Jump to content

Is Western Boxing Good For Muay Thai?


Recommended Posts

Hi everyone. What do you think about dedicating a part of the training to western boxing? When I train on my own muay thai skills on the heavy bag I always split every type of shot. For example I do 20 minutes only roundhouse kicks, 20 minutes teeps, 20 minutes knees and elbows. I prefer to do like that due to a better focus on every single shot. I think Boxing is usually underrated and undertrained in muay thai. So do you think that making some boxing lessons would be good? Of course you can't do everything you do in a boxing fight like weaving, but I think punches would become better right?

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been wondering about this... I feel like my boxing skills are pretty weak so would like to do more boxing, but as I already struggle keeping my stance wide and have been working on this a lot I'm worried that i would let it slip...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Western boxing has been influencing Muay Thai from the modern beginning. We tend to think of Muay Thai as "pure", but the very first permanent ring in Bangkok in the early 1900s featured western boxing, and there has been western boxing in Rajadamnern and Lumpinee stadia from the start. They are of course two different arts, but Thais don't seem to see them as contradictory. Samart Payakaroon, who some consider the best Muay Thai fighter of recent eras, was also a WBC boxing champion.

But there are schools and styles of boxing, and some may be less conducive to Muay Thai than others.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi everyone. What do you think about dedicating a part of the training to western boxing? When I train on my own muay thai skills on the heavy bag I always split every type of shot. For example I do 20 minutes only roundhouse kicks, 20 minutes teeps, 20 minutes knees and elbows. I prefer to do like that due to a better focus on every single shot. I think Boxing is usually underrated and undertrained in muay thai. So do you think that making some boxing lessons would be good? Of course you can't do everything you do in a boxing fight like weaving, but I think punches would become better right?

I've done some boxing training and it has always been beneficial for me. There are some major differences between western boxing and Muay Thai, but it's mainly in hip position and the boxer's "crouch" versus the Muay Thai "c" shape. You can't check kicks with your legs from a full-boxer position and you can't sit down in your punches the same way boxers do when you're in a Muay Thai stance. But as long as you can figure out how to switch between them for what you're working on, it should all be very good.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The ranges and timing for hands change when used in the two arts! 

Knowing when you're vulnerable to being kicked is an important step to learning how to punch in kb/mt. Even the great Sagat was often disrupted when he goes into punching mode -- of course though, he was facing some of the greatest kickers in history. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The ranges and timing for hands change when used in the two arts! 

Knowing when you're vulnerable to being kicked is an important step to learning how to punch in kb/mt. Even the great Sagat was often disrupted when he goes into punching mode -- of course though, he was facing some of the greatest kickers in history.

 

Thanks everyone for replies!!

 

My boxing coach don't know anything about muay thai but he was a great boxing champ, soo technichal... he saw Giorgio Petrosyan fighting and told that when he wants to do a boxing action he becomes a perfect boxer, his elbows protect his body, legs are bent (or flexed, I don't know the right term lol) and he moves like a boxer... of course in k1/kickboxing you don't get kneed or elbowed as much as in Muay Thai but do you think he's right? So if you want to do a boxing action you have to change your style temporarily?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

his elbows protect his body, legs are bent (or flexed, I don't know the right term lol)...

 

This is a major difference between western boxing habits, and Muay Thai (at least the Muay Thai of Thailand). In boxing it is very common to protect the body with the elbows and forearms. You aren't protecting against elbows at closer range so your guard can be lower, for one thing, and a crouch can be advantageous in boxing for many reasons, both offensively and defensively. Lots of westerns come to Thailand and favor this habit. But in Muay Thai the body is mostly protected directly by the knees and shins, and the guard stays higher. It's a very different defensive posture.

This is related to some degree also to the hips. One of the biggest challenges I think for a westerner in Thailand is learning how to push the hips forward as part of defensive maneuvers, especially, at closer range. This goes against a lot of western instincts which basically are inclined to pull the groin back (to safety) and to hunch. It can make a bad habit in Muay Thai. One of the concerns of training boxing is getting comfortable with an ass-back defense.

There is a lot of variation in Muay Thai styles, so this isn't universal, but one of the biggest hurdles westerns have in Thailand is the orientation of the hips in both defense and attack. Thais learn early on that pushing the hips forward can be very advantageous and safe. Adding to the western bias towards the hunch is that Greco-Roman wrestling also can favor hip-back, ass-out positions (very different than most Thai clinch positions) so with western boxing and wrestling combined the tendency of the ass-back can get in the way of a lot of Thai Muay Thai techniques, at least at introductory levels. You need to be able to toggle the hips, out and in - you see Saenchai humorously do this in fights, and be prepared to use your shins defensively.

  • Like 3
  • Heart 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A bit late to this, but my coach definitely tries to add a large part of western boxing to our training sessions every now and then, specifically with boxing combos and head movement as well as when working with angles. He says that the very traditional Thai style is to just stand directly in front of each other and sort of just trade back and forth rather than trying to cut and make angles.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks everyone for replies!!

 

My boxing coach don't know anything about muay thai but he was a great boxing champ, soo technichal... he saw Giorgio Petrosyan fighting and told that when he wants to do a boxing action he becomes a perfect boxer, his elbows protect his body, legs are bent (or flexed, I don't know the right term lol) and he moves like a boxer... of course in k1/kickboxing you don't get kneed or elbowed as much as in Muay Thai but do you think he's right? So if you want to do a boxing action you have to change your style temporarily?

you don't need to change it, it's just that you get advantages and disadvantages when you change it. 

The stance to punch combinations optimally is different from the stance to punch optimally combined with kicks and defending kicks. 

 

Petrosyan is a bit different as he's a southpaw so he can get away with a longer stance more so than someone who stands orthodox. 

 

Masato is another great example, soundedly outboxed Buakaw in their second fight, but also ate a lot of low kicks. It's often a trade off that some are willing to take. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A bit late to this, but my coach definitely tries to add a large part of western boxing to our training sessions every now and then, specifically with boxing combos and head movement as well as when working with angles. He says that the very traditional Thai style is to just stand directly in front of each other and sort of just trade back and forth rather than trying to cut and make angles.

I love this about Muay Thai in Thailand - like fighting fish. Float, float, float, explosion of movement and then float, float float. So beautiful. My first ever teacher, who is Thai, wanted me to be very agile and hop around a lot, mostly because I'm small but also some older styles sometimes have more movement like this (SOME); but I really love this stand-in-your-space aesthetic. It's the baddest-ass pissing contest in the world!

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 years later...

I've wondered about the angles v derning into them too. Thanks for the fighting fish comparison. Would you suggest that for clinchers? Or is some circling around ok?

And what are your thoughts on weaving and slipping punches. Im afraid of hook knee combo and the 12 rear head kick happening. Like justin gaethje v dustin porier fight. There are some ppl that are encouraging head movement in mma. 

In the vid he talks about the punch and knee happening on the same beat. And that it's easy to avoid. He also shows some film study of fighters using head movement a lot in fights. I'm still not convinced entirely cuz of feints. I'd appreciate all advice on this.

Edited by oldman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Most Recent Topics

  • Latest Comments

    • Some notes on the predividual (from Simondon), from a side conversation I've been having, specifically about how Philosophies of Immanence, because they tend to flatten causation, have lost the sense of debt or respect to that which has made you. One of the interesting questions in the ethical dimension, once we move away from representationalist thinking, is our relationship to causation.   In Spinoza there is a certain implicit reverence for that to which you are immanent to. That which gave "birth" to you and your individuation. The "crystal" would be reverent to the superstaturated solution and the germ (and I guess, the beaker). This is an ancient thought.   Once we introduce concepts of novelness, and its valorization, along with notions of various breaks and revolutions, this sense of reverence is diminished, if not outright eliminated. "I" (or whatever superject of what I am doing) am novel, I break from from that which I come from. Every "new" thing is a revolution, of a kind. No longer is a new thing an expression of its preindividual, in the ethical/moral sense.   Sometimes there are turns, like in DnG, where there is a sort of vitalism of a sacred. I'm not an expression of a particular preindividual, but rather an expression of Becoming..a becoming that is forever being held back by what has already become. And perhaps there is some value in this spiritualization. It's in Hegel for sure. But, what is missing, I believe, is the respect for one's actual preindividual, the very things that materially and historically made "you" (however qualified)...   I think this is where Spinoza's concept of immanent cause and its ethical traction is really interesting. Yes, he forever seems to be reaching beyond his moment in history into an Eternity, but because we are always coming out of something, expressing something, we have a certain debt to that. Concepts of revolution or valorized novelty really undercut this notion of debt, which is a very old human concept which probably has animated much of human culture.   And, you can see this notion of immanent debt in Ecological thought. It still is there.   The ecosystem is what gave birth to you, you have debt to it. Of course we have this sense with children and parents, echo'd there.   But...as Deleuze (and maybe Simondon?) flatten out causation, the crystal just comes out of metastable soup. It is standing there sui generis. It is forever in folds of becoming and assemblages, to be sure, but I think the sense of hierarchy and debt becomes obscured. We are "progressing" from the "primitive".   This may be a good thing, but I suspect that its not.   I do appreciate how you focus on that you cannot just presume the "individual", and that this points to the preindividual. Yes...but is there not a hierarchy of the preindividual that has been effaced, the loss of an ethos.   I think we get something of this in the notion of the mute and the dumb preindividual, which culminates in the human, thinking, speaking, acting individuation. A certain teleology that is somehow complicit, even in non-teleological pictures.   I think this all can boil down to one question: Do we have debt to what we come from?   ...and, if so, what is the nature of that debt?   I think Philosophies of Immanence kind of struggle with this question, because they have reframed.   ...and some of this is the Cult of the New. 3:01 PM Today at 4:56 AM   Hmmmm yeah. Important to be in the middle ground here I suspect. Enabled by the past, not determined by it. Of course inheritance is rather a big deal in evolutionary thought - the bequest of the lineage, as I often put it. This can be overdone, just as a sense of Progress in evolution can be overdone - sometimes we need to escape our past, sometimes we need to recover it, revere it, re-present it. As always, things must be nuanced, the middle ground must be occupied. 4:56 AM   Yes...but I think there is a sense of debt, or possibly reverence, that is missing. You can have a sense of debt or reverence and NOT be reactive, and bring change. Just as a Native American Indian can have reverence for a deer he kills, a debt. You can kill your past, what you have come from, what you are an expression of...but, in a deep way.   Instead "progress" is seen as breaking from, erasing, denying. Radical departure.   The very concept of "the new" holds this.   this sense of rupture.   And pictures of "Becoming" are often pictures of constant rupture.   new, new, new, new, new, new...   ...with obvious parallels in commodification, iterations of the iphone, etc.   In my view, this means that the debt to the preindividual should be substantive. And the art of creating individuation means the art of creating preindividuals. DnG get some of this with their concept of the BwOs.   They are creating a preindividual.   But the sense of debt is really missing from almost all Immanence Philosophy.   The preindividual becomes something like "soup" or intensities, or molecular bouncings.   Nothing really that you would have debt to. 12:54 PM   Fantasies of rupture and "new" are exactly what bring the shadow in its various avatars with you, unconsciously.     This lack of respect or debt to the preindividual also has vast consequences for some of Simondon's own imaginations. He pictures "trade" or "craft" knowledge as that of a childhood of a kind, and is quite good in this. And...he imagines that it can become synthesized with his abstracted "encyclopedic" knowledge (Hegel, again)...but this would only work, he adds, if the child is added back in...because the child (and childhood apprenticeships) were core to the original craft knowledge. But...you can't just "add children" to the new synthesis, because what made craft knowledge so deep and intense was the very predindividual that created it (the entire social matrix, of Smithing, or hunting, or shepherding)...if you have altered that social matrix, that "preindividual" for knowledge, you have radically altered what can even be known...even though you have supplemented with abstract encyclopedic knowledge. This is something that Muay Thai faces today. The "preindividual" has been lost, and no amount of abstraction, and no about of "teaching children" (without the original preindividual) will result in the same capacities. In short, there is no "progressive" escalation of knowledge. Now, not everything more many things are like a fighting art, Muay Thai...but, the absence of the respect and debt to preindividuality still shows itself across knowledge. There are trends of course trying to harness creativity, many of which amount to kind of trying to workshop preindividuality, horizontal buisness plan and build structures, ways of setting up desks or lounge chairs, its endless. But...you can't really "engineer" knowledge in this way...at least not in the way that you are intending to. The preindividual comes out of the culture in an organic way, when we are attending to the kinds of deeper knowledge efficacies we sometimes reach for.
    • "He who does not know how to read only sees the differences. For him who knows how to read, it all comes to the same thing, since the sentence is identical. Whoever has finished his apprenticeship recognizes things and events, everywhere and always, as vibrations of the same divine and infinitel sweet word. This does not mean that he will not suffer Pain is the color of certain events. When a man who can and a man who cannot read look at a sentence written in red ink, they both see the same red color, but this color is not so important for the one as for the other."   A beautiful analogy by Simone Weil (Waiting for God), which especially in the last sentence communicates how hard it is to discuss Muay Thai with those who don't know how to "read" its sentences. Yes, I see the effort. Yes, I see the power. Yes, I even see the "technique"...but this is like talking about the color of sentences written out at times.
    • from Reddit discussing shin pain and toughening of the shins: There are several factors, and people create theories on this based on pictures of Muay Thai, but honestly from my wife's direct experience they go some what numb and hard from lots of kicking bags and pads, and fighting (in Thailand some bags could get quite hard, almost cement like in places). Within a year in Thailand Sylvie was fighting every 10 or 12 days and it really was not a problem, seldom feeling much pain, especially if you treat them properly after damage, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzTmHfae-k and then more advanced, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcWtd00U7oQ And they keep getting harder. After a few years or so Sylvie felt like she would win any shin clash in any fight, they just became incredible hard. In this video she is talking about 2 years in about how and why she thought her shins had gotten so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXCmZVXeGE she shows in the vid how her shins became kind of permanently serrated, with divots and dings. As she discusses only 2 years in (now she's 13 years of fighting in) very experienced Thais have incredibly hard shins, like iron. Yes, there are ideas about fighting hard or not, but that really isn't the determining factor from our experience with Sylvie coming up on 300 fights and being around a lot of old fighters. They just can get incredibly tough. The cycles of damage and repair just really change the shin (people in the internet like to talk about microfractures and whatnot). Over time Sylvie eventually didn't really need the heat treatment anymore after fights, now she seldom uses it. She's even has several times in the last couple of years split her skin open on checks without even feeling much contact. Just looked down and there was blood.  
  • The Latest From Open Topics Forum

    • Hi all, Does anyone know of any suppliers for blanks (Plain items to design and print a logo on) that are a good quality? Or put me in the right direction? thanks all  
    • The first fight between Poot Lorlek and Posai Sittiboonlert was recently uploaded to youtube. Posai is one of the earliest great Muay Khao fighters and influential to Dieselnoi, but there's very little footage of him. Poot is one of the GOATs and one of Posai's best wins, it's really cool to see how Posai's style looked against another elite fighter.
    • Yeah, this is certainly possible. Thanks! I just like the idea of a training camp pre-fight because of focus and getting more "locked in".. Do you know of any high level gyms in europe you would recommend? 
    • You could just pick a high-level gym in a European city, just live and train there for however long you want (a month?). Lots of gyms have morning and evening classes.
    • Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?..  Appericiate all responses, thank you! 
  • Forum Statistics

    • Total Topics
      1.4k
    • Total Posts
      11.5k
×
×
  • Create New...