On The Benefits Of Fighting Frequently - Part 2
I love fighting often.
I actually get a little crazy when I have to wait longer than ten days between fights and if it's even a few days longer it starts to feel like it's been forever since my last fight. There have been a few times I've had to wait what felt like incredibly long lengths of time, when I had a broken nose and twice when I had stitches. I think it was only three weeks between, but that's like missing two fights!
The beauty about getting back into the ring is that it takes the importance and the weight out of any one fight. The best way to clean the taste out of your mouth after a fight that didn't go the way you would have liked is to just get back in the ring with another one - let the training smooth away the edges and let the next fight be your focus, always looking forward.
To me, this isn't a remarkable or unusual way to go about training and fighting.
For me, fighting is part of training. Indeed, my initial desire to start fighting in the first place was the realization that I couldn't ever really know Muay Thai in the way I wanted to if I didn't fight – it’s a fighting sport, so not fighting is like being a soccer player who never plays a game. Thais have a hard time understanding folks who come out here and train but don't fight. For them, training and fighting go hand-in-hand.
When I hear about my own trainers in their youth, they lived this way also, fighting sometimes twice in one night. My main trainer Den has over three hundred fights. You don't accomplish that by fighting every now and then; you achieve that by fighting all the time. And Den is amazing. Every single fighter that I watch with wide eyes and amazement because they move so beautifully, it's because they've fought over and over, many times.
What's funny is that once the frequency of my fighting came to be understood and appreciated by my trainers, my main trainer started using my name and the number of fight dates listed next to it on the fight board as a way to tease the men who were mulling over the idea of fighting for long periods of time, always unsure whether or not they were "ready."
Just the other day, one man, who is more than ready to fight in terms of the training he's done, said something about how he wasn't quite ready yet and he'd think about it. Den pointed at me and then said to him, "Yes, you wait until Sylvie has one hundred fights and then you fight."
It's a double-sided coin there, because I know that Den respects how often I fight because it's the Thai way – it's the way he grew up and he would probably want his nephew and the other Thai boys at the gym to do the same, but they're not the diligent or obedient types.
But at the same time my being a woman is the piece which makes this teasing also mocking, that a girl is tougher than the guys, that I fight all the time, and the boys aren't sure whether they can even get in there once. When I try to encourage guys at the gym to fight, I do so through telling them that when they say yes to a fight they should actually say yes to scheduling two fights. Have the second one to take the pressure off of the first one – no matter what happens in the first, you have that second to either build upon or reinterpret the first. None of my fights mean anything in particular because I have all these other fights to make it into a progression, a process and a practice.
My last two fights have been a little frustrating for me.
The first was a first-round stoppage by the doctor for a cut I received from an elbow and that felt terrible because I very badly wanted to keep fighting and was unburdened by the cut. The second was a draw against a fighter who I could easily have defeated if I'd just had better focus.
I don't dwell to heavily on any of my fights but it's easier to glide past victories than it is losses or fights where I don't feel I performed well. What makes it much easier in any case is fighting again. However, my trainer is forced to work with a different promoter at the moment due to complications at our usual venue and twice now my fight has been cancelled last-minute – I’m talking mere hours before the fight is supposed to go on.
As a result I've stopped training on the appropriate day and prepared my body for the fight only to have it not happen, going back to training the next day to start again, stopping on the appropriate day and going through it again. What frustrates me is that I could just keep training if I knew sooner that the fight was postponed or cancelled. Instead, I am missing training and being disappointed each time the fight does not go through.
So now it has been nearly a month since I was in the ring and the protraction of time that I feel between fights is unlike anything else.
Part of this is surely due to training twice per day, seven hours each; time gets pulled and stretched and forgotten rather than measured out in equal portions. It's great that I'm not in the west, where a fight takes weeks or months to prepare for and if the fight doesn't go through you're out of luck for another few months – thank God I'm not in that situation – but it breaks up the rhythm of my training and changes the pattern to which my body has become accustomed.
My temporal reality is measured not by clocks and calendars so much as how hungry my body is for another fight.
That hunger is like clockwork.
Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu was born and raised in Colorado and now trains full-time in Thailand as a Muay Thai fighter. She has an excellent website at http://8limbs.us/. This is the second instalment of Sylvie's blog; the first instalment is available on our blog section.
Comments
On Friday, June Jun 2013 Simone said...
“Just read both instalments Sylvie. Muay Thai really does seem a young person's sport. How old are the Thai fighters when they stop competing? I'd imagine it wouldn't be that old...”
On Friday, June Jun 2013 Sylvie said...
“@Simone - Thais start at a much younger age than most of us in the west, beginning to fight at about age 8 on average (sometimes younger, sometimes a bit older). As such, their bodies go through a lot in a relatively short career, peaking as late-teens and early 20's and then retiring in the mid- to late 20's. Some Thai fighters are lasting longer now, into their 30's and some kind of novelty fights with men in their 40's. But in the west, because we start later and don't put our bodies through quite the same process, our careers are on a later curve in life.”
On Saturday, June Jun 2013 Kriste said...
“Hi Sylvie, I've checked out your website and You Tube clips (I love Master K!) and noticed you mentioned your partner. What does he think of all this? Does he do Muay Thai too? Is he supportive? Concerned you might get hurt (you seem to fight much bigger opponents, which I always though was not allowed)? And are you intending to stay in Thailand indifinitely?”
On Sunday, June Jun 2013 T-Rex said...
“Sylvie, do you see a lot of Dutch and Australian fighters training over there? As an Australian, I know a lot of Aussies go there for training prior to a fight here. They always talk about how tough and strong the Dutch fighters are, and how good their technique is. ”
On Sunday, June Jun 2013 Teo said...
“Clever, real clever. I'm talking about the part about booking two fights. All about learning. Good tip and one I'll pass on. ”
On Saturday, June Jun 2013 Sylvie said...
“@Kriste - it's funny you mention my husband because he is asked very often how he feels about my fighting. I feel very fortunate because I've met a number of women over the internet who do not enjoy the kind of support I get from my husband and, truly, I would not be where I am without him. It sounds quite strange but if you look at Kevin while I'm fighting you'll actually see him laugh when I get hit. He's not worried for me because he knows what I am capable of and knows I'll get up, or that I'll withstand whatever is happening in the ring. It's a strange vote of confidence but I appreciate it for sure. My parents and brothers have come around as well. They don't "enjoy" seeing me take strikes but they do love the fight in its entirety, which included me taking my lumps. We hope to stay in Thailand as long as we can. It's a financial issue more than anything, everything else is legal logistics for visas.”
On Saturday, June Jun 2013 Sylvie said...
“@T-Rex, I do see tons of Australian and Dutch folks out here. The "Dutch Style" of Muay Thai is fairly popular around the world, so I'm always surprised when I meet folks out here from Holland who don't even know the popularity of Muay Thai in their own country. And Aussies seem to make it out here in all different forms, mostly tourists but a few fighters as well.”
On Sunday, June Jun 2013 Tara said...
“I guess the obvious question is: after this, what next? And how long do you intend to continue fighting? What happens to people who stop? If they can't buy a gym and train others, does it just become a personal training thing, with the only goal to keep healthy and honed?”
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