jules

I am wondering how Thai fighters train for/with elbows... This is my problem... I don't want to come off arrogant but of all my attacks the elbow "feels" most natural. It has always been like that. Even when our "Tden~Nuh" came from Thailand he said that i have good elbows... But the thing is that since i am not a pro-fighter we don't do elbows when we spar... as a matter of fact our fighters don't throw elbows when they spar each other... Are there anything else than thai pads that will help my elbow training?

Damian Mavis

I'm sorry for busting in on your question, I was also wondering how to train them and found out so figured I'd share. At some of the camps I've trained at we spar with them slowly and carefully heh, usually during plum practice. You try to see the openings and carefully elbow eachother when the chance arrives. So far no accidents beyond a bruise.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

Khun Kao

Damian is correct. Its VERY difficult to even ATTEMPT sparring with elbows. in 99.9999999% of cases, elbows are prohibited during sparring. Elbows are just TOO DANGEROUS! Even if you wear elbow pads, you can really **** someone up with an elbow, and thats even if you're going light!

Typically, we train elbows by adding them into our shadowboxing, bagwork, and padwork. There are certain partner drills where you kinda choreograph what each person is doing to minimize the risk of injury.

For instance, one fighter attacks, one defends and/or counterattacks. Each fighter knows exactly what the other is doing so that there are no surprises. A particular favorite is the combination: Lead Jab - Lead Straight Knee - Spinning Rear Elbow (to the body). The idea behind this type of drill is speed and precision... NOT POWER! You want to go fast and be accurate, but you want to control the technique so that each strike merely "touches" your partner.

I was actually fight training earlier today. We included elbows in each of our drills today.

5 rounds of shadowboxing (including elbows)

3 rounds heavy bag: All techniques performed FULL POWER, speed is not an issue!

2 rounds pad work: Speed and accuracy are the key. Full power punches, Medium power kicks, Medium to full power knees, LIGHT elbows.

You just have to keep safety in mind and find the most realistic way to SAFELY train elbows. As I mentioned above, use elbows FULL POWER on the heavy bag, and FULL SPEED on the pads.

Brooks (Khun Kao)

__________________
Kru Brooks C. Miller
USMTA Director of DC, MD, and VA
http://khunkao.com/

jules

thank you