True strength lies in gentleness.
Mastery of the world begins with,
mastery of self.
Sawadee. My name is Sken Kaewpadung.
And I'm a grandmaster of Muay Thai.
I started Muay Thai when I was two years of age.
My father taught me how to train with my mind.
And now I am 66 years of age, so I've been training now for 64 years.
When I was young, my father was killed,
so I was full of anger. I wanted to train Muay Thai, and my Mum
took me to the Buddhist temple to learn to calm,
without any negativity.
I met the monk, Pi Yai who taught me Muay Thai.
He said “you have to have a calmness in you to be able to have a creative mind.”
So before we train you Muay Thai, we are going to teach you meditation.
When you have negativity and anger, and you’re so negative in your mind,
your mind becomes stiff and tense and stressed.
So when you get rid of all the negativity and anger,
you feel much more relaxed,
and your mind becomes much more creative.
So when you do Muay Thai, since your mind is so relaxed,
you become so creative, so your technique becomes better.
You remember the 3 Ds ok?
Discipline, dedication and determination.
Determination - never give up.
If you sit on the couch and watch TV, your brain shrinks because you don't train anything.
So make sure you practise ok?
Every day say I can, I can, I can.
You know what? When you say you can, you certainly can.
If you say you can't do it, you never can do it.
Ok, we are going to do Ram Muay Thai the ritual dance of Muay Thai.
The most important part is the warm up of mind and body.
Pay respect to the teacher. And assess the area of your battleground.
So when you Ram Muay Thai, you listen to the drum. The drum gives you rhythm.
When you use the rhythm, you relax.
When you relax, you can do any technique.
Some technique comes from the muscles, and the muscles teach you how to imitate the hunter.
And it teaches you how to get the bow and arrow to hunt the deer.
You can move on, and combine with the technique of boxing, and you can move like this.
Some masters will teach you differently.
Like I do now, you need real flexibility and you need to spend a long time practising.
And, go down.
Muay Thai is very special to me.
Because I keep discipline and don't take any drugs or alcohol,
I can be disciplined for training, and feel very strong. When I go in the ring, I can beat anyone.
Since my father passed away, I had to earn a living,
in order to give myself an education.
When I stayed in the Buddhist temple, the monks allowed me to go to fight,
anywhere that I could earn income to pay for my uniform,
pens and pencils and all my education.
I paid my way all the way up to primary school, high school and then university in Bangkok.
So many fighters have to fight to earn income to look after themselves and their family.
The dancing, it originally started before the original Muay Thai,
before you start fighting, and it teaches you about coordination of mind and body.
The dancing would make you relax, and when you are relaxed you become so creative.
When I came to this country in 1977, I saw that so many fighters
moved like a tank, they couldn't do the technique quickly and they moved so slowly.
But the way I move, I dance with a rhythm that gives me a tempo
so that rhythm keeps your mind and body together and they become synchronised together as one.
The movement becomes so quick and unpredictable,
that's why it’s important that the dance and movement is so good.
I did some work as a stuntman back in 1980,
I worked on Batman with Michael Keaton,
in a scene where I was a swordsman.
But Hollywood was not for me.
I wanted to get back home to my wife Kay,
she is also a Kru/instructor.
We have been together 37 years.
To me, it's very important to become a Muay Thai teacher/Kru
because you take on a responsibility to be an excellent role model to your students.
And you have to be excellent physically and mentally,
and be able to demonstrate technique correctly.
Being a teacher, you are mediocre as a teacher if you explain,
good teachers demonstrate,
but great teachers inspire.
So I try my best to be able to inspire my students
around the world, in order to be excellent and a good person.
But for me, Muay Thai is for life.
Muay Thai taught me to have respect, discipline and be physically and mentally strong.
So that's why I chose Muay Thai, and Muay Thai became part of my life.
And it is so important, that people can train Muay Thai.
But Muay Thai is for life, and it taught me to be a champion,
not just to teach a student to be a champion in the ring,
but a champion in life.