Body Type and Clinch

[Heino]

I'm finally going to start playing in clinch with one person at my gym (limiting it due to covid), but he is quite a bit bigger than me (and it seems like 70% of the fighters here are heavyweight). I've had every coach at my previous gym, and the coach here tell me that taller fighters are favored in clinch.

 

I think of Sylvie's success in knee fighting and my experience in clinch with taller people before covid, and wonder if this sentiment is true. Being tall in muay thai definitely seems like an advantage, but I'm not sure if it's exaggerated during clinch. What are your thoughts on this?

 

What advantages do taller fighters have in clinch? Are there advantages to being smaller in clinch? Do you have any advice for being the shorter/smaller partner in clinch?

 

I understand the only way to improve is to just get hours in, so I'm very excited to finally have a partner I can responsibly train with.

 

Thank you for your time.

[Jeffo]

I'm not tall so I'm not the person to ask for advice on being the tall person, but as a shorter guy and one who has a bjj background, I really love double under hooks. There's this sweep where you have your lock around the opponents hips and you just bulldoze your forehead into their chest (don't know the name of the sweep) but it's awesome. I'm sure there's some pitfalls in muay thai to this but so far its worked like a dream. If the opponent tries to elbow or hit me i just shrug my shoulders and really bury myself in their chest. 

The toughest thing about this is sometimes it's really hard to basically bulldoze them down so typically they shoot their hips back and it just sets up a great knee to the body, and then after that they tend to push their hips forward in response so they don't get kneed again in which case i go right back into trying to bulldoze them down only this time they're usually a bit weaker and easier to break down. I can't remember the private but someone shows this in the muay thai library. 

Another thing i was going to mention is because I'm short i basically just end up in this double under hook position usually my opponent can easily get the "plum" position. So i would think this type of clinch position would be good for big guys. Since I can kind of anticipate my opponent going to this position I've started looking into a lot of escape stuff and counters to this, which is awesome because it gives me this clear cut thing that I have to work on. 

So if I can get good at countering and defending the "plum" and chaining this with my under hook game then i think my game will really flourish (my A game anyway). It took me a long time to realize this but the best people are the ones who can chain things together in such a way that they can almost predict your response and from there they give you less and less options until your out of options and in the case of bjj you get choked out and in the case of muay thai you get knocked out or battered or thrown lol

hope that helps somewhat

[AndyMaBobs]

16 hours ago, Heino said:

I'm finally going to start playing in clinch with one person at my gym (limiting it due to covid), but he is quite a bit bigger than me (and it seems like 70% of the fighters here are heavyweight). I've had every coach at my previous gym, and the coach here tell me that taller fighters are favored in clinch.

 

I think of Sylvie's success in knee fighting and my experience in clinch with taller people before covid, and wonder if this sentiment is true. Being tall in muay thai definitely seems like an advantage, but I'm not sure if it's exaggerated during clinch. What are your thoughts on this?

 

What advantages do taller fighters have in clinch? Are there advantages to being smaller in clinch? Do you have any advice for being the shorter/smaller partner in clinch?

 

I understand the only way to improve is to just get hours in, so I'm very excited to finally have a partner I can responsibly train with.

 

Thank you for your time.

If you're considerably taller, double underhooks become lethal, knees take way less effort to get to the face etc. that's a very big part of Dieselnoi's success, tho he was a great fighter by any metric, his freakish physical advantages made him exceptionally lethal. AFAIK only Vicharnoi was able to overcome him

If you're just slightly taller, I think while there are advantages they're not huge - but when you're WAY taller... ooh boy. Those huge physical advantages + a knowledge of how to use them, usually makes for an exceptionally dominant athlete. Dieselnoi, Semmy Schilt, Wladimir Klitschko, even outside of combat sports, Michael Phelps.

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Angles and leverage definitely favor the tall in clinch. That said, as a shorter fighter if you can get a taller fighter down to your angles and height  - breaking theor posture and destroying their leverage - the advantage is huge. Tall fighters are also more susceptible to trips, as the center of gravity is higher. The lower base of short fighters makes us harder to off-balance.