The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt (Patreon article) (Patreon)

Ray Valez, my boxing coach in New York, who had this incredible ability to teach 8-year-olds and professional fighters the same things at the same time  used to shout out to the room of students hitting each other in  organized sparring, "Throw those hands, we're in the hurting game!" As a  fighter that seems obvious enough, but I've been consistently surprised  - or surprised myself consistently - with how much I don't embrace that.

Every  few months my trainer at Petchrungruang, Kru Nu, will give me a leg  kick that drops me to the floor. I'm not being dramatic; he hits the IT  band at just the right spot and the leg gives out. It's incredibly  painful and getting up any slower than immediately just means  he'll go after it again. He's not trying to hurt me, not to the extent  that he does anyway, but he's got these long legs and years of  accuracy for hitting just the right spot. If I hurt him, he never lets  me know. Occasionally he'll end a game of "let's kick each other's legs"  earlier than anticipated, which I've come to learn means I've done some  damage, but he never, ever shows it.

In our padwork lately, with  me switching to Southpaw, there's been some disagreement between us. He  doesn't verbalize his opposition very often - that's kind of his last  resort - but I know he's making a point when he goes after my right leg,  my lead leg, when I switch stance. I feel myself turning to try to  defend the leg because my defense from this stance is still  underdeveloped. He goes after me harder and I can feel my emotions start  to swell with the leg; some days the anger leads to me just hardening  myself and moving forward harder - that's good - but some days I go  mushy under the emotional swell and it's just this soggy mess of me  getting my ass kicked. That one's not good. Kru Nu feels like he's  proved a point on those days. Today it's the former. I'm all riled up  and ready to defend my stance even if it's going to get me beat up.  Staying in it and weathering his battering of my openings is proving my point,  that I'm willing to be just tough until I'm actually skilled. He comes  in to grab me around the neck and use his 25 kg (55 lbs) weight  advantage and considerable height to just break me apart. I catch the  inside of his left arm as it's grabbing behind my neck and throw an  upward elbow from the inside, landing it against his left peck muscle.  He punches me on the side of the head with his right pad and then grabs  again with the left arm, so I throw the same elbow, stepping in on it  and stabbing into his muscle. I let out a shout of victory as he backs  away, giving up on this plan. He holds his arms to the side for a kick  and then his face twists. His arms go kind of loose and he reaches  toward his chest with his left hand and he starts to bend at the waist. I  stop, watching him for when he will right himself again and come back  to call for a strike. He doesn't. Instead, he kind of slowly makes his  way over to the ropes and drapes himself over the top, holding himself  up with the elbow hooked over the top and his hand still holding his  chest. He looks like he's having a heart attack.

By this point I'm  putting my gloves on the ground and waiting. I've never seen Pi Nu look  like this. Sometimes he has a moment and comes back, but this is drawn  out. And there was a delay between me hitting him in the chest and this  response, so I don't even fully put it together in my head. Filippo, an  Italian trainer who has known Pi Nu for over a decade, comes over to see  what's happening. He's laughing at Pi Nu's dramatic state, but that's  kind of all you can do in this situation. He helps him drop his pads to  the floor and I help take off his bellypad. Then Filippo holds Pi Nu's  arms and guides him over to a stool in the corner of the ring so he can  sit down, helping him take off his shirt before lowering him onto the  white plastic. Nobody else has stopped training. I ducked through the  ropes and hopped down off the ring to the tile floor, then ran into the  house where Pi Nu's wife was seated at the table, peeling apples into a  bowl. I put a 20 Baht note down on the table in front of her and grabbed  a cold water out of the fridge, then ran back to the ring before she  had time to get up and give me change out of the desk a few feet away  from where she was sitting. I handed the water to Pi Nu through the  ropes and he pressed it against his chest, rather than drinking it. A  few moments later one of the young boys handed him a chunk of ice, which  he replaced the bottle of water with and sat there kind of wincing and  trying to roll his shoulder to feel the pain at a range of motions.

Everyone  was kind of laughing and joking, especially Kru Den, who is in his 50's  and has a smile like a Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine. The most  common comment appeared to be how funny it was that he got knocked out  by the smallest fighter in the gym - and a woman, to boot - to which Pi  Nu started to laugh a little bit and said that I hadn't even hit him  that hard. Meanwhile, I could feel the worried and bummed out  expression that had frozen on my own face. I felt terrible. When it  became obvious that Pi Nu was out for the rest of the evening, I jumped  into the ring and removed his shinguards for him (his son Bank also  helped with this), then put all his equipment on the edge of the ring so  the boys could collect it after training. My face felt hot, like I was  getting ready to cry. I knelt down and put my hands on his feet, then my  forehead on the back of my hands, wai-ing deeply in apology  to Kru Nu. He almost jumped at this, he put his hand on my head and said  not to worry about it, that it was an accident. It wasn't an accident  at all, I just didn't mean to hurt him that bad. I waied  again and told him I was leaving, then hopped out of the ring to get my  things and head over to my other gym to finish my work. I was too  embarrassed and bummed out to finish out the evening at Petchrungruang,  even though that would have been a perfectly appropriate thing to do. I  just couldn't see Pi Nu all crumpled in the corner for the rest of the  evening.

It's been a week now and Pi Nu is still in pain from  those elbows. The mood between us about it is lighter, or rather from my  side it's lighter since Pi Nu has been telling me not to feel bad about  it since the moment it happened. But it still feels awful. He never  apologizes when he drops me with those leg kicks - never once - but I  think my struggle is that I feel like I didn't control myself. And  that's part of my problem in general: the fear of not being in control.  You can't control everything; you shouldn't control yourself at  every moment. If I'd been emotionally spastic and tried to hurt him  under that intoxicant, then sure... I should feel shitty. But that's not  what happened. I was emotionally responding to his pressure in a  completely appropriate way. I used a technique that was appropriate for  the techniques he was using to create that pressure on me. Quite  frankly, I've been trying to learn how to use strikes and, indeed, pain  to get my training partners and opponents to stop rather than the more  practiced emotional "check out" that just kind of hopes to make someone  stop. The emotional version is rolling on your back and showing your  belly. It's quitting. It's opting for your opponent showing mercy rather  than backing them the fuck up. I should be proud of myself, honestly.  This response is something I've tried to train into myself for years and  now that it's appeared - in context and with the affect I've aimed for -  I should be motivated to do more. In fact, a few of the men who train  at the gym and heard from Pi Nu what happened (because he has to explain  to each guy, one by one, why he's at limited capacity while holding  pads now), the explanation Pi Nu is giving comes from his own pride.  He's proud of the technique. He's proud that I could hurt him. He's also  slightly defensive as to how I hurt him, explaining that if  he'd flexed it would have been fine. He also made me do 2 rounds with  his older brother, locking his head in a clinch and just throwing  endless knees into his bellypad. I thought this was to tire me out a  little bit before my pads with Kru Nu, to take the edge off of me. But  when I finished the second round I saw Kru Nu look at his brother and  ask, "she's strong, right?" His brother, Pi Nok, smiled and nodded in  agreement. There was a little subtext to the exchange... like Kru Nu was  proving a physical point to his brother, who likely made fun of him for  having been hurt so badly by a gerbil-sized fighter.

The other  morning there was a new student from England. Pi Nu invited him to join  me on the bench press because he'd tried to do a set and decided against  it when his chest protested. Pi Nu tried to explain in English that his  chest was hurt, so I took over where his English got thin and explained  to the new guy, "Pi Nu was holding pads for a pro fighter, very  experienced with more than 200 fights," the guy's eyes grew wide and he  nodded in understanding. This was partly teasing, by leaving out the  fact that it was me as a physical reference for this fighter. Instead, I  let the guy imagine the silhouette of what this fighter might look  like, kind of entertaining myself by being able to speak of myself in  factual defense for what Pi Nu was up against at that moment. It was  also a moment of pride, accepting and owning my accomplishments rather  than only feeling bad for my "lack of control" or whatever that made me  so remorseful for hurting my trainer. It's the hurting game, and Pi Nu  is one of my greatest teachers in that subject. I looked at Pi Nu,  referring to that 200 fight fighter, "dangerous, chai buh?  (right?)." Pi Nu looked at me steadily, a slight smile creeping over his  lips as he poked at his hurt muscle with his fingers. "Very dangerous," he replied.

ARTICLES - Patreon Magazine

• Patron Only Articles - These articles are written specially for my patrons and are my attempts to expand as a writer. They are full of richer descriptions, and take on themes not always talked about in the experience of being a fighter. At least one is published a month, if not two.

The Perfection of Festival Fights in Thailand | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

Cheet Yaa - "if there were no cuts it wouldn't be Sylvie" | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt | Even though I've fought over 200 times being the one who hurts others, that the game is hurting, is still a psychology I need to embrace. read it here 

A Girl and Her Bag - the Intimacy of Work | Every fighter who has spent a long amount of time in the gym has to fall in love with their bag - how bagwork contains its own beauty. read it here 

Jai Rohn - My Story of Blood, My Pride and Stitches | My heart was racing, I was upset at my performance, and then there was the pain of stitches, more painful than any stitches I've had before. read it here