Sityodtong North Shore Part 2: A Machismo Sport

In one of last month’s posts, Sityodtong Part 1: The Other Side, I explained my choice of a competitive martial arts school as a summer training venue and described my first impressions as I began training. Now that I have had more time to sink my teeth into Muay Thai, from its attitude to techniques and  principles, I would like to revisit  it for further reflection. While in my first post I focused on the similarities between Muay Thai and other styles I have practiced, my goal for this post is to dwell on differences; it is these differences, after all, that make styles distinct and valuable, and are the source of the diversity which strengthens the modern world of martial arts.

Perhaps one of the most obvious and enjoyable differences between sport Muay Thai and the more traditional styles I have studied is simply the attitude. The Muay Thai/MMA mindset at Sityodtong is unabashedly competitive and confrontational; a far cry from the strictly formalized behavior practiced in a Karate or Aikido dojo or idealized by Taoist monks writing on Gungfu. As showcased by the decorated walk-out shirts, colorful MMA shorts, and expensive sparring gear abundantly spread across a floor-full of students, there is considerably less emphasis on humility, uniformity, and discipline than what one might find training at a traditional school.

One senior student and top-ranked regional kickboxer, after coaching me in a few rounds of sparring in the gym’s ring, described the Muay Thai attitude as one of “Machismo”, explaining the aggressiveness of proponents and the style of competitive fighting, which focuses heavily on hard blows to wear down or knock out an opponent. To use his words, “A guy swings at you, you don’t run away, you take it and hit him right back even harder. You play dangerously with range so that your weapons are always ready to smash him down in front of you.” Indeed, as I learned by sparring with higher level students, standing squarely before me with chins dipped, gloved hands lifted, and feet poised to deliver a crippling leg kick, Muay Thai is not an art for the faint of heart; a practitioner must face their opponent dead on and be ready to win an exchange of blows at any cost. Naturally, there is just as much precision, technique, spacing, and mental game as any other fighting sport, but from a cultural standpoint, the Muay Thai ethos is an assertive one.

I soon discovered just how infectious this machismo attitude could be. At the end of my first month of training, I decided to stick around after my first hour of training for an advanced/intermediate class absolutely loaded with senior students. I struggled with some of the more complex material throughout the night—already exhausted from training earlier that evening—and was dead tired by the time it was time for sparring. I found myself standing before a fellow perhaps three or four years my junior and two or three inches taller than me. He had black, short-cropped hair and a lean build, opting to display an impressive collection of tribal tattoos rather than wear a shirt.

The buzzer sounded, indicating the start of the round, and we touched gloves and fell easily into our practiced stances, maneuvering and adjusting our distance as we tried to feel one another out with a few opening jabs and feints. Accustomed to the lighter contact rules of sparring in karate, I generally pulled my punches, shooting them inside my opponent’s guard but not letting them make heavy contact. In point sparring rules, one would bow to acknowledge such a blow, and the round would begin anew; but I soon noted my opponent was completely ignoring my punches; I would tap his nose,  chin, or solar plexus with a well-timed strike, only to have him showering me with hooks and uppercuts in response. Like a typical Karateka or Aikidoka trained in self defense, I would retreat out of range or pivot around my opponent to his weaker side and evade these salvos of wild blows, then re-enter on my own time. The tactic inevitably failed me in a cramped MMA gym, where I suddenly felt my back hit the wall, followed by a rush of stars as a gloved fist struck my jaw, sending my head bouncing back against the thankfully padded surface behind me.

I shook my head with a good-humored laugh as my opponent retreated a step,myself  perhaps unconsciously assuming (as would be the case in point sparring) that he had, in his enthusiasm, struck a bit too hard, and happily forgiving him. After touching his outstretched glove, I feinted a hook then penetrated his guard with a swift cross that cleanly pecked the tip of his nose; a transgression which he punished with another rush of alternating blows. Like I had been taught, I shot out my lead foot in a gentle, controlled pushing front kick (or thip) to stop his advance, but felt him run right through me and ignore the restrained contact. Raising my arms to cover, I was jarred by another heavy hook, then heard the fleshy smack of his shin impacting powerfully into the outside of my thigh, where an exposed nerve (the target of the leg kick, a fierce weapon for which the style is well known) caused my muscles to seize and flex involuntarily in shock.

“Phew!” I gasped in exasperation, hopping back from the action to rub at my leg with another tolerant chuckle, though by now I was growing indignant and frustrated. So caught up was I in the karate mindset of control and discipline that his forcefulness seemed like arrogance; how could he disrespect me so blatantly when I  made the concerted effort to control my own blows? My partner was oblivious to my plight, however, and made not the slightest indication of understanding that he was hitting too hard; on the contrary, he stared me down with an almost predatory intensity. My resentment and embarrassment grew as the situation repeated itself, and soon I sensed the welling of a sort of egocentric anger within me; the type every Buddhist, Taoist, or Zen martial artist strives to extinguish in the pursuit of greater enlightenment. Alarm bells were ringing in my head; voices of past teachers warning me to calm myself and forgive, but as a fierce cross knocked my cheek hard enough for me to wish I had purchased a mouth guard, those voices were lost in the rush of blood in my ears.          

To hell with enlightenment. I thought as I rolled my shoulders, looking up to my opponent as he awaited my return. I’ll knock him flat. Freed from the perspectives and opinions of past training, I closed quickly with my partner and landed a heavy jab on his gloves, hammering them again with a cross and following with a hook. He covered and ducked his head, taking the blows without surprise or indignation, and answered me with another punishing leg kick, the likes of which hit the same exact spot it had before and made bells ring all up and down my body. Rather than laugh it off, I gave a wrathful kiai and fired a round kick to his body with all the force I could muster. It caught off his tricep and sent him stumbling to my left; I pursued with an overtight hook and sloppy uppercut, then caught his gloves and shoved him hard when he tried to retort. I forced him into a covered retreat toward the caged wall of the gym where two of the trainers had been chatting, and the two of us were soon exchanging fierce blows to the head, body and legs. I attempted another ambitious hook, only to feel my head snap back from a fierce cross and yet another kick to the leg, which I simply took and answered with another brutal body kick. Before my partner could respond to my furious counter, I leaped into a diving thip which struck him in the solar plexus and sent him stumbling backward. The kick must have hurt him, because he pounded me mercilessly with body kicks and landed a solid hook on my kidneys.
        “Easy, guys! Calm down!” We both heard a trainer call from beside us, and responded with a scoffing chuckle in unison. “Jesus, they’re beating the f*** out of each other.” Said another, but we weren’t about to stop. Heart thudding and eyes stinging with sweat, I gave myself entirely to  the sheer aggression of the match, and faced heavy blows despite my fear and unfamiliarity. By the time the round bell had sounded, I was battered and exhausted, my opponent in notably better shape, but I felt rewarded by the experience. After years of rarely being solidly hit, I had become fearful of just taking a blow. It was humbling and empowering to face far less controlled technique and keep on swinging come out standing. Even so, the damage done by the blows was far more emotional than it was physical; my ego was the only thing hurt by my partner’s strikes, my body was shaken but fine.

Walking into the parking lot after class, I spotted my sparring partner, who smiled and complimented me on the bout. “How long have you been training here again?” he asked. “About three weeks.” I admitted with a shrug, noting how his eyebrows sunk with concern. “You’ve done some other stuff before this, huh?” “Yeah.” I laughed sheepishly with a nod. “I thought so… there I was thinking ‘I’ll go easy on this guy, he’s new’, and whang!” he jerked his head back as though he’d been struck hard on the chin. “Good stuff man, keep up the good work.” I wished him the same and thanked him for the great experience, then we both headed for home. While thirty minutes earlier we had clashed egos and shins on the mat, at the end of the day--just like on the tatami of a traditional dojo--there were no hard feelings but instead a mutual respect and camaraderie; we had both learned from the practice (though admittedly I had gained much more from it; he was an amateur MMA fighter with an impressive record).

The moral of the story is a familiar one mentioned frequently throughout eastern spiritual disciplines, and made famous by Bruce Lee; empty your cup. That is, you cannot truly learn from a new experience or idea when your mind is already filled with preconceived notions and lessons learned elsewhere. This concept is especially important for the modern day martial artist, who may (willingly or otherwise) end up taking up other styles of practice throughout his or her journey in the martial arts. While I had been well aware of the idea since I first began my study, I had applied it only to technical aspects of the arts. When I began karate, I did not practice Aikido, but worked to imitate the movements of my teachers and not view them solely through a lens of my past experience. Likewise, when I practiced Muay Thai, I did not let myself fall back on reflexive techniques from karate, Jeet Kune Do, or Aikido (many of these were illegal to boot), but practiced what I had been taught, despite how uncomfortable or awkward the movements may have been. This is an important first step toward emptying one’s cup and learning a new art. What I found to be more difficult and yet perhaps more important is to rid one’s self of the attitude of a past art when practicing a new one.

Thus, when I began my training in Muay Thai, I was simply an Aikidoka learning Muay Thai techniques. My goal, however, has been to be a Muay Thai practitioner practicing Muay Thai; to embody the art I am studying and immerse myself in it. I believe this is a key part of “emptying the cup” and easing the transition into a new art. Perhaps more importantly, it may mean the difference between learning a few techniques and gaining a lasting impression and sense of a system as a whole. Thus, if you're a traditionalist cross-training in a competitive martial art, don't over-complicate your training with the moral implications of your actions in the ring; give yourself to the practice. Likewise, if you come from a more sport-oriented background, don't turn your back on the rituals and ideas of a traditional discipline; bow like you mean it, take the words of your sensei or sifu seriously, and look to your senior students for an example. When training at a new school, a martial artist should think not only "when in Rome, do as the Romans do", but "think as the Romans think". By (at least temporarily) adopting the attitudes of a different discipline, a martial artist learns to view their art from a truly different perspective beyond technical detail.

Chinese Medicine in the Martial Arts

Perhaps one of the most frustrating challenges for a martial artist is a physical injury which disables them from training. Like an all-star quarterback who breaks an ankle before a big game, an injured martial artist is stuck brooding on the sidelines while hours of valuable practice go on without them. While much can be gained from watching a class from the outside (I highly recommend this practice to those temporarily unable to train), learning martial arts is inherently experiential and requires intuitive and physical feeling rather than intellectual understanding. Watching will provide a clear image of what is to be done, but only by doing does a martial artist develop technique to a level of applicable refinement. Thus, being injured, a martial artist’s learning, too, is injured, and their training must take a temporary back seat to healing.

                While I have missed a day or two of training here and there from jammed toes, swollen ankles, and bruised ribs in the past, I have been fortunate in that I did not come to know the bitter disappointment of a serious injury until this past year. Working as a field assistant on a remote natural history reserve in central California, opportunities for formal training were few and far between. After hours of hiking and carrying equipment to census woodpeckers for a Cornell University study, I diligently kept to my own independent training, which consisted of alternating sessions of shadowboxing, Tang Soo Do forms, strength and conditioning, yoga, and suburi (practicing sword cuts). After a month of intense practice, I felt my techniques growing smoother, more natural, and more powerful, and eagerly anticipated the opportunity to train at Shobu during my three week vacation that winter.

 Not long thereafter, I slipped on rocky scree while walking obliquely on a steep hill and fell heavily with my load of equipment. Unable to break my fall, I strained the LCL of my left knee, and experienced sharp pain with nearly every weight-bearing movement. I took a week off from outdoor work and searched frantically for any way to speed up the healing process—I would be returning home in a few weeks and couldn’t stand the thought of missing a day of training—but my injury persisted, and I spent my last month of work limping up and down hill after hill. Even the gentlest of exercises and techniques of my independent training routine seemed to aggravate the injury, and I felt the progress I had made beginning to slip away as I ceased practice altogether. To make matters worse, the stumbling limp I had developed as a result of my ligament strain had begun to take its toll, as I developed patellofemoral pain (runner’s knee) in both knees from the excessive hiking required in my job. By the time I made it home to Boston in December, I could neither sit in seiza, squat, nor stand in hanmi (triangle stance), and knew I would be unable to train without risking further injury.

I arranged for a visit with an orthopedist before returning home, but was unable to get an appointment until halfway through my time in Boston. By the time I had my appointment, I had missed most of my opportunities for training at home, and was given a frustratingly small amount of information regarding my condition.  It was unclear how severe my injury actually was, and whether or not I would need surgery. I would need to have make an appointment for an MRI and come back afterward; an imaging center would contact me in a few days to schedule an appointment. A few days, I thought to myself, knowing that yet more opportunity for training would be lost.

Heartbroken, I attended a few classes at Shobu and visited my friends there, eagerly watching classes and taking what I could from sensei’s lectures.  He approached me after one class to ask about my injuries, and when I described them he was quick to recommend a practitioner of Chinese traditional medicine who he explained had helped him many times in the past. Frustrated to no end with the snails-pace approach of Western medicine, I welcomed the alternative and took her card. Due to the hectic nature of my last few days in Massachusetts, I didn’t have the time to call and arrange an appointment, and before I knew it I was on a plane back to California, having never received a call from the imaging center.

I had all but surrendered myself to simply tolerating the pain as I returned to work in January, when I received a call from a close friend and fellow martial artist. Aside from being one of my first close friends in the martial arts, this friend was also a practitioner of alternative medicine and dedicated student of traditional Chinese martial arts including Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan. The advice he gave me was analogous to sensei’s, and he even went so far as to send me a book on the subject, “A Tooth From the Tiger’s Mouth” by Tom Bisio—a book which I shall explain here to some degree, but most certainly deserves its own post in the future.

As soon as the book arrived in the mail, I was burning through it with enthusiasm. In it I found a fantastic overview and explanation of Chinese traditional medicine, including its history, doctrine, techniques and applications, and relationship with Western medicine, as well as detailed explanations of treatments for nearly every common martial-arts-injury imaginable, and exercises specifically designed to help martial artists prevent further injuries. I immediately found an explanation of both my knee ailments, their likely causes, and how they might be dealt with until I could get real treatment.

I learned that my repeated use of ice to kill pain after a day at work may have actually been slowing or preventing the healing process by restricting blood-flow, and that heat and gentle flexion exercises could be used to bring blood (and qi, best translated as “life energy”) back to the injured areas, allowing my body’s natural healing processes to take place unobstructed. I immediately stopped icing my knees and instead used a heat pad nightly before bed, and soon noticed a dramatic improvement in the ligament pain in my left knee. Using the book’s detailed explanations and guide to acupoints, I massaged specific points on both legs which reduced swelling and lessened pain during the day; a productive activity to keep me busy during hours of waiting in hiding for elusive woodland birds.

By the time I had finished my work in California and returned to the East Coast for good, the ligaments in my left knee had healed completely, and my patellofemoral pain had become more bearable. Training at Shobu was still painful, however, and I arranged an appointment with sensei’s friend immediately. Within a week I scheduled two hour-long acupuncture sessions before moving to Ipswich. The practitioner was direct and to-the-point, plainly describing the problems I was having and how she might help my body to solve them itself (a principle difference between Eastern and Western medicine), yet providing enough scientific rationale to put my biologist’s mind fully at ease. Based on the acupuncture work alone, she was able to tell me that scar tissue had developed around my kneecaps (this was causing the pain and inflexibility) and exactly where it had become most severe. While I am no expert on modern medicine, I would say information of this level of detail is remarkable without the use of imaging technologies. After having me lie still under a heat lamp pin-cushioned with needles, she sent me off with a set of herbal plasters, moxa sticks (herbal sticks which are burnt and used to direct heat into acupoints and injured areas), and a few exercises as homework, and asked me to return in a few weeks for a follow-up appointment.

After the first session of acupuncture I felt little change in my knees and was highly skeptical, yet the next morning I had already begun to notice a dulling of the pain around my kneecaps. The pain was further softened after my second treatment, though I was still unable to perform certain movements (particularly techniques in suwari-waza which involve sitting and moving in seiza, or kneeling position) during training. After a couple weeks of diligently applying and changing plasters, heating my knees with moxa, and exercising my knees each morning, I was astonished to find the pain disappear altogether. It was a remarkably quick and complete transition; enough to give me the confidence to start training in an art as physically intense and demanding as Muay Thai.

Since that treatment, I have used techniques of Chinese medicine to aid in healing a number of injuries (mostly severe bruises and minor sprains) from my training at Sityodtong and Shobu, and have been equally impressed at how quickly they enable me to heal. My knees are stronger and more limber than they have been for quite some time, and in my last few visits to Shobu I practiced suwari waza for nearly an hour with no hint of pain around my knees.

As I have said before, martial artists are practically-minded and results-oriented people, concerned ultimately with what works, and not necessarily why it does so or where a certain solution comes from. Holding to that mindset, I would heartily recommend that any serious martial artist investigate how Chinese Medicine might be applied to their injuries and wellness routine. “A Tooth From the Tiger’s Mouth” is a well-written, clear-and-simple account of Chinese medicine, emphasizing its utility to the martial artist. Aside from that, it contains—in neatly distilled form—volumes of useful specifics on how to self-diagnose, treat, and prevent injuries with techniques of Chinese medicine. A book worth well beyond its retail price for any interested practitioner, and a good introduction for those interested in getting professional treatment.

Training in the martial arts, minor injuries are an inevitable—if not somewhat necessary—part of learning. Healing minor injuries and preventing severe injuries are important priorities for any martial artist hoping to practice for any length of time—especially those who view the martial arts as a life-long endeavor. Chinese medicine is a fantastic tool to help both treat injuries and prevent them in the future, and provides a more straight-forward, less time consuming solution than some approaches of Western medicine. For those hoping to continue practicing well into the next few decades of their lives, a look into Chinese traditional medicine would be a wise move indeed.