How to improve on Muay Femeu

[Pedro Oliveira]

Hi everyone,

I'm brazilian, and have been training for about 4-5 years in a gym in Rio. My "style" of fighting is something I struggled a lot with on the start, appreciating all kinds of fighters, loving a knockout as much as a technical masterpiece. With time, I started gravitating towards a more technical, well rounded style, by influence of watching so much Namsaknoi, Saenchai and Samart. It's been about a year since I finally started identifying myself as a Muay Femeu, and the improvements came quick after finally figuring out what I was naturally designed to do, and ignoring most of the instructions to fight on a classical brazilian style of muay thai, that resembles Muay Mat a lot.

Finally going to the point, I'd like to ask what you guys think about training for Muay Femeu, which specific skills I should work on, some drills or techniques in which I need to specifically focus in order to improve inside my own style, and anything else you think could possibly come in handy. I'm 5 foot 10 and pro level, if that helps you with the answer.

Thanks so much for reading! Any help is highly appreciated!

[Xestaro]

This is in the "anything else you think could possibly come in handy"-category and you probably already know or do this, but anyways:

Keep in mind I'm NOT at anything resembling a high level of Muay Thai! I'm a beginner and have not found my "style" yet. I have however done Kali (Fillippino martial art) for almost a decade and a while ago I realised that a lot of what I did in sparring there (that is full contact sparring with a (arm-length) stick as weapon) is what would probably translate to a Muay Femeu style in Muay Thai.

One of the basics of course is to watch your opponent and figure out any weak spots or bad habits you notice and exploit those.

Multi-level attacks can be useful if you can pull them off without exposing yourself. Could be as simple as tapping their leg with a quick little low-kick that doesn't even really hurt just to draw attention away from the Punch that follows or throw their footwork off or something like that.

Also it can help a lot to put a level of insecurity into your opponent which can happen for example by surprising moves (breaking an established pattern or stuff like that). Sometimes it's as simple as making it blatantly obvious what you're gonna do and let your opponent get stuck thinking about what they can do against it. Of course you can still change what you're ACTUALLY gonna do from there (like for example raising a leg ready to teep to "scare away").

Also find weird and unusual positions you can work from. Most people get confused when they are confronted with something unusual because they have no answer readily established for that. Keep in mind though that usually there is a reason for a position to be unusual! Typically because it has weaknesses that can be exploited or something.

As an example: In Kali, when fighting with a stick/sword, you usually tend to keep your weapon in front of you so it's in the way of your opponent and the distances are shorter for quicker reactions or up (like arm raised, weapon on your shoulder) so you can deliver powerful blows to attack or parry without having to "load" before you actually strike. imagine the question marks on a sparring partner's face when you stand there just holding the weapon hand low with the tip towards the ground. Most of them were just totally unsure of what to do with that.

Kind of like how people like Saenchai freezing up their opponents by quickly shuffling their feet back and forth. Its really actually NOTHING but it gets people confused and stuck for a moment.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Xestaro