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A little more than 5 years ago, if you told someone that you practiced muay thai you'd get:
a. blank stare.
b. a chuckle, followed by some Bruce Lee cat screams.
c. "You can't fight for real?"
d. some combination of the above.
Nowadays, the response is more like..."Isn't that what they do in the cage?"
Muay thai is a great art for self-defense. Everyone who is out here can testify to that; even black belt masters in other styles. It isn't perfect since it does not include ground work, but its stand up and clinch work give it a lot of flexibility and advantages whether fighting against other stylists for competition or against an attacker. In the case of weapons, the art has seperated itself from its parent art, krabi krabong, which is a blade/sword based art that orginated from thailand over 1,000 years ago.
Conditioning is one of the reasons why muay thai is good for self-defense and weight loss, too. Any style that emphasizes conditioning is one step up from the others that do not. There are traditional styles out there that disregard conditioning on the basis that they don't need to be fast to be effective or that one punch will kill someone. Its true one punch can make a difference, as long as you've worked with that one punch against different kinds of sparring partners who try to make you miss and land their own.
Other kinds of training - using a weighted belt to strengthen your bite (jaw), working neck bridges and doing impact medecine ball drills supplement your ring time and do wonders for your ability to work through a little contact.
Sparring is yet another reason. Sparring isn't the same as scuffling on the street, but someone who regularly deals with the nerves when sparring develops abilities to move, react and hit with intentions. Getting clocked now and then decreases your fear of being hit and increases your ability to fight under pressure but the real goal of sparring is to learn to make the other guy miss while landing your own shots, not to act as a punching bag.
Lastly, people ask about dirty techniques?
From my somewhat short time in the martial arts, my observations have been that every art has their own dirty techniques and that most practitioners won't think twice about using them + what they know from training in self-defense. Below is a picture of a muaythai fighter using a dirty move set up with a little footwork.
In the end, any kind of training in martial arts, whether it be muay thai, kali, judo or whichever you enjoy the most, should be used with great responsibility and control.
a. blank stare.
b. a chuckle, followed by some Bruce Lee cat screams.
c. "You can't fight for real?"
d. some combination of the above.
Nowadays, the response is more like..."Isn't that what they do in the cage?"
Muay thai is a great art for self-defense. Everyone who is out here can testify to that; even black belt masters in other styles. It isn't perfect since it does not include ground work, but its stand up and clinch work give it a lot of flexibility and advantages whether fighting against other stylists for competition or against an attacker. In the case of weapons, the art has seperated itself from its parent art, krabi krabong, which is a blade/sword based art that orginated from thailand over 1,000 years ago.
Conditioning is one of the reasons why muay thai is good for self-defense and weight loss, too. Any style that emphasizes conditioning is one step up from the others that do not. There are traditional styles out there that disregard conditioning on the basis that they don't need to be fast to be effective or that one punch will kill someone. Its true one punch can make a difference, as long as you've worked with that one punch against different kinds of sparring partners who try to make you miss and land their own.
Other kinds of training - using a weighted belt to strengthen your bite (jaw), working neck bridges and doing impact medecine ball drills supplement your ring time and do wonders for your ability to work through a little contact.
Sparring is yet another reason. Sparring isn't the same as scuffling on the street, but someone who regularly deals with the nerves when sparring develops abilities to move, react and hit with intentions. Getting clocked now and then decreases your fear of being hit and increases your ability to fight under pressure but the real goal of sparring is to learn to make the other guy miss while landing your own shots, not to act as a punching bag.
Lastly, people ask about dirty techniques?
From my somewhat short time in the martial arts, my observations have been that every art has their own dirty techniques and that most practitioners won't think twice about using them + what they know from training in self-defense. Below is a picture of a muaythai fighter using a dirty move set up with a little footwork.
In the end, any kind of training in martial arts, whether it be muay thai, kali, judo or whichever you enjoy the most, should be used with great responsibility and control.
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