Certification without ring experience

[doubleouch]

What do you guys think of thai boxing instructors who give certification to people with no thai boxing ring experience. I won't name names but I know of a couple including one who is mentioned often on this board. What is the rational for this?

[Khun Kao]

I think we've gone over this before.

Ideally, you would want a certified instructor to have ring experience. But the operative word here is "Ideally". Should you really hold back someone from instructor certification if they meet all the requirements for that certification, except they have not actually stepped into the ring?

I personally believe that someone who wishes to be a Muay Thai instructor *should* make every possible effort to get some ring experience, but you wanna know something? The stars do not always align, and Jupiter is sometimes in the House of Venus, and certain people are unable to get a fight when they have the ability to put in that kind of hardcore training.

The bottom line, IMHO, is that the understanding of the sport of Muay Thai makes the instructor, not ring experience.

Khun Kao

[chalambok]

I Have A Humble Opinion Also

okay, I have never had a ring fight, muay Thai, boxing or anything outside of high school wrestling. Well, am I a joke? Apparently my instructors do not think so, or I would not have been put in the position I have. Ring experience is very important when it comes to teaching people to fight in the ring. Can a person who has never had a street fight teach how to survive in the street? Many ring fighters have never fought outside the ring, hmmm?
Also, there are many many good fighters who later turned out to be quite poor instructors. Why? Maybe the ring only requires limited numbers of techniques, albeit they must be done well; or maybe conditioning and specific training for that specific opponent was the critical difference? I never even met Grandmaster Sirisute until I was 32, way over the hill for fighting. However, when I look at the current crop of 'ring-tested' instructors I can see they have a limited view of muay Thai, and often do not know how to teach the basics to their students, although they have 'mastered' any number of ring tricks. It seems obvious to me that the perfect instructor should have lots of experience, both in and out of the ring, and must have had good instructors himself. But what would he be called? Grandmaster I think...and there are very few of them out there teaching. So, like everything else in life we must be content to do the best with what we have. Should someone be allowed to teach muay Thai who has never been to Thailand? Some of the best schools in Thailand use feeders who have never had a fight ! And often these feeders are the baddest dudes you can ever hope to meet, having seen everything while holding the pads for countless rounds against every fighter in the camp. No, I think what is most important in an instructor is the 'educated eye', a phrase I freely steal from Ajarn Dan Inosanto; a teacher who knows all the basics and can see how you should be taught them; so your understanding of the art becomes instinctive, and you become imprinted for life, or more accurately, for the saving of your life. Remember that muay Thai is a sport descendant of the much more combative fighting/war arts of Krabi-Krabong, which was difficult to train safely and continuously for months on end without having many injuries. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion

[doubleouch]

Sorry if I'm rehashing old news. My problem with it is that it degenerates the art after several generations. What happens is that someone learns thai boxing from a boxer. They don't get in the ring. They teach someone else. They don't get in the ring. The cycle continues and after awhile the art doesn't look anything like the ring art it once was. Should the instructors rely on their students to test the techniques real time in the ring? Sure lining up fights can be trouble. I think the ring experience can happen in the gym. People who are thai boxing certified who have never sparred hard using thai rules are kidding themselves. You can't learn thai boxing without getting in the ring and sparring hard, so how can you say you know thai boxing if you haven't had that experience. My instructor says you don't know a technique until you can pull it off consistiently in sparring. If that is true then some of these paper certificate people don't know any thai boxing. You have to have trained the techniques with timing and resistance and motion against someone fighting back real time. Until you have done that you haven't done thai boxing. Having good form and doing techniques well against the pads is not thai boxing, it is training for thai boxing.

[chalambok]

So, just who is your instructor, and who certified him? I live in Portland also, and I know ALL of the qualified muay Thai instructors around here. Let's see, there is a school who took pictures of my class and used it to advertise their muay Thai class. There is another school whose instructor has no certification from anyone but has lots of pictures on the wall, a good facility, and the seeming mastery of 6 arts by the age of 28. Oh yes, there is a good school affiliated with Randy Couture but their kickboxing skills are poor, but they are improving. Hmm, curioser and curioser. I agree good sparring is important, but to think you can regularly leg kick as a part of class is ridiculous. Overtraining and injury have forced even the Thai to change their training methods the last decade, and free-styling (light contact legs and honesty concerning a score) is more the trend, especially during the runup before a fight, although the intensity can look real. As far as the art getting weaker, muay Thai is still the fastest growing sport in the world, and the quality of fighters has never been better. Perhaps parity makes it seem degenerated.

[doubleouch]

I don't study under a certified thai boxer. I know you can't sustain full intensity thai kicks and elbows etc. on a daily basis. I do think that you can't claim to be a thai boxer if you have never experienced it.

[Tom Yum]

If you are not planning on becoming a pro-fighter, but want to prepare for amateur you can have school fights. 3 x 3 min rounds against someone who will challenge your abilities.

I did this with a 202 lb guy who has devistating rear leg round house kicks (mind you I'm a sup middleweight). It was hard, because after 2 of his kicks I was in immense pain! His boxing skills are not as good as his kick, so I countered the rear leg with a simultaneous r. cross left hook or a cut kick to his supporting leg.

Round 2, I tried to shake off the leg pain and landed lots of body punches and then he nails me with a push kick to my chest which sent me into the wall (at this time I am glad his boxing is only so-so!). I got the angle, landed some more punches and a rear roundhouse of my own.

Rd 3 - he tries to tear me up with rear roundhouse, r cross. I just duked it out until the end and wanted to puke! He was tired too, but I had trouble walking. Those kicks, from a bigger guy gave me a little limp the next day.

[Bryan Popejoy]

"I do think that you can't claim to be a thai boxer if you have never experienced it."



Define "experienced it" in regards to muaythai, please.

Thanks,

Bryan

[doubleouch]

Tom is right on. You certianly can experience thai boxing in the school environment. Experiencing thai boxing means actually thai boxing and not just training for thai boxing.

[Bryan Popejoy]

where do you draw the line at "Experiencing"? Fighting? Fighting modified rules? Full Muaythai rules?

[OctaviousBP]

...also awaiting definition of fighting.

D

[doubleouch]

Must I figure out everything for you guys