Zyaga Writing about whatever the hell I want, cuz it's the Interwebz!

Muay Thai – Day Three

Today, there happened to just be three of us out there, the other guy couldn’t make it out for one reason or another. It was quite hot out at first, but by the time we were done which was roughly an hour or so later, it had cooled down substantially because the clouds came out. Overall, it was a nice day to practice though.

At first, we did some basic routines, working out by doing push-ups, etc to get our bodies “going”. After that, my instructor brought out a decently large training bag that is held in front of someone so they can just “bash” on that person rather than the focus mitts which are more for accuracy. Anyway, he had us practicing combination’s of jabs, knee’s, and side kicks. One thing I noticed that was quite funny though, was that the other guy out there with me(who has just started back in training as well), could throw a hell of a lot harder knee to the stomach with his left leg than his right leg. The funny part about that is, he says that he is more comfortable with his right leg and usually is “right sided”. Funny how things work sometimes. For me, I’m the “norm”, I kick a lot better with my right leg and hit a lot better with my right hand. My left leg definitely needs a lot of work. My left hand is quick on blocking but is shit at throwing jabs.

After the bag work, we went over a few simple take down methods, nothing too serious. The idea behind him getting us into knowing a few take down methods was that we could practice “break falling”. Break falling is essentially breaking your fall so that when, not if, you get thrown to the ground or knocked down, you are able to break your fall. By breaking your fall, you limit the amount of damage your body is going to take from the fall which gives you a faster recovery time to getting back to your feet.

We ended with light sparring like we usually do. For a while we just had the rules of “anything goes” pretty much, obviously meaning kicks, sweeps, jabs, elbows, etc. I got a couple good combination’s in on my teacher, with one in particular allowing me to land my kick to the side of his thigh. The worst mistake I made was when he brought a high kick all the way up to my face(I’m a bit taller then him) and I misjudged his leg length and the end of his foot skimmed my cheek. I’m trying to get back into the “dodging by only the thickness of a piece of rice paper” routine again.

Like I said before, my teacher doesn’t just teach Muay Thai, he teaches “What Works”. He’s learned various styles and takes from them and tries to apply them together. Obviously, no one martial art is superior to all others. So, during the very end of the light sparring we practiced over some of the “Wing Chun” methods of blocking, simply using only our hands(we chose to just use only the hands, in no way is Wing Chun limited to this). With Wing Chun, when two people are practicing it, it’s quite easy to tell who’s in control of the situation because of how much one controls the other movements, so to speak.

I’ve got a lot of work to do to progress further, faster. I’ll report again sometime soon.