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

  • November 30, 2021
    We’ve heard how much everyone has been enjoying the Muay Thai Bones over the years, thank you for sending us messages on how you listen to our epic deep dives into Muay Thai. We know the podcast is super long, but that’s the way we love it. Got to be committed. So we’ve done a quick turn around and put together yet another Muay Thai...
  • our podcast, Sylvie and Kevin on Muay Thai
    November 11, 2021
    Our newest Muay Thai Bones podcast is out, and it is a good one. We really wanted to take our time to talk about this first subject right. We take a very deep dive into all the changes that have been coming to Lumpinee, as a New Lumpinee image is taking hold. For us this revolves around the fact that female fighters are becoming integrated...
  • October 6, 2021
    We’ve noticed that there was a pretty big chunk of fights which never made it to YouTube, existing only on Facebook in their live stream version, so I’ve made a project of voicing over those fights, fights 178-204 in 2017. You can find my complete record here, if interested in following along. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you don’t want to...
  • August 15, 2021
    This is something that I’ve battled with myself, many times and in many iterations over the years, and I know for sure I’m not unique or alone in it. This video is to offer encouragement to those of us who don’t identify as “Naturally Aggressive,” which in full contact sports can feel like a serious deficit. It isn’t. But it is something you can work...
  • May 23, 2021
    It’s strange, in a way, that there are things about us that we ourselves do not know. I am both fond of reminiscing and also allergic to it, happily recounting memories from my childhood to my husband about my brothers and friends, but I prickle and have sudden amnesia when it comes to a question that raises something more difficult. Recently we were talking about...
5 Minute Documentary on Sylvie
My Latest Posts
  • Our Muay Thai Library Coffee Podcast

    Part of the beauty of my Patreon, is that it not only supports everything I do – from writing, training, fighting, blogging, vlogging, the Muay Thai Library, documentary projects, helping take care of Legends, etc. – but it also supports the growth of everything I will do. Kevin and I have new ideas all the time and we work hard to expand our content, come up with new and interesting ideas, things that really haven’t been done before. It’s very cool. That’s where our Muay Thai Bones podcast came...
  • What High Level BJJ Can Teach Today’s Muay Thai

    Guest Post – Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu A Husband’s Point of View Above are kind of my reading notes on a really good Joe Rogan podcast with his long time Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor Jean Jacques Machado who speaks with great reflection on the evolution of the art from what he considers the acme of its development in the 1980s and 1990s, to today’s MMA influenced versions. To follow what is below watch that 5 minute edit of a very good discussion. What is compelling about the selections I chose, and...
  • Muay Thai Bones Podcast #8 – Introverts, Goggins, Long Clinch, Fight City

    The newest Muay Thai Bones podcast is up, another epic podcast clocking at 3 and a half hours, full of in depth discussion of how Muay Thai touches all aspects of life. Here is how to subscribe the audio version of Muay Thai Bones podcast episode 8     1. Square-1-ism – Goggins, Shame & Discomfort     2. Eye Contact as a Technique     3. Introversion and Letting the Body Act 4. Muay Khao Fighting for Western Females 5. What My Wai Kru & Ram Muay Mean...
  • What Team Means in Thailand – The Eyes in Team

    I am, in many ways, a satellite to my gym in Thailand. This is necessary for me to do almost everything that I do, but it’s also a point of difficulty. I don’t fight through my gym (if I did, I’d have had maybe 10 fights over the past 5 years, rather than over 150 in that same time) and so they’re not with me when I do fight and I’m often not with them when they go fight in Bangkok. On the rare occasions when I do get...
  • When You Can’t Train – The Sulk vs Focus

    My last fight – you can watch it here – left me with a souvenir of 8 stitches, right between the eyes. That’s a lucky number for me, I’m into it, but returning to training with a cut on my face is always a slightly tricky process. Surely, everyone who has been with me in the gym for these past 5 years is used to me by now – I’ve been called “Cyborg” and “Iron Lady,” “The Machine,” and “crazy,” because I’m always right back at it. Most of...
  • The Fake and the Real in Thailand

    Filippo comes over and hands me his phone, asking me to take a short video of him, Kru Nu, and Sudsakorn supervising the boys as they kick the heavy bags. Sure. I wipe my hands on the nearest piece of fabric, usually a shirt discarded on the apron of the ring, slip through the ropes and stand a few feet above the row of fighters as they shout and slam their shins into the bags in a syncopated, thwack, thwack, thwack. The boys don’t change how they’re kicking the...
  • The Lone Master In Need of a Student – Saving Muay Lertrit

    We are honestly trying to change the fate of Muay Thai through what is happening on Patreon. This is a dying branch of the art, it literally is going to die out if General Tunwakom does not find a serious student. Legit. He is the sole inheritor of this military style of Muay Thai, the last teaching student who directly has received the art from it’s creator, วิสิทธิ์_เลิศฤทธิ์ Ajarn Wisit Lertrit, a naval officer who incorporated his own Muay Khorat (a Boran style from the Khorat region of Isaan)...
  • Mental Training in Practice – Vlogging My Process

    A few days ago, I was at training and struggling through some really difficult sparring. The sparring itself was no different from how it usually is – or at least not different enough from the way it differs from day to day anyway – but I could tell that my mentality was what was making it so hard. It was the third day in a row like this. What I’ve learned over the years of focusing on my Mental Training (about 5 years, in earnest) is that you never...
  • Namkabuan Coming to Petchrungruang! | 3 Days Legends in Residence

    Namkabuan Nongkeepahuyut is coming to Petchrungruang. He will be acting as an advisor at regular sessions, both AM and PM, to all the Thai fighters and any of the westerners who are lucky enough to be training with us at that time. And he’ll be available for privates in the hours in between, which is a very rare opportunity indeed, as Namkabuan is one of these Legends of the Golden Age who doesn’t teach at any gym. He’ll be there from May 20-22nd and I’m very, very excited. Recently,...
  • Muay Thai Bones Podcast #5 – Fear, Sleep and How Muay Thai is Like Rap

    Our latest podcast, sleep, fear, rap and Muay Thai....
  • The Nature of Clinch – A Photographic Series and Essay

    Below is my husband Kevin’s photography series on clinch. These are photos he took from my last private session with Tanadet Tor. Pran49, who is teaching Long Clinch in Chiang Mai. I filmed a Muay Thai Library session with him, which you can see here (Tanadet Long Clinch), and decided the work was so good I’m going to try to do it once a month, on my regular visits to the city. These photos are from the first of those “just for me” sessions, building me as a fighter....
  • Muay Thai Bones Podcast #4 – Sodium, Dieselnoi, Shame & Fear, Switching Stance

    This is the 4th episode of Muay Thai Bones Podcast, filmed as Kevin and I are driving back from my 238th fight, in Trat. The Muay Thai Bones podcast is a sharing of how Kevin and I usually talk on our long drives across Thailand, inviting you to travel along with us! I hope you enjoy. We had a few technical difficulties with the camera overheating so this we supplemented with discussion from the coach in areas we lost the original conversation. So this one is part from the...
  • About Kaimuay Diaries – The Inside Look Muay Thai Documentary

    We wanted to do something different. There are so many incredible but mundane things that happen at a more traditional, family-style Muay Thai gym in Thailand it sometimes feels like you can just point a camera anywhere and capture something special. Something that isn’t a part of everyday lives elsewhere in the world. So we came up with the Kaimuay Diaries concept. The idea was to just pick a topic and have Sylvie just run the camera, letting things unfold. We didn’t want a super edited, “let-me-tell you” film...
  • Energy, Mental Clarity: Upping Your Sodium | 1+1 Keto

    One of my favorite things about the Ketogenic approach is that it’s all about what works or doesn’t work for you. All of us are genetically different, taking an extreme approach in diet to maximize certain benefits will affect people differently. In Thai there’s a phrase, “if you don’t try, you won’t know,” and that’s basically how I approach all of this. You turn yourself into a test-kitchen, or a lab rat, in order to figure those things out. Of course, what exactly you want to experiment with comes...
  • Expat Life, Power Lifting, Muay Thai and Freedom | Emma Thomas Interview

    I’ve known Emma for a number of years now and we’ve become very good friends. She lives in Bangkok and I live in Pattaya, so we don’t get to see each other in person often, but every time we do it’s wonderful. Mostly because I just like Emma a lot. We keep in touch regularly, so I know what’s going on with her and she with me, but because our visits are spaced apart, the ways in which both of us have changed can be quite dramatic at each...
  • Toward Muaythai in the Olympics – IFMA Stephan Fox Interview

    Muaythai in the Olympics – where are we at? Any chance to talk with Stephan Fox, the General Secretary of IFMA and director of the two-decade long process of trying to get Muaythai into the Olympics, is an amazing opportunity. I’ll admit that the first time I ever went to meet him, I was not sold on Muaythai in the Olympics – it felt like it would be a watered-down version of a sport and art I love a great deal and respect beyond measure. While I still have...
  • Muay Thai Bones Podcast #3 Olympic Muay Thai, Child Fighters, Head Trauma

    Above is our latest podcast from the road, covering tons of important topics. We try to touch on everything from big ideas and trends in Muay Thai, to technique and fight wisdom and celebration of Muay Thai history as well. episode 31. Child Fighting In Thailand2. Muay Thai in the Olympics3. Modernization4. Concussion Concerns5. Captain Marvel6. Kara Lowenthal – autonomy7. Southpaw vs Orthodox 8. Dieselnoi Watching Over ….& 9. Boonlai’s Session – Phrasing You can become a patron supporter of this podcast and all my content, the suggested pledge...
  • My New Podcast! Muay Thai Bones #1 and #2

    Kevin and I are doing a thing! I had a great time podcasting with my friend Emma Thomas in our “Two Ladies in the Kingdom” podcast, but sometimes it was hard to arrange it all on Skype – Emma and I both have very busy schedules that don’t always match up – so Kevin and I for some time were thinking that maybe we could do one ourselves. I mean, we occupy the same space all the time. We talk and think about the same things, all the time....
  • Kru Syndrome: The Pitfalls of Being Taken On By a Thai Trainer as a Woman

    guest post, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu – I’ve been wanting to write something on this for several years now. In fact, I’ve urged Sylvie to write about it herself, because I feel like she has special insight into it – we’ve talked about it a lot together – but she’s kind of crushed by the huge content load, and it seems that if it’s going to get written it’s going to be by me. Maybe we can discuss it together in a podcast of some kind. This is a kind...
  • Interview with the Late Sirimongkol Looksiripat – Fighter of the Year 1972

    above, enable Closed Captions for English (CC) – 10 minutes of my interview with the great Sirimongkol, you can watch the full translated interview by supporting the project here. One of the things I’m trying to do with the Preserve The Legacy Muay Thai Library project is to create more interview opportunities with legends of the sport. It’s a chance for the world to hear directly about the lives of past stars and to let them speak for themselves. This involves not only being able to sit down and...
  • Train With Dieselnoi the GOAT at Petchrungruang Gym for a Month

    Starting on February 15th, through March 15th 2019, Dieselnoi will be staying at my home gym in Pattaya (Petchrungruang) for the entire month. That’s 30 whole days! I’m truly excited for this. In December of the last year he was the “main event” – so to speak – of the Muay Khao Summit hosted at my gym, a chance for women to learn clinch and knees from Golden Age Legends who brought much of themselves out through the technique and heart of what Muay Khao is. But Dieselnoi is...
A Husband’s Point of View
  • Overburden, Character, Mental Anchoring | Confidence in Minute

    There’s a phrase in modern gold mining that I find profoundly poetic: clearing the overburden. Practically speaking, it means moving dirt with giant machines to reveal the gold-rich bedrock underneath. Move the worthless dirt, find the worthy dirt. I’ve adopted this phrase for my own evolution as a fighter and development through mental training. There’s a lot of useless dirt to dig through to get to the meaningful bits, the valuable bits, the core morals of your being. A lot of what we do, for years and years and with...
  • Tips On How to Relax In Training Muay Thai

    This is an expansion on two previous posts: my husband’s guest post Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training then my follow up post How to “Train Like a Thai” – Why Many Get it Wrong and then lastly Training with Hippy Singmanee – With Relaxation Comes Power. It’s part of an informal relaxation series.   One of the hardest things to learn is how to relax in contact sports. It’s also one of the most important things and something that separates “good” from “great.” This is by...
  • Fear of Looking Bad | Freedom and the Art of Letting Loose

    Part of what makes Jaidee such a good companion for me is that he sleeps on an Olympic Gold level. He can nap and laze around for hours and when it’s time for me to nap in the day between sessions he’s a real champ of a partner, curling up with me and stealing my pillow. But what’s really amazing about Jaidee is his running. He’s not a “good” runner by any means, when I try to run with him in the mornings he rarely makes it a few...
  • Deliberate Practice and Mental Training – Mapping, Violin and Muay Thai

    As the story goes, I was 2 and a half years old and my oldest brother Gabe – then probably about 9 years old – was finishing up his violin lesson. I stood up from whatever wooden blocks or plastic toys were keeping me occupied on the floor of the practice studio and crept up to my mother’s knees. She couldn’t hear my meek, mousy voice (my nickname back then was “Miss Mouse”) and leaned down to hear me better, and I repeated my question, “When do I get...
  • Permanence, Pain and the Gift of Acceptance | Mental Training

    I descend the steep stairs at the front of WKO, holding on to the handrail as the deep drop between each metal platform is designed for someone taller than I am, and feel the hot afternoon air rush into me as I open the glass door and exit the air-con. The metal of the lock I use on my helmet is hot to the touch as I unchain it from my bike and I have to carefully angle the helmet as I pull it over my head, to avoid...
  • Fight Thoughts: Modesty and Thinking You Are Better Than…

    image credit above: Dimitri Otis, Getty Images I made this Vlog the other day in response to a realization I had. In short, I had a really good sparring session against a young man at the gym who I don’t really know. Because I don’t know him at all – I’ve seen him training for a month or more now but don’t know anything about him and haven’t talked to him or worked with him – I don’t have judgments about how we ought to match up together. When...
The Muay Thai Bones Podcast – Us on the Road
My Muay Thai Vlogs – Experiences and Thoughts