Vlogs – Sylvie Study | Muay Thai Techniques & Style

Intensive Training Vlog – On Continuity | Training Vlog #8 (47 min)

Sylvie — Wed, 16 May 2018 05:33:27 +0000

This training vlog is not my usual ramble into the camera by myself, because I’m rambling into the camera as part of a discussion with my husband Kevin about some of the deeper soils we’ve been uncovering in this 6 weeks of my intensive training with Karuhat. Within the first couple weeks, Karuhat took a major leap in how he’s been instructing me. Not in method, really, but he’d been giving me little games to play and focus on in our long sparring sessions and I’d been improving as he slowly upped the intensity each time I thought I had gained some ground. But this huge leap came when he introduced this unexpectedly difficult game of “ต่อ” or simply continuing. I’m a cardio monster as one of my natural strengths as a fighter, just the ability to push past physical fatigue, but what Karuhat was demanding of me and drawing out of me is something else entirely. He blew the cover off this deeply ingrained habit of taking tiny breaks, all the fucking time. Sometimes it’s just a small hesitation, but sometimes it’s a full mental break that requires me to start over, but neither is acceptable to the Golden Age level of fighting. Take out your “ums” and “ers” and “like” ticks that you use for giving yourself time to think while speaking – it’s not easy. You may not be a full on Valley Girl, but all of us have these small ticks; taking them out feels like drowning. But when you do edit them out, you are more concise. You sound more assured, intelligent, the discussion flows and you have fluency. Karuhat is teaching me fluency.

You can download the podcast version of our discussion here.

You can see all the training vlogs in this series here

Watch all the free Intensive Training videos here

Intensive Training Vlog – The Silver Cloud | Training Vlog #7

Sylvie — Sun, 13 May 2018 10:48:40 +0000

Above is my 7th training vlog in the Intensive series, just a day like all the rest, but somehow I seemed to reach a point where I just came over the hill. These 6 weeks have tested me in all the areas I am weak, but it has been making me strong, and somehow today, just a few hours ago, I came on out on the other side. It wasn’t a big revelation, it was just a feeling I got in shadowboxing. I liken it to glimpsing the shore. You can see where to swim.

You can see all the vlogs in the series here.

Intensive Training Vlog & Podcast – The Loaded Gun | Training Vlog #6

Sylvie — Mon, 07 May 2018 06:45:48 +0000

In this vlog – the podcast version is here for download – I start discussing a realization I had about what I’m calling Muay Thai literacy. There is not only the reaching for the meaning of particular words (knowing the right ‘move’ to make under certain circumstances), but there is also the forcing of your opponent into the circumstances that you want. For me this explains a bit of my growing frustration with myself as I’ve always felt a beat behind with Karuhat, as if I’m struggling to find the right word, the right pronunciation, whereas you can also get ahead of the game by forcing the words you want to come out, and anticipating the probably next word in an exchange. This leads me to discussing the right energy and how important that is to technique. And even though I quote Dickinson a little bit wrong – the line is “My Life stood – a Loaded Gun”, that is almost the point. You must start at and train the feeling first, and then correct the words to sharpen the feeling.

You can see all the free videos in this training series here

watch the full sessions On Demand here

Intensive Training Vlog & Podcast – Fighting Beyond Technique | Training Vlog #5

Sylvie — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 00:49:08 +0000

Above is my 35 minute vlog on how training is going, and the particular kind of breakthrough I’ve come on, just in the last two days. I’ve struggled quite a bit pushing through all the extraordinary instruction I’ve been getting from both Chatchai and Karuhat, complicated by the fact that I’ve just been sick with fever and infection. Finally recovered I’m starting to see the light in my training too. I talk especially about how I’ve begun to flow with Karuhat and how doing voiceover has helped me get perspective on film. Mostly though, I just have to stop trying so hard. Kevin interviews me for this vlog.

You can also listen to the vlog as a podcast too, as part of the Preserve The Legacy Podcast series. Download the podcast version here. Or listen to it just below:

Subscribe to the Preserve The Legacy Podcast on iTunes

or find it on Stitcher.

If you’d like to watch all the sessions with Karuhat, which I refer to here, you can see them On Demand on the Sylvie Study Intensive.

Post-Training Vlog #4 – Emotional Fray and Gaining Feeling | Karuhat Intensive 6.0

Sylvie — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 06:45:01 +0000

my post-training vlog #2. In this vlog I talk a little about how I’m gaining feeling for Chatchai’s weight-transfer, especially on the jab. Previously, in a more beginner stage, the transfer was almost entirely onto the back foot, but in this session I started to feel how it also is on the front foot a little, in a kind of tension. And Karuhat couldn’t make our last session so this morning he gave me about 2 hours of continuous sparring and teaching through sparring, which is his method. So good, but very frustrating. Things are made a little worse by conjunctivitis which has weakened me a little too, so I’m really treading water at this moment.

You’ll be able to watch all these sessions with full commentary on my Sylvie Study on Demand channel. Karuhat’s sessions will first be voiced and put up one by one, and then the Chatchai sessions will go up after that.

1st Full Day – A Little Brutal and Very Tiring | Training Vlog #3

Sylvie — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:44:26 +0000

Vlog from the 1st completely full day of training. Today, the first day, was a tad overwhelming. We had already proposed a very tight schedule for myself including all the time needed for voiceover, editing and uploading and it all got thrown out of whack as after my morning session with Chatchai, as Karuhat had trouble with the taxi and was about 2 hours late. This meant so much shadowboxing while I waited, which probably was a good thing, but it also meant that I was going from about 8 am all the way until 8 pm. We were driving across Bangkok almost as soon as we arrived home from Chatchai’s headed to Dejrat Gym for a very intense session.

The Brilliance of Karuhat – Training Vlog #2

Sylvie — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 18:58:23 +0000

In this vlog I run through some of the subtle brilliance of the style and technique of Karuhat, and what it is like to try and train some of these incredibly subtle skills. I liken it to actual reading. We all hear that we should “read” and opponent, but with Karuhat it is literal reading. It’s becoming accustom to certain shapes that your opponent takes, noticing when they are (or forcing them to be) on one leg, providing a single avenue of escape so that they walk into your strike, provoking tension in your opponent to make them more readable. What is absolutely amazing about Karuhat is that he does not only have these skills as an instinctive fighter, he is able to teach them, slowly.

Introduction: Karuhat – Secrets To Style | Training Vlog #1

Sylvie — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 06:42:16 +0000

This is a bit of an overview of how I’m feeling just a few days away from setting off to Bangkok to commit myself to 30 day or so of one-on-one training with two legends. We’ll be documenting the Karuhat sessions in nearly real time (daily) with long video commentary, in the style of the Patreon Muay Thai Library, and the Chatchai Sasakul session will be filmed and probably added to Sylvie Study at a future date. I’m both excited and terrified of how large a project this is, but things that will stretch you should scare you.