TECHNICAL STYLES & STYLINGS OF THE FEROCIOUS FIST

From Muay Thai Guy

I’ve recently been spending a lot of time watching Youtube videos of old Roberto Duran fights.

I was quite surprised to see the similarities between Mr. Duran’s style and a Muay Thai fighter’s boxing style. Duran was described as an inside fighter as well as a technical brawler which I feel is the perfect way to describe a Muay Thai fighter’s boxing style.

Even though I’ve put the boxer and the puncher together, by no means are the puncher and boxer one in the same. This is something that I feel is up for interpretation.

Some fighters are not the most technically sound boxers, but they were born with the gift of natural punching power or hands made of stone. There are also those fighters who are technically sound or precise and use that to their advantage.

The Evolution Of Muay Thai

Like any other sport, Muay Thai has gone through it’s own evolution. Evolution is...

TREAT YOUR MIND & BODY TO REFRESHMENT

By Sarah Morris

It’s widely known that yoga produces wonders for your physical and mental well-being. The practice promotes harmony between your mind and body through a combination of breathing exercises, meditations, and poses.

Enhance the effects of this method by coupling it with a restful vacation to get away from all the stress and toxicity in your personal and professional life. Enjoy breathtaking views as you equip yourself on how to manage stressors more productively.

You can find holiday packages that provide you with a new environment to meditate in. Bali, one of Indonesia’s islands, is a scenic tourist spot and an ideal place for yoga retreats. Learn more about the incredible Thailand & Bali retreats at Blooming Lotus Yoga.

Here are the reasons why you should try Bali yoga retreats during one of your wanderlust adventures:

Engage with Nature

Bali is the ultimate tropical paradise with its picturesque...

 AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPETITION WEIGHT CUTTING

From Muay Thai Guy

Enter: cutting weight. For pretty much as long as fighters have been weighing in, cutting weight has been a practice done by almost everyone.

There are a lot of misconceptions of what cutting weight is, and these misconceptions can prove to be costly, hindering performance during competition or, worse, even causing death.

(Title image courtesy of Andrew Miller, The Star Ledger.)

WHAT WEIGHT CUTTING IS

Cutting weight is a process that involves manipulating hydration levels in the body over the course of just a few days. Fighters will often sweat out as much as they can in order to lose weight temporarily. They will weigh in at the agreed upon weight, then rehydrate and eat to get their weight back up to...

WRAP YOUR HANDS & PROTECT YOUR WEAPONS

By Ben Stark

Ben Stark is longtime familiar face in the relatively small MMA community, which was many times smaller when he made his pro debut back in 2004, amassing a 5-2 record. Sharp-minded UFC fans will remember him from season 11 of The Ultimate Fighter. He has been around the world, fighting, training, and coaching MMA, BJJ, and Muay Thai.

When it comes to hand wrapping, Ben’s prowess is equally impressive as his depth of experience in the fight game. He has wrapped hands in four different countries, each with its own detailed rule sets.

In the video below, Ben will cover how to properly wrap hands following (most) Western commissions’ rules. Wrapping rules do change from place to place, though the one consistent rule across all US states is that fighters are never allowed to have tape over the knuckles.

Watch this mesmerizing hand wrapping tutorial by none other than American Top Team coach...

MAKING THE BEST OUT OF OPEN MAT & SOLO SESSIONS

By Emily Moore

Have you ever shown up at the gym only to find out that you’re the only one there?

Maybe your coach had an emergency and needed to step away, or your training partner bailed on you. You still want to get a good workout in but do you know how to structure your own training when no one is there to guide you?

If you’ve always had a coach there to tell you what to do and how to flow from one drill or exercise to the next, approaching an open mat or solo training session can be a little confusing. You can enter the training session with good intentions and strong motivation, but without some forethought and planning you might end up halfheartedly hitting the heavy bag for two and a half rounds before deciding to go home.

Training on your own is great; fighting, after all, is something that you ultimately have to do alone. Just like you can’t go into a fight without preparation, you can’t go...

DEBUNKING HARD SPARRING’S MISCONCEPTIONS

From Muay Thai Guy

When it comes to fighting, there is no argument that it’s one hell of a tough sport. But how is toughness really built into fighters? Is must be all the long hours in the gym rotating through countless sessions of hard sparring, right? How many UFC and boxing highlights have we seen featuring fighters battering their sparring partner in the days leading up to a fight?

“Pain is the best way to learn,” they say. “Iron sharpens iron… Spar hard, easy fight.”

These adages are as old as time and exist across disciplines and sports. If you’ve ever trained to fight, you know these push-through-the-pain maxims by heart, mostly because your coach has shouted them at you in the middle of hard sparring sessions. Encouragement like this has been shown to help fighters move past their limits, mentally condition themselves to eat hard shots, and alleviate the fear of contact.

That said,...

WOULD YOU TAKE A CHANCE TO LEARN FROM THE GREATEST?

By Sean Fagan

When is the last time you got to shoot practice shots with Michael Jordan?

Can you recall the last time you swapped opening move strategies with Bobby Fischer? Or played a friendly round of 18 holes with Tiger Woods?

Have you ever been granted the amazing opportunity to learn from and practice with a real, live legend of sports?

Well, recently, my friends, I got to do just that. Let me tell you all about my Muay Thai private with the one, the only, the king of the cartwheel kick...

SAENCHAI!!!

This wasn't my first time meeting Saenchai, but it was the longest private I've ever had with the man. And let me tell you: he is EXACTLY what you think he's like.

"Playful" doesn't begin to describe him. Where do I even begin?? When we sparred, every time he landed clean, he started counting me out... LOL. He's so loose no matter what he's doing or showing you. The constant "oooweee!" coming out of his mouth had me grinning...

HOW TO BUILD A FUNCTIONAL CORE FOR FIGHTING

By Evan Lee

I enjoy multi-purposed tools, especially in fighting. These 'swiss army knife techniques' tend to find themselves fitting into cracks that are too tight for other tools.

It ought not come as a surprise then that I find enjoyment in developing core muscles. Developed proper, they look nice, aid in movement, act as a great natural body armor, and, thus, all our bases are covered.  Actually...not quite.

Picking one trait to develop is easy, for instance: getting a 6-pack. Diet properly and the fat will melt like polar ice caps and the 6-packs will rise to sea level. But what good are looks if they do not function? We're going to try to piece this puzzle together and have you reap all the good fruits it has to bear.

3 Muay Thai Counters | How To Catch and Counter The Body Kick

A strong core isn't just about a strong core, it's about the entire body (we're talking stuff like harder shins, bigger forearms and...

THE DOS OF YOUR VERY FIRST FIGHT

From Muay Thai Guy

Nobody will ever forget their first fight, not ever. The pressure, anxiety, and excitement all jumbled up together in your chest is a feeling that can’t be reproduced.

Amateur fights are matched mostly based on experience, unlike professional bouts, which consider the level of the fighter and their style. If you are confirmed to make your amateur debut, your opponent is also likely to have no fights as well. (Sometimes they do, but no more than three.)

Taking that first step into the ring and hearing that bell ding for the first time is almost like stepping into an abyss – you’re not sure what to expect. Keep the following in mind during your first fight and you’ll always feel grounded to the mat (rather than floating above it).

DO: Train Hard 

So much of how well you do in a fight depends on your conditioning. If you have good conditioning, you can keep going. If you don’t, you’re...

YES- THEY ALWAYS HURT. YES- THEY CAN HURT LESS.

By Sean Fagan

Well, maybe not in the moment when you're slamming your shin into your opponent's thigh (or worse yet, something bonier than that). That's always gonna hurt.

But somewhere early on in the development of Muay Boran and eventually of Muay Thai, clever practitioners learned that by conditioning their shins, they could turn the crippling sharpness into more of a deadened, dull pain that one can endure throughout the fight without giving up.

They also learned that conditioned shins heal much more quickly post-fight than unconditioned ones. Think about it this way: if you walk a mile every day, you'll not run out of conditioning if, one day, you're forced to walk two miles - or even three. But ten miles? Twenty? Fifty?? You're just not ready for that. For that, you'd need to start conditioning your body to be functional for those huge, marathon walks.

The same goes for your shins - an integral part of your arsenal in the Muay...