  The drama and intrigue of the film is whether Francis’ other-worldly physique, which tips more toward male bodybuilders than the small, moderately muscular

Paula Bronstein - Women of Thailand and the Bottom Rope-001

So What’s the Big Deal About Women and the Bottom Rope In Thailand?

photo credit above: Paula Bronstein at Getty Images Guest Post – A Husband’s Point of View There’s been some of recent conversation about the bottom rope, and the Thai custom that women not only pass under the rope when entering the fight ring, but also less well-known, that in some more conservative camps, that they enter training rings this way as well, so as to not disturb the protective powers of magic that consecrate the ring and everything that happens within it. One western coach took to Facebook to present a defiant rant that his female fighters would never go

Sylvie and Robyn - Petchrungruang

Company in a Male Space – Training with a Friend

The afternoons at Petchrungruang have been crowded lately.  I’m sitting in a somewhat unusual spot between the two rings, rolling my wraps. I’m sitting here because my usual spot on a bench across the gym has already been usurped by a few Italians who train in the evenings; it’s a wrench in my routine, but a sublimely mild one. My friend Robyn is visiting from the US and will have a fight next week. She looks at me while we sit and adjust our wraps, “What do you want to work on today?” Robyn asks. I’m stumped. There are things

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Mother - Patti Gassaway

My Mother’s Shadow – Why She Can’t Understand My Fighting

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

Tom and Dees in Thailand - 8limbs.us

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

meme - Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

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

Thai Clinch - Lanna Muay Thai - black and white

The Male Nature of Thai Clich – Play, Dramatization, and Domination

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

Ressurection-Original

What is Violence: Fighting or Silence? | The Telling of Rape

A woman I know from the US wrote to me and asked me how one knows whether or not one’s gym situation is severely messed up. She then told me about a very alarmingly abusive power dynamic between the owners/managers of her previous gym and how they treated female gym members, as well as their more physical power trips over male and female members during sparring. She wanted to write about it, to help women who might be in similar situations realize that this is not okay. In the way you can change any love song into a Christian Rock

Masculine Physique - Female Muay Thai - Sylvie

ฺBody as Evidence – Masculine Frame and Status in Muay Thai in Thailand

I write a lot about how having a female body and female identity in a male-dominated sport and alien culture places limits on my possibilities as a fighter.  There are also ways in which my anatomical build and a general physiognomy work to my advantage, (I use the word “physiognomy” throughout because none fit better, despite it not being exact):  Namely, the ways in which my body isn’t stereotypically feminine create some new possibilities of perception and opportunity, not just drawbacks. I have just written about status and how near invisible behaviors, can affect it: The Mitt And the Joke. This

no-shoes

Of Modesty and Men – Thai Manners In and Out of Camp

  Power in Modesty? I just read an online article on the topic of Evangelical clothing stores popping up “all over” Brazil. The author is quick to note that Brazil is “known for it’s tiny bikinis,” so there’s some kind of shock expected from the popularity (in number as there is no note on the sales) of these modest clothing stores. The author raises the question, mostly in the title of the article, of whether there is power in modesty. If focus is taken away from the body and how “hot” it looks, can women accomplish more, go farther in

nadia

Playing to Type – the Sexy Exchange Student and Muay Thai

– 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

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Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail

Academic author Peter Vail is one of the few serious scholarly writers who have taken on Muay Thai as a field of study. You can find his articles in my Academic Resources post. Besides a general dearth of articles on Muay Thai in English, there is the added problem that they are very hard to find for the average sincere reader who wants to learn more about Muay Thai and Thai culture. Peter Vail’s PhD dissertation is perhaps most significant example of an important work that is largely hidden from western Martial Art readers’ eyes. Academics aren’t interested in Muay

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu - Gym Culture and Equality

The Mitt and the Joke: Illusions and Pitfalls of Equality in a Muay Thai Gym

Being treated equally isn’t always what it seems.  I’ll just come right out and say that I balk when I hear women claim they are treated completely the same as men are at their gyms in Thailand.  I find it so hard to believe that I quite frankly don’t believe it.  On the one hand, even if treated with kindness and respect on both sides of gender, men and women are rarely treated exactly equal anywhere in the world.  I wouldn’t claim this about how I’m treated in my own family or among my friends; and while I do feel

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