master toddy seminar.

[tenzen]

hello everyone. my school is hosting a master toddy seminar on sept. 26 at south sound martial arts in tacoma washington. the school is located on the second floor of the indoor soccer stadium. there will be two sessions one in the morning and one in the afternoon. the cost is $75 per session. if you are in the area we would like to see you there.

[george stando]

Tenzen: Put up all the contact info email/telephone and location details, so people who want to come can get in touch also if there is pre reg for the seminars.

[tenzen]

the address is 2610 bay st. e tacoma washington, right off of portland ave. phone number is 360-280-0199. there is no pre reg as far as i know. i can find out more about that and post later. fist seminar is from 900-1100. and second is at 1 to 3. i think he will be teaching the same thing in both seminars not sure. you can see me at the first one. hope this helps a little better.

[tenzen]

you can buy the tickets early or at the door the price will be the same.

[george stando]

By the way, please give us a review after its over, if possible. Never met master toddy and only read stuff and saw the tv shows.

[tenzen]

i will let you know as soon as i get done with the seminar. i would like get some footage on video if possible but i dont know if that will be allow. but if it is i will have it in my private collection.

[george stando]

Looking forward to hearing how it goes

[JAB]

Anyone train with Toddy before? Thoughts?

[JAB]

I wrote a short review of the seminar here on my blog

Enjoy,
JAB

[george stando]

I think tenzen made the seminar too, dont know if it was the same one as you attended.

I havent trained with master toddy or any of his instructors but the general concensus with those i train with in the states and here in thailand is that it is the McDonald's of Muay Thai, easily accessible and taught but is streamlined and recreated by toddy himself. Although those comments come from solid sources, i havent had the chance to be on the floor with him or his students personally and have only seen the shows and videos of him in the teaching process.

[JAB]

Muay Thai seems to suffer from the same phenomena that the Chinese arts do, and it is a shame.

What is "real?" I have read a lot on this (and other) forums about the "real" Muay Thai. Some have the attitude that it is only "real" if you go to Thailand. And then only if you study with a group that is not easily accessible is it really REAL!

The exact same thing has been the ruination of the CMA.

I am by no means an expert in Muay Thai, or anything for that matter, but the 18 years of experience I have tells me that Toddy has some decent stuff. Is it real/best/better than... I have no clue. But what he offered the other day was solid good technique and theory.

Cheers
Jake

[george stando]

Hey Jake,

I cant say what real is but i can offer my opinion for whats its worth. When I was in the states, there was one school that said they offered authentic muay thai. I went along with it. The teacher trained in thailand and knew his stuff. But the classes were just line them up and work in pairs with no corrections, no clinching or minimal at best, along with alot of conditioning. OK, not a bad class but in no way were we getting close to the way things are done here, the intensity, the work out circuit, the tiny things that make muay thai and lead to its proper development. it was an approximation of it by way to me like a karate class. So it seems alot of people put together classes or situations that some odd reason have to approximate muay thai but never quite does. So when my friend said Master Toddy's was the mcdonalds of muay thai, it sort of made sense to me but maybe not to others. It meant to me he made smooth to learn and pick up but in essence is not the core of what muay thai is. Funny I speak to some people from the old class, many of which come to thailand and train, and everytime they came back they left the class, saying its not muay thai.

You brought up another point lets say you have done chinese martial arts for a long while, its probably easy for you to spot out the inconsistencies or teaching experience of others simply from your own indepth experience.

I've been thinking alot about it because lets say i wanted to teach when i got home, how would i deal with this problem. how would i teach it? I have a teacher who is an american who spent most of his life training in se asia and in one of the top camps in thailand for a long time. I remember him teaching and i only took a couple of his small muay thai classes because i was learning something else from him then reunited with him in thailand where he hooked me into the muay thai scene and I decided to come back to live, train and fight. But what taught and how he taught it was exact to thailand in a more structured class environement but he got it all in.

He said that it was more work than any normal class to keep things like a real muay thai environment but it can be done in a structured environment as well as taking time to actually learn the small things that really matter. Pad training needs to carefully done and not sloppy because students are holding for students. Some teachers complained that its a commercial class and they cant make money or whatever but its really they dont want to work hard like a muay thai teacher here who busts his ass twice a day, making sure everyone gets the work, critique and development he needs.

In the american commercial scene everything sort of gets whittled down to the most common demoninator which is a class line them up and let them go. The two or three classes i took where developed in line with how muay thai is taught in the camp, specifically he had an excellent development sequence for the tiip and just from three classes i was actually commended for my tiip by my trainer when i got to thailand who doesnt commend anything you do unless you do it well. So I guess it comes down to who the teacher is, how well does he really understand muay thai, did he do his homework to break it down, develop the proper sequences, pad drills, sparring that will lead to having some genuine muay thai skills.

You can also check the development in holland where they were the early competitors against muay thai, but they put more boxing, footwork and some other combos to fight against the thais. So they developed their own offshoot that they were able to teach in a class like structure that developed and continues to develop a tremendous amount of top notch competitors. Most classes i think mostly mirror this type of training and development since the structure is already laid out and the teacher just follows it.

I havent been to many muay thai classes across the us, so i can only say i have worked in a couple but i have been meeting a huge cross section of students and i talk to them about their training, check out the results of their training as they begin muay thai here and see how they progress and what their opinions are.

The other final factor is muay thai never really took off in america for some reason probably because it couldnt be fought with full rules in many states and a lack of promotion. There were so few real full time muay thai schools as well and probably continues to be. The rise of mma really helped it tremendously as many of the fighters crosstrained muay thai as their stand up base and a rise in the practitioners and schools really increased. Of course in europe, muay thai has been supported for a long time and competitions have been strong. So the growth in europe of the sport and the lack of growth in the us also add to the equation.

But thats just my views for now. I am continuing to think about this and develop my own ways and opinions on how to do it myself in the future.

Hope that helps a bit!

[JAB]

Excellent points, and well put brother. And I think you hit it on the head in regards to it coming down to the teacher actually teaching! Universal problem! We just need to be careful about painting too broad of stripes with our generalizations.

Cheers
Jake

[george stando]

I am continuing to learn and analyze and gain more experience. I see that teaching is also alot about experience and the ability to translate that experience.

[tenzen]

hey guys. i see you went to the afternoon seminar from what your blog says. i was at the morning seminar and let me tell you it was not very good at all. i was told however that the afternoon seminar was much better and was completely different. if i had known it was going to be different i would have stayed. but honestly the morning seminar was terrible aside from the fact that he was 45 minutes late. that doesnt seem like fast food to me george ha ha. but we worked on distance alot and that helped me out i guess. his system is just very different from the way i have been taught he has too much flash and not enough bang for me. too much in and out when you could come in and stay in to end it not punish and back off. did you get that from him jake? hope the weather is nice george it sucks here.