Do they have a belt ranking in Muay Thai?

Do they have a belt ranking in Muay Thai?

  Our course on winning any street fight is out! Learn how to win street fights using one Muay Thai technique! Check it out here! No, true Muay Thai doesn’t have a ranking system. Over the last several years there have been more and more schools popping up with ranking systems. Some use colored shirts or colored prajioud to show rank, but this concept is purely a western one. In true Muay Thai, an instructor or student’s skill is instead determined by their accomplishments. It’s determined by the level of competition they’ve fought and the titles they’ve won –making no other method of ranking...
What striking art is best to cross train with Muay Thai?

What striking art is best to cross train with Muay Thai?

  Our course on winning any street fight is out! Learn how to win street fights using one Muay Thai technique! Check it out here! My first martial art was Wushu Kung-Fu and my second was a Korean style called Jidokwan. I had originally planned to learn several arts separately and then mix them, but as I got better at Muay Thai I realized something interesting. Muay Thai is unique because it’s both a combat sport and a martial art. Yes there is tradition and history steeped in the movements, but because competition is the most important element the movements are shaped by practicality. In the end, all combat sports are refined with the basic principle of innovating something new, keeping what works, throwing away what doesn’t and repeating this process over and over again. I found that modern Muay Thai has already adopted and borrowed things from other styles such as more head movement and varied kick catching techniques. Still, martial arts is a personal journey and some people still feel like mixing Muay Thai with arts that have a different approach like the spinning techniques of Korean kicking arts or the slick defensive head movement of Western Boxing. I highly suggest against training these arts concurrently though. To mix styles you must first become proficient in one then proficient in the other completely separately. Once you have learned enough to have a true understanding of each you can see where things need to be modified and adapted to get them to work together. Trying to cross-train two striking arts at once will only hinder your ability to...
How long does it take to learn a certain fighting technique, like  Muay Thai or kickboxing?

How long does it take to learn a certain fighting technique, like Muay Thai or kickboxing?

  Our course on winning any street fight is out! Learn how to win street fights using one Muay Thai technique! Check it out here! Muay Thai and kickboxing are actually fighting styles. A technique would be something more along the lines of a right low kick i.e., a specific move. I don’t want to seem like I’m correcting the question, but that’s an important distinction because learning a specific move is very finite. True, you can always get better at each individual move, but with dedicated and focused training you can get to a base level of proficiency in handful of moves in a relatively short time (example: you can develop a decent roundhouse within 2-3 months if you’re taught exact form and you practice extremely diligently). Fighting styles and Martial Arts on the other hand are a lifelong journey because the combination of techniques, strategies, setups, and counters possible are endless and new strategies and setups are being developed constantly because these styles are constantly evolving as athletes push to new...
What does it take to become a professional MMA fighter?

What does it take to become a professional MMA fighter?

  Our course on winning any street fight is out! Learn how to win street fights using one Muay Thai technique! Check it out here! The bottom line is all it takes to become an MMA fighter is to sign a fight contract. It doesn’t take any extensive training, or time commitment to sign. The real question is what does it take to become a SUCCESSFUL pro MMA fighter. To be a successful fighter, you have to above all else, have drive and heart. I say that to say that your current physical condition and experience level are non-issues. Likewise, thinking about a timeline is the wrong mode of thinking. The mode of thinking should be “regardless of how long it takes I’m going to be great at this.” The trick to making this actionable is to apply this mode of thinking to micro-goals. Keep your end goal of being a pro MMA fighter in the back of your mind, but once you hit the gym you pick a micro-goal like throwing a jab that make a loud pop when it hits the bag. Once you achieve that then you pick another micro-goal like throwing a kick that can make the bag start to fold. It’s the concept of using micro-goals that’s the most effective for making you successful in MMA, because it makes success a habit. Even if it takes 5 years to get to that level that you imagined yourself, during that entire 5 years you were having success and accomplishments every step of the...
I was sparring today and got punched pretty hard straight in the  face. How long should I take a break for?

I was sparring today and got punched pretty hard straight in the face. How long should I take a break for?

  Our course on winning any street fight is out! Learn how to win street fights using one Muay Thai technique! Check it out here! The short answer is that you shouldn’t. The first rule of Muay Thai is that everyone gets hit. If there is damage then that needs to be addressed by training smart while you heal. If you’ve got a broken nose or been concussed then you need to restrict partner work to kick sparring, clinching, and pad work. Once you’ve healed we need to make sure that training is done properly to minimize the risk of future injury in training. There are far too many ways to get hurt doing full Muay Thai sparring so for this reason even in Thailand all Muay Thai sparring is done extremely light. The only hard sparring is done with boxing so that fighters get accustomed to feeling power as well as seeing and defending punches with bad intentions, but headgear is always worn and vaseline is always applied to the face when this sparring is done to reduce damage done to each...
What is the difference between a Tae Kwon Do roundhouse and a  Muay Thai roundhouse?

What is the difference between a Tae Kwon Do roundhouse and a Muay Thai roundhouse?

  Our course on winning any street fight is out! Learn how to win street fights using one Muay Thai technique! Check it out here! Well this is a little bit of an oversimplification. There are actually several different types of Tae Kwon Do, and there are several different types of roundhouse variations in each one. Muay Thai also has several different variations of the roundhouse as well, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll look at the most common roundhouse in Muay Thai and WTF Tae Kwon Do (This is the style of Tae Kwon Do most popular in S. Korea and the style that is used in the Olympic Games). The most obvious difference is the part of the leg used as the striking surface. The WTF Tae Kwon Do roundhouse uses the instep as a striking surface. Also this kick to the body is designed to quickly sneak under the elbows of the opponent so the angle is always extremely upward. Good TKD players have roundhouses that move so much upward that they almost look like front kicks with the hips only rotating at the very end. Lastly the objective after landing a scoring kick in TKD is to adjust the distance so your opponent can’t return a kick. For this reason the most common method of throwing a single kick is to drop the kicking leg in front after making impact and advancing forward to got into an end position that’s chest to chest with your opponent, effectively jamming the distance for a return kick. Muay Thai on the other hand uses the shin to...