First Muay Thai Lesson

markfj

Well,

Like I have have said previously, I have done Taekwon-do for 11 years, so I am not new to martial arts, but I have always wanted to try something else, mainly for better fighting skills, as TKD doesnt really coach in the fighting area.

So, as I had heard of so many people doing Muay Thai and saying how great it is, thought I'd go to my local club and see how goes.

I enjoyed it, I think the stances/guarding positions are thing areas I have to work on, as they are completely different to what I am use to, but will stick at it, and sure I will pick it up.

Now just trying to fit it, TKD, Muay Thai, Work and Gym in 7 days lol

wogihao

I know when I took some of my friends from TKD to the mt place they had a real hard time kicking from the back foot as they were used to flicky kicks and bounceing around.

I think its a valuable experence, one thing to rember the mt guys dont expect the TKD head kicks, more than one got caught with that.

I always used to kick off the back foot but then that was because i was not such a techical/stylish fella. the MT kicks are weird from a TKD perspective because your strikeing with the shin not the foot. so the distance is diffrent to what your used to. But after a while i found it a much more efective kick for safe kicking and power. You just lose some distance compared to a TKD kick.

One thing I realy did like was learning the MT guard, the throws and best of all the knees, elbows there fantastic eddition to a TKD education.

markfj

I can see what you are saying

Ofcourse I cant judge too much, as this is my only MT lesson so far, but seems MT is very powerful, and structured for power as well as speed.

TKD is also good for speed but can sometimes lack power I guess, ofcourse that depends on people etc

But I did find it strange with the new gaurding/stepping positions... but I think one can help the other

wogihao

Yes thats exactly what i found, the conditioning of most MT guys is way above a TKD'er but then thats because usualy they dont train for it. (Myself I was always impressed by the ohara training reel in enter the dragon lol... so i did lots of wacky conditioning). If you can master the conditioning then you will go from a Meh TKD blackbelt to a very good well rounded fighter. The bigest critisim leveled at TKD blackbelts is that compared to other systems where you have to spar in a compition to get your grades (Judo) you can in theory go through to black belt without entering a single compition. So you have pattern experts that never spar, or guys that love there set sparing.

It was the same with shotokan karate, there conditioning was of a far higher standard (because there used to not useing pads ect...) but on the other hand there atacks were easy to read (straight line punching bursts), and there kicking was not so fast as TKD. I much prefer there patterns though (or kata as they call it) it suited me much better than TKD patterns.

I meen theres good and bad to all systems and like you said its dependant on the individual. Take my friends for example 3 of us started TKD the same time with the same instructor but we all had completely diffrent styles - my friend was basicly a big side kicker he would just mow people down with that and was a very heavy kicker but used to come off the front foot so he was fast. the other guy used a very ranged tappy style that was full of hooking and reverse hooking techniuqes from distance. and I just basicly did turning kicks of the back foot and front foot with back kicks for combos.

Its how you express yourself through the style, you do what your good at. I realy like destrucion and breaking (i did a 9 stack of roof tiles), the guy with the big kicks loved doing long distance arial kicking demos (over loads of cowering juniors) and my tappy tappy friend was very good at presision and pattern work. funny enough he did the best in TKD comps because his style suited the comp rules best.

If you get the chance try to do some Brazilian jujitsu or Judo, there both exelent systems and deffo with judo your soon gain muscle and strengh quickly because theres so much physicality to it.

markfj

I agree, after watching some TKD vs MT fights on the net, its clear the MT guys can take more of a beating, and TKD guys try their speed, which often fails.

Thankfully, the guys today said they were impressed with my power in kicks/elbows (all I did today) so as long as I can perform with the correct technique I shuld be ok.

I would love to do more martial-aerts, but for now... TKD I will stick with because I love it and been doing it so long, and MT just because it seems as if I will gain so much strength/conditioning

The MT instructor is a person tranier too, and incorporates that into his sessions, my legs were knackered after my session this morning.
He says he likes to do some of the old ways of training too, involving sand bags, tyres etc whatever that means lol

wogihao

Ah that sounds cool. sandbag training is ace, its realy cheap as well if you have the space in your yard.

markfj

Dont quite know what training he is talking about, but I think I will find out soon enough

Either way I think, I will be put out of my normal rotuine and comfort zone, which is good.