MT: real world applicability?

[bigphatwong]

I've got a couple of questions for the Muay Thai enthusiasts. I'll divide it into two parts:

First of all, kicking. I'm sure by now you've all seen the videos of guys breaking their shins doing round kicks so there's no need to repost them here. In both instances, the unfortunate kicker caught a knee, or the hard shin bone just below the knee. My question is, with knowledge of MMA becoming more prevalent, aren't you worried there is a very real possibility of that happening if you attempt to pull it off in a pinch? And what is your solution? To me, it's just too much of a high-risk move. Call me a wuss, but I'm personally not willing to give Murphy that much of a chance to get one in on me.

Secondly, punching... pretty much the same question. As we know, MT utilizes the standard boxing punches. It seems to work great with gloves on, but what about the risk of damaging your hands if you connect with a hard bony surface? If it can happen to Tyson, it can happen to anyone.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing kickboxing, just wondering what (if any) modifications would be made to adapt it to the street and how you would address those concerns.

[Darthwing Teorist]

One of my teacher told me about a MT guy who had over 200 fights. And he said: that guy probably saw it all. If you can deal with the pressure of a lots of fights, you have good chances to stay calm in a street fight.

Using open hands and going for knee kicks instead of the thigh would make MT much more devastating, IMO.

[Juan]

Dude, really? So punches are now absolete in teh streetz because you might hurt your hands on the guy's face? Yeah, it happens but punches have been thrown in fights before we were born and they have always been effective regardless of style.

Also, unless the person trains in MT/MMA if he throws up a block when I'm kicking his shin is going to hurt alot more than mine is because of all the conditioning. The likelyhood of breaking your shin is very low. It rarely happens in MT fights and MMA fights. So yeah, I would but my kick to the test in a fight. Also, if the guy has only seen mma/mt fights on tv it is very unlikely that he would correctly block my kick or would have the timing to do so.

[Brady]

What do you do besides kicking and punching, especially as a first move?

[mrtoes]

I've been taught to prefer punches turned up (i.e. palm side upwards) when punching to the face, in order to increase the chance of the big knuckles landing, rather than the smaller ones which are more likely to lead to a break. The downside is you lose range. I find it quite natural to strike towards the face that way, but interestingly when I've been using gloves recently I haven't done that, as it hasn't been necessary to protect my hand. Just wondering, would you adjust your punch in any way when striking with bare fists in MT (or boxing) or would the strike be in the same way as you'd use when striking with gloves?

[JusticeZero]

I'd be more worried about MT having a very small space on the force continuum really..

[Kurt Robbins]

To avoid the kicking problem - its called setting up the opponent.

[mrtoes]

Mmm I'm not really much of a kicker but I reckon thai boxers would be pretty confident using dem shin kicks. As for breaking them, surely far less chance than mashing your fingers with punches. They are quite brutal, my shins are not conditioned at all and when I try to block them with my shins it hurt like hell. And when they block my crappy shin kicks it hurt like hell. So yeah, what Juan said

[Ian]

guys,

what does the thai military use (with all the open hand striking)? is it muay boran?

anyway for kicking, if you throw your kicks from the front leg (and assuming you know how to generate power from very short distances), they become a lot harder to deal with.

[Ian]

also you might be interested in these

[Bhassler]

I hung with some bouncers for awhile and they were adamant about keeping both feet on the ground during any sort of skirmish, based on their experiences working in busy nightclubs.

[chimerical tortoise]

Bhassler: do you know if they had specific drills used to keep their feet planted?

[GrahamB]

also you might be interested in these

Interesting - reminds me a lot of XingYi kicking.

[neijia_boxer]

Does San shou or SanDa have real world applicability? many of the techniques are the same in terms of striking punching and kicking but with slight variations and different throwing approaches.

[Bhassler]

Bhassler: do you know if they had specific drills used to keep their feet planted?

Dunno-- I never trained with them for fighting, only freerunning. They were a pretty straightforward bunch, though, so I doubt that they bothered beyond what's implicit in sparring, learning to take people down and getting taken down, etc.