Muay Thai Stuff’s Blog

Story told by, Kru Brooks Miller

I enjoy coaching, but as with any job, you go through ‘down’ periods. Over the course of late November and the entire month of December, my training classes had increasingly become deserted. For example, during the entire month of December, I believe I only actually coached 1 or 2 times in total. I would arrive to coach the fight team, but no one showed up to train. To tell the truth, it was a bit depressing. I was actually thinking about cancelling my classes.

Fortunately, now that we’ve relocated to the new gym, my classes are beginning to pick up again. While I’m not enjoying the same attendance I did this last Spring, where my class typically had up to 20 students, I am no longer left twiddling my thumbs during my training session.

Originally, my Friday night training sessions were “Fight Team Training & Sparring”. However, I quickly found that many of those who attended my class were recently ‘promoted’ in rank and allowed to participate in sparring classes. So while they had proven that they had mastered their basic skills, they had little to no understanding of how to fit it all together and fight with it. Rather than throw these Fight Team novices to the wolves, I quickly altered my approach. My class rarely allows MuayThai “free sparring”. Instead, my class focuses on strategy and contact drills designed to build the skills for use in the ring. When they do spar, it is with limited tools. They may be allowed to only Box or only Kick. Sometimes they are to fight only from the clinch.

Last night, one of the students was participating in my class for the first time. We only had 3 students attend class, so I stepped in as his training partner for the drills. Our focus was the Push Kick, or Teep. As I pointed out to the class, the Teep is really one of MuayThai’s underappreciated techniques in International competition. It is rare that you see anyone outside of Thailand use this tool effectively. Hence, it is one of the areas that I focus on when I coach.

At first, our new member wasn’t getting it. His push kicks were mis-timed, and mis-aimed. I noticed that he was using MuayThai’s “boxing” stance, as taught by Matee Jedeepitak, who has taught seminars at our gym in the past. I had him try a different variation of the stance, with his weight to the rear, and advised him of how to alter the delivery of his kick. We then practiced a number of different ways to use the technique throughout the training class.

All in all, it was a good class and I really enjoyed myself, but the real moment of satisfaction arrived in my email INBOX today. The new student had emailed the owner of our gym raving about my class, claiming that it was the most enjoyable training experience he’s had since becoming a member of the gym. The gym owner forwarded me this email along with his own “Thank You and Good Job”.

These are the moments that make all the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile!

Anyone with any real understanding of MuayThai should realize that full sparring is not only unnecessary, but is often detrimental to the development of students and fighters. In Thailand, the name of the game is to protect your fighters! Thai gyms, more often than not have the finest training equipment that money can buy. A fighter’s safety is of key concern because gyms want to protect their investments. Sparring in Thailand, while fast, is typically a very light-contact affair. The only times the Thais will fight each other with heavy contact is when they “gear up” and use Boxing only. They also typically separate the various phases of combat into separate sparring drills, such as Boxing only, kicking only, and clinching only.

Outside of Thailand, though, we frequently encounter gyms where students and fighters will spare full contact at all ranges. Their sparring sessions are essentially fights! Many seem to feel that this helps develop the fighters faster, toughening them up. But in reality it slows down their progress. They become brawlers with little understanding of the subtleties of the game. Unfortunately, this also leads to injuries. More often than not, these injuries are superficial: a bloody nose here, a black eye there, bruises, scrapes, and sore legs. Occasionally, however, some of the serious injury, such as the two examples provided above.

Trainers have a responsibility to their students and fighters. It is a job to protect them as they learn their craft. A trainer must remain ever alert, carefully monitoring what is happening during training sessions. A momentary lapse of attention may be all that’s needed for a student or fighter to lose control during a drill or exercise.