Xestaro

I'm 36 now, but: Punch me! punch me! I need to work on my defense anyways! Sidenote: there is this guy at my gym who is somewhere in his 40s I think (don't know his exact age) and while he was in no bad shape when he first came in he was not very experienced but he told the trainers he wanted to fight. some people didn't think he would get there but a while back he actually had his first fight (K1, its difficult to find Muay Thai fights in Germany) and it seems he pretty much smashed it. I wasn't there but I know he won and I think meanwhile he got a second win under his belt. not 100% sure though, haven't met him in a while.

Congrats Sylvie and Congrats LengLeng! :) Jomkwan fought well and aggressive but I felt like beginning in round 3 the fight was beginning to take a somewhat visible toll on her. When she was down so long in the end I couldn't help but wonder if maybe one of her ribs had cracked or something. I once saw a fighter KOd with a broken rib which looked similar. Hope she recovers soon! I enjoyed watching her as well as Sylvie! Those knees were the bomb once again! Well aimed, powerful snipershots :)

... Where does Trainer Dick step in to correct the two? I kid you not, I once wrote a physics test where the professor had put in a part about lightspeed and time dilation and he had ACTUALLY called the 3 persons in his question "Mick", "Nick" and "Dick"... It put a whole highway-system of knots in my brain even though I was able to figure it out. The most difficult part was keeping track of who was who the whole time...

Let's make it easier and use names instead: So Nick throws a cross and Mick parries.....

That's what I was thinking. Yodkhunpon put such great emphasis on stepping very close to the opponents foot and it made me think "if we're getting this close, why not step ON the foot?" Guess I'll start practicing that again when I have the opportunity. Can only really practice that with a partner.

I was rewatching the library session "Yodkhunpon "The Elbow Hunter" pt 1 | Slicing Elbow 37 min" and was wondering something: Yodkhunpon tries to get Sylvie to step in towards the opponent very deeply and very close to their front foot for a horizontal, slicing "fan sok" elbow. Since I had the experience in Kali training years back that stepping ON an opponents foot seriously messes with their movement and ability to execute whatever they're trying to do I was wondering if that was an option in Muay Thai. I don't think I've actually seen Muay Thai fighters do that so I wonder if it is even allowed in fights. In Kali I got to the point where stepping precisely on an opponents foot when closing distance became pretty much natural and automatic for me and it seemed very effective but this is in a martial art that does not have a ring-fighting variant or rules at all, so...

Don't know if he has been mentioned before but how about a session with Ajarn Gae? I don't really know where he teaches but he should be fairly easy to find. Not a big name fighter as his career was cut short by a serious injury but it seems he is a pretty high profile trainer nowadays. Pretty oldschool, tough as nails guy from what I can tell who really wants you to improve and push you to the peak of what you can do. EDIT: just watched Lawrence Kenshin's short documentary about him. It say he teaches out of Elite Fight Club in Bangkok

Actually I was wondering if one could have that done here in Germany, too. Not that I'd need it. I neither own a Monkol nor will I fight anytime soon but I just found it interesting if it would be possible. We don't exactly have a lot of Buddhist monks around though, much less Thai ones.

The variant I described above is actually same side "block" but as I wrote elsewhere: if it works, it can't be "wrong" Its a manifestation of a basic principle of Kali as an art: They say its neither offensive nor defensive, but "counter-offensive". You don't really "block" in the traditional sense of the word but rather react to an attack with a direct counter-attack that's designed to at least neutralize the attack but ideally also causes damage to your opponent in the process.

Take a look at the thread "gym/accommodation advice in BKK - 105kg 6'4" (11 years experience)" right in this forum. There is at least a little bit of info about the gym in there.

I love that Lowkick-destroyer "Block"... well actually more "Counter-Attack". It SO reminds me of Kali! We were taught to do something similar where while taking the low-kick in a kind of check you'd drop your knee on the kicking legs ankle. If you don't hit precisely the kick was still blocked, if you did.... lets just say a perfectly executed one with low-intensity execution in training (no padding) can fucking hurt and I guess at force it could actually break the ankle or at least give your opponent a moment of very insecure stance which gives you an opportunity to counter-attack. I've actually non-intentionally used a version of the lowkick-destroyer in sparring when I cross-blocked and hit the guy's shin right with the big, hard part of bone right below the knee. Not what you want to do to your sparring partners all the time but I can attest it is very effective!

That would be interesting! If they do use drills I'd like to see what they are and how they compare to what we did in Kali! On the second part: I would not really say that I've studied Muay Thai. I'm just a beginner actually who hasn't been training consistently and probably will never take it further than the sparring ring. I'm just the kind of guy who likes to obsess about his hobbies I used to practice Kali for some 8 years or so but that's also like 6 years or so ago so not everything is fresh to say the least. I would have gone back to kali when I wanted to do martial arts again but somehow I just felt like going more into the sports direction this time and thats where muay thai came in. When I saw Sylvie's session with the general it made me happy because I saw so many things and concepts that seemed familiar from Kali. I do think the non-weapon portions of Kali are practical (even though they are fundamentally connected to the weapon portions). Also you have to take into account that Kali/Escrima/Arnis describe a general art that's split into hundreds of different systems (styles if you will) that have different focuses. Some are more geared towards actual combat or self defence while others are more sportified if you know what I mean. Practical in a ring setting.... I'd probably say to a degree. What parts you could use of course would depend a lot on the rules but its definitely not meant as an art for sport competition (at least the style I practiced). We did full contact stick sparring (with protective gear) and that works fine, also a bit of knives sparing, rolling on the ground trying to submit each other (a jiu jitsu practitioner would of course be more expert in this aspect) and other empty hand practice in varying degrees of freedom and contact. How does it translate to a ring setting? Well it's kind of difficult to translate. We did a lot of open hand slaps for example which dont really work well when gloves are used. A lot of the stuff is also geared towards specifically attacking joints and other vulnerable parts like you wouldn't do in a ring setting. Ring martial arts usually seem more based on... an exchange of being hit (of course avoiding as much damage as possible), finding holes in your opponents game and hitting them back. In Kali you typically dont want that. You mostly want to end things quickly and dont give your opponent any chance if possible. IF you even have to be there in the first place. You dont want to get hit AT ALL really, which gets priority over landing shots yourself because you're taught that an opponent could always carry/use a weapon even if you dont see it (there is this saying that "knives are meant to be felt, not seen") and every hit could be dangerous. That being said though, we did practice stuff like lowkicks, elbows, knees, also some punches (though that's the part I'm lacking in the most when it comes to Muay Thai I think). As far as I know my Kali trainer actually has Muay Thai experience of his own from before his Kali days so that might be another factor in finding parallels.

Very, very interesting! I find myself reminded of learning Kali from a lot of your descriptions, especially when it comes to movements coming from the hip or core of the body. And interestingly enough Kali (at least the style I practiced) also prides itself to be not a sport martial art but a practical system for real live application (the Filipinos actually train their marines in this style). The part about flow and natural movement, recovering from failed moves and just flowing to the next thing VERY much reminded me of how it felt to practice this art! Actually when someone asked my trainer about something they were "doing wrong" he'd often be like: "Did it work anyways? Then it wasn't 'wrong'! Maybe it's not what we're trying to practice right now or there is a better way of doing it but it's not 'wrong' per se." Kali has a different style of teaching this stuff though. We used to train stuff in "drills" a whole lot. A drill in Kali is a sequence of moves you practice with a partner where the whole sequence ends in the same position you started in so you can just continue on. It's kind of like a continuous flow or dance with your partner and lets you get a lot of repetitions in short time while constantly calibrating because you have to adjust for your partner all the time. As you advance more you learn how different drills flow into each other seamlessly until it gets more and more freestyle and you just flow because you learned how to feel how you can continue out of pretty much any position you find yourself in, all based in the same basics. At least thats a short, rough description of the process and of course not the whole of how training looks. Also as Kali is a weapons-based art (the drill-approach works for all the different weapon types including empty hands), weapons, especially the stick, are used as a tool to help develop body-mechanics and teach you how to use your body to generate speed, power and flow, especially how to use your hips or core as the part that drives all of this. We would actually sometimes swing a baseball-bat instead of a stick because the much heavier weapon FORCES you to use your body in an efficient way in order to be able to swing it. It MAKES you feel how it works. That feeling can then be carried over into using sticks again and by extension all other kinds of weapons including empty hands/elbows/knees/kicks/whatever. The word for working with 2 sticks (or swords or actually any kind of 2 weapons, mostly referring to sticks though) is "Sinawali" which actually means "to weave" like in weaving a basket. It's used to develop ambidexterity and again, flow. Its something that can be very beautiful to watch from someone who is good with it and it's also seen as a form of expression of the individual fighter. And that's in a style that is very practical in nature and not at all about fancy moves or high body-flexibility. EDIT: here is a nice video that explains and shows Sinawali very well. Its old and some of the editing is a bit weird but I think it shows very well how this relates to continuous flow and empty hands application. Not to hijack anything here but with all of what you guys wrote about Lertrit I think it might be relevant in a way or at least interesting to see in this context.

Is it Hongthonglek? :) I hardly know anyone who fights in Australia but I know he does and he kind of fits the description :P

My experience from another martial art where I was more advanced than I am in Muay Thai is that it can actually be quite useful to train with beginners because they sometimes give you problems that your more experienced partners just don't give you. Stuff like: Have you ever seen someone experienced throw this kind of attack from THIS weird angle?

I'm from Germany and while I'm not knowledgeable enough in the topic to give you the run down of organizations here my impression is that we are one or even a few steps more behind than you guys in the US. The name "Muay Thai" or "Thai Boxing" is used by some but quite often what is trained there is more kickboxing (light contact, K1, ...) than actual Muay Thai. We have a few notable fighters on the international level like Pascal Schroth or Enriko Kehl, both of which I think have trained outside of Germany quite a bit (Schroth actually lives in Thailand). Personally I guess I'm kind of lucky to be in a gym run by people who have at least fought and trained actual Muay Thai in addition to other forms of kickboxing and actually DO teach elbows, clinch, etc BUT even there the focus is more on K1-style Kickboxing as that is what has a much bigger scene here. In Kickboxing you can actually find fights here while this (from what I've seen so far) seems much more difficult in Muay Thai. As an example: My gym recently organized a "Fight Night" including a 4man tournament and about as many other fights. It was all Kickboxing (from kids with shinpads and headgear to adults with just 10oz gloves) and one boxing fight, no Muay Thai. This seems to be the common sight when it comes to those small shows. As far as I'm aware there is only one big kickboxing show on German TV and that is run by a promotion that seems to be largely regarded a corrupt joke by kickboxing fans outside of it. I think they even have "Thai Boxing" rules but as far as I heard even those are different from actual Muay Thai. Actually I watched it for the first time last weekend. Only saw 1 fight and was amazed that I, being a beginner who only has been into this kind of stuff for like 2 years or so, had a better grasp on the rules than the TV commentator who couldn't figure out why on of the fighters got "another warning, for what ever" when she actually got demoted a point for repeatedly catching her opponents leg which the ref had warned her about several times before. Needless to say... I was kind of unimpressed

Generally it's of course logical that, especially older, martial arts will look similar to a degree. They were mostly developed to do the same thing under similar conditions and the human body can only move in so many ways when you try to find efficient ways of doing damage to other humans while staying relatively save in the process. Broken lines of heritage are of course a big problem when trying to find/learn "original" arts. Here in Germany (and probably Europe as a whole) there is a similar problem right now where people try to revive the original European medieval martial arts. We know there was a big history of things like longsword fencing for example but as technology in warfare had improved a lot people stopped practicing such things and today... Well, there are some documents that detail the art (like Talhofer's writings. At least this seems like a first hand thing since Talhofer was himself a successful fencer) but noone who can actually trace a line of teachers back to that time. Only people who try to recreate it as true as possible based on medieval writings (who are sometimes difficult to understand) and drawings (that sometimes look weird for someone with a modern understanding of martial arts). The result is basically something that draws on those sources as much as possible while being influenced by the prior training of the people trying to figure it out.

Never been to Thailand but as it might be relevant here: I follow Hongthong and Joe and Gen on Facebook and as far as I know Gen is currently teaching, training and fighting in Australia. Has been for a few months already I think. I don't know what the plans are for him coming back. Joe does live streams during training on FB relatively often. Can't judge how much what you see there represents what it is like to actually be there but it seems people over all have a lot of fun.

somehow I recalled my first ever sparring session in Muay Thai, well actually K1, reading this. I had experience with full contact sparring from Kali several years back but it was my first time doing any sort of actual kickboxing sparring with gloves, mouthguard, shinpads and all. I had asked if someone was up for some light sparring with a beginner. and found a guy who was like "sure! lets spar with open hands! don't want a headache tomorrow either" so I climbed into the ring expecting LIGHT and just feeling this out for a first time. Granted, the hands weren't a great problem even though I sucked at boxing technique but he totally surprised me by starting to throw hard lowkicks over and over. At least I had learned defence against stuff like that in Kali so I was like "oh, ok, so thats whats going on here? unexpected, well ok then but I'm not just gonna stand and get smashed". I started defending with me own legs as good as my somewhat rusty technique would allow which actually worked better than I would have expected. Then I misjudged his attack and raised the "wrong" leg for a block but had enough time to realise my mistake and pull the leg to the other side for a cross-block that hit right in the perfect spot. It was a hard kick but it didn't hurt me at all since it connected flush with the largest portion of bone just below my knee but we actually had to stop sparring after that because HE had hurt his shin in the process. Don't know if he took that as any kind of lesson and it certainly wasn't my intention to teach anyone anything as the newbie but I think it can serve as an example for lack of control in sparring. How would you say should people who start at adult age best get into sparring? Start out light to improve and test out techniques without too much fear of getting smashed for mistakes? Hard(er) to get used to the feel and stress? Some kind of mix approach?

Kali (Pekiti Tirsia to be more specific) is the only other martial art I have practiced for a significant time (about 8 years or so). It's a Filipino art that is not very "sportified" and is based on the use of blades and impact weapons (empty hands training is done, too though but its based on the same patterns and concepts as the blades). I found it really interesting how similarities between different arts pop up, especially with the more traditional styles. There is so much that sounded very much familiar to me in the Muay Lertrit sessions. Things that are either very much the same as I learned in Kali or at least follow the same principle. There is this thing about "let them try to strike you but make them pay every time" that we also did a lot. Directly counterattacking instead of blocking is a central concept there. Stuff like parrying a punch with a move that, if done well, is supposed to strike the opponent in the same move as it parries their punch. Or making someone who uses a leg kick on you pay by not only blocking with your own shin but dropping your knee on their ankle while doing so, very similarly to what the general demonstrates in that one session. Also I've watched the session with Gen Hongthonglek a few times and only the last time it suddenly occurred to me that the way he uses fakes, delayed timing and counters is actually very similar to how I used to do sparring with the stick in Kali when I was more experienced. I'd typically move back to keep range (I'm a very tall guy with long arms) and would constantly weave my stick in front of me or throw my opponent off with some weird position kind of like Gen does with his feet before he lands his big kicks. This kinda stuff is really fascinating to me. Sure there are differences between arts but often there are also overlaps or concepts that can be applied to other arts as well. Did you have similar experiences? PS: Of course there are differences, too: For example Kali teaches you to give not getting hit (at all if possible) top priority because an opponent could always carry a weapon even if you don't see it right away so every hit might be very dangerous. Thats something I have to practice to overcome a bit in Muay Thai where the opponent is guaranteed to not have a weapon and getting hit is not actually a mistake in principle.

Dont know if I can really say I have a favourite technique so far. I'm just a beginner and haven't even trained very consistently because other stuff had to be done. Trying to get back into it now. I might say kicks. I'm not very good at them yet, one thing that limits me with regards to kicks is my lack of flexibility, but it just feels good to me and I've also been told I have a heavy kick (well, I'm a heavy guy though ). I'm still working on more flexibility, quicker, more secure execution and also making them less prone to being caught by my opponent. If we're talking go-to techniques in sparring, so far thats teeps, lowkicks and I have taken a liking to Sagat-style uppercuts even though I'm no pro at punching at all. Also I keep seeing openings for elbows so that could be called a favourite, too. It helps that elbows are among the techniques I already know from training Kali for several years. Unfortunately most training here in Germany is more geared towards K1 than actual Muay Thai.

Can't help here but: Wow! This is really cool! :)

Anyone have some fun little stories to share that happened to them in or around Muay Thai? Here is one that happened to me: I filled up my car at a local gas station wearing a shirt from my gym with a big Muay Thai Label on the front and went inside to pay. The guy who runs the station is asian (from his looks he MIGHT actually be Thai, I really should have asked!) and very open and friendly to people. He looked at my shirt and beamed at me like "Aaaah Muay Thai! You have to loose lots of weight!" My answer (a little overwhelmed by the funny openness) was something like "haha yea I guess... I'm working on it" :P He went on the tell me about how he played some soccer when he was young and how they made shoes for that from cut up tires and that to play in the team you had to be tough like a fighter. He actually said when he asked to get into the team the leader body-punched him to see if he was tough enough. The best part was simply "Aaaah Muay Thai! You have to loose lots of weight!"

I was able to witness that live in a K1 fight I watched. One guy was fighting this Russian fighter and right away in the first round the Russian landed a first lowkick flush on his opponents thigh with a loud resounding *SMACK*. A lot of people where like whoa! He obviously had prepared to make good use of this weapon and he went on to do so. More and more of his leg kicks started landing when he snuck them in all the time with good setups and ALL of them were damn hard. Needless to say, the damage racked up quickly and made his opponent very vary of the lowkick threat. Naturally that made him even more susceptible as the fear of more legkicks hitting just threw off the rest of his game. Not that I blame him.... that Russian took him clean of BOTH his legs one time (where mostly that only happens if a fighter is on only one leg). The fight ended with a KO through those legkicks. The man just was not able to get up on his own anymore and had to be supported by his trainer to leave the ring.

Personally I started training Muay Thai at 35 (I'm 36 now) and very out of shape. Used to practice Fillippino Pekiti Tirsia Kali for some 8 years before but that was years ago, too. Had to take a bit of a break from seriously training for a while because we moved and whatnot but I will get back into it soon. Don't know yet if I want to actually fight or if sparring is enough for me but I don't really feel like my age would not permit that. When I started I was like: "I'm 35 now and look, Saenchai is 38 so I still have time" :P