The Gallop and the Essential Battle of Rhythms - Chatchai and Yodkhunpon

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Above is two minutes of work with Sylvie and Chatchai this week. He's teaching her his tiny inner gallop step which triggers on-beat much of his boxing strikes. He is explaining that this tiny step is the same as in Muay Thai, especially when throwing lead side weapons. Chatchai is a world class Boxing Kru but he was also a Golden Age Muay Thai fighter, and he sees Western boxing and Muay Thai not in conflict, but rather as built out of comparable rhythms. What is interesting about this is how that small gallop is in the same beat as say the gallop step Yodkhupon shows (just below), in his Muay Khao stalking. It's the iambic pentameter, one might say, on a much smaller scale, close space scale.

 

Once we get below the level of strikes - strikes being a primary preoccupation of Western appropriations and inclusions of Muay Thai "techniques" - we get into a much more important dimension of fighting. Fighting in many ways a battle over space, fighting the fight where you are more comfortable and where your opponent is not (a primary reason why Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao battles are classic), but the battle over space is conducted often through the battle of rhythms. Each fighter is attempting to (somewhat musically) impose their rhythm on the fight, and disrupt the rhythm of the opponent. This is especially important if each fighter has a different rhythm, it becomes a musical duel, but even with similar rhythms you still are trying to get inside the opponent's "beat". This is part of the meaning behind the Muay Thai sway or rock, that has become iconic. It's the beginning of a rhythmic battle, in which a baseline is laid for variance to ensue. 

But, what is beautiful about the top video, at least in my mind, is how that it secretly connects up to Yodkhupon's space-eating gallop, which allows you to quickly cross over distance and suddenly and suffocatingly be on your opponent. What Chatchai's inner gallop does is allow the gallop to become at any time a trigger for a strike, out of the same rhythm, once you get into the phone booth of the pocket. You don't change rhythms, you just condense it. 

Seven years ago Sylvie put together this video on the Yodkhupon gallop, and how it relates to the Muay Thai sway. You can even see in it her showing Chatchai's weight transfer rhythm (which he had taught her). But, she had not yet learned Chatchai's inner gallop step, nor seen how Chatchai's rhythm could connect up with Yodkhunpon's gallop...and Yodkhunpon's gallop had not yet been connected up with Chatchais's full Boxing vocabulary arsenal. 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

This film study also delves into the potentials of Chatcchai's rhythm dynamics, and how they can be experimentally trained with other Muay Bouk styles:

 

The fuller discussions of the film is found here, public and free on Sylvie's Patreon. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

For more philosophical thoughts on rhythm (and possibly the failure of rhythm), especially as it relates to "Style", this thread discusses Karuhat, perhaps the most accomplished Muay Thai stylist:

a section from the above:

Thais learn much more foundational techniques - with far greater variance, and much less "correction" - principally organized around being at ease, tamachat, natural. The techne (τέχνη), the mechanics, that ground stylistics, are quite basic, and are only developmentally deployed in the service of style (& signature), as it serves to perform dominance in fights. The advanced, expressive nature of Thai technique is already woven into the time and tempo of stylistics. This is one reason why the Muay Thai Library project involves hour long, unedited training documentation, so that the style itself is made evident - something that can even have roots in a fighter's personality and disposition. These techne are already within a poiesis (ποίησις), a making, a becoming. Key to unlocking these basic forms is the priority of balance and ease (not biomechanical imitations of the delivery of forces), because balance and ease allow their creative use in stylistics.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Returning to the OP, one of the interesting things about the comparison of Yodkhupon's movement and Chatchai's inner beats movement is that it points out how futile or insufficient visual imitation can be. Just looking at their shapes they look nothing alike. A large part of the Western and International grasping at and training of Muay Thai is based on visual cuing and bio-mechanical imitation, a great deal of it video-based as well. This visual-mechanical lead just keeps us on the surface of "strikings" and tends to cut away all the living material beneath the strikes, the rhythms and stylistics that animate the strikes and make them so effective (and beautiful as well). Only when you get down into the rhythms, leaving the visual map aside, do these two gallops come together, a secret affinity that connects them, and suggests that they could in practice amplify each other.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

I should add that these are two nice summations in comment on the original posting of the micro-gallop video on YouTube, in answer to someone who asked for elaboration: