27.07.20 The course in Denmark continued on Monday with the fourth hour of this six hour course. My client’s daughter was away for this lesson so I taught a heavy bag session. Tonight we began with some simple tips on handling the heavy bag. One good piece of advice I was given by the US teacher, Ron Goin, was to use techniques to stop the bag swinging between combinations. Using a spear elbow, spear knee, a long-guard or a teep […]
13.07.20 The second of my teacher Denmark’s six-part course on Dirty Boxing and Kickboxing included striking from an under-hook position. We warmed up with some boxing and kickboxing shadow sparring before my client and his daughter went back through last week’s dirty boxing combinations. Here we discussed a few points on footwork, retaining the guard position and getting closer. I then chained on the low inside round-kick after a knee-bump. Finally, I introduced under-hooking and how to strike whilst clinching […]
16.03.20 Monday night began my client’s first Mixed Martial Arts course. She is coming to it from a Kickboxing/Muay Thai perspective. With this mind, we will be extending and adapting techniques from this discipline to MMA. Tonight was mainly about exploring the different ranges before we began putting together some simple combinations. With the stand-up range already covered in three previous courses, we began with the clinch and immediately started work at using wrestling positioning. We worked on […]
08.02.20 The Oxford School of Martial Arts kindly booked me for a two-hour clinic on Muay Thai tactics for Karate sparring. Quite simply, black belt gradings for these particular schools include a half hour fortitude test where conventional sport karate rules are abandoned in favour of a virtual no-holds-barred format (contact to the head is light and foul techniques are carefully monitored). I have previously taught a ground-fighting workshop with this in mind. This time we looked at the […]
03.02.20 Monday night brought my client up to the fifth hour of her third Muay Thai course. We are focusing on punching specifically and tonight we looked at better chaining of all the punches with each other and then in combination. The lesson began with some a warm-up of line work, just looking at the individual punches. Four types of jab, the basic cross, four types of hook and two types of uppercut were covered as trained them […]
20.01.20 Monday night saw my client reach the third hour of her third Muay Thai/Kickboxing course. As previously discussed on this blog, we are focusing on punching techniques. Each lesson roughly follows this plan: isolate the punch, integrate the punch into punching combinations and then integrate the punch into other combinations making use of the remaining “six limbs” of Muay Thai. Tonight we worked on the lead hook. We began with a light warm up of mobility and dynamic stretching. […]
09.12.19 Monday night was my client’s last lesson in her current course of Muay Thai. We revised various material over the course and then looked at the back kick (deer kick) and the spinning heel kick (crocodile kick). We warmed up with mirror footwork. Here I introduced hopping steps and diamond steps. We then began some one-for-one light sparring, ensuring that all kicks were set up with hand techniques. This led onto some counter-work with the belly shield […]
25.11.19 Monday night was my client’s penultimate lesson in her second course on Muay Thai. Tonight we focused on developing primarily speed and also power in techniques. The lesson began with simple callisthenics, including squat-teep kicks and punching-jogging. This was then followed by mirror footwork and one-for-one sparring. This was followed by kicks set up with hand techniques and then counter-attacks. We then began a series of speed conditioning exercises. These exercises consisted of jabs, crosses, hooks, […]
11.11.19 Monday saw my first lesson back in the UK after teaching a weekend of children’s self-protection and martial arts cross-training. My client has reached her seventh hour in her second course of Muay Thai/Kickboxing. Tonight my intention was to address countering kick-catches, which we did, but we also ended up covering using and fighting southpaws thanks to a switch-kick question. The lesson began with mirror foot-work, followed by one-for-one techniques. From here we began to build combinations. […]
29.08.19 We covered the third hour of my client’s course on Sparring Conditioning. We are currently focusing on the stand-up range (Boxing and Muay Thai). Today we ramped our training up to 10 x 3 minute rounds with one minute breaks to focus on specific areas. The lesson began with dynamic stretching and sport specific callisthenics. We then did ladder agility drills and agility cone drills to develop footwork. The lesson then went into the 10 rounds. […]
31.07.19 Wednesday night the nephew and uncle double lesson got underway with lowline takedowns for the junior section and advanced Muay Thai combination work for the senior section. Both classes warmed up on the agility ladders and cones. The senior lesson included some revision on the L-Step and V-step work. We also looked at using other technique suggestions. The junior class also used the cones to set up for a sprawl double-leg takedown combination. Here we addressed the […]
05.06.19 Wednesday night saw my junior client finish his long and extended course on Basic Muay Thai for Martial Arts Cross Training. Next week we will begin his Clinch/Stand-up Grappling course. The senior class that follows was largely based on stand-up sparring – Boxing, Muay Thai and MMA. The junior class consisted of 6 x 3 minute rounds of Boxing and Muay Thai. The first two were on the focus mitts and the next four were sparring. We went over […]
01.06.19 The final hour of my client’s mixed course on Muay Thai and Submission grappling went through various stand-up combinations and also a round of grappling sparring. We began with mirror footwork and some reaction drills. The first drill was the Dutch one-for-one kick repayment. Various kicks are exchanged to prompt returning a strike as quickly as possible. This was then changed to prompting and taking advantage of predictive behaviour – low kick/low kick/teep. We then went through all the […]
22.05.19 Tonight’s junior and senior lesson saw considerable overlap. Both nephew and uncle cover 12 rounds between them on Muay Thai and Western Boxing. I began the junior lesson with a round of Western Boxing on the focus mitts. This was followed by a round of Muay Thai on the Thai focus mitts. Then we did a round of clinch before we began sparring. This consisted of two rounds of Wester Boxing and two rounds of Muay Thai […]
11.05.19 Saturday’s second private lesson was the last hour of my two junior client’s Muay Thai for Martial Arts Cross Training saw a full revision of elbow strikes then moved into a review of the course, a call back to the Western Boxing course and then a final round of blending Western Boxing with Muay Thai. We warmed up with some line-work focused entirely on all the basic elbow strikes. This began with some attribute training that linked […]
19.03.19 Tonight’s lesson brought my client up to the seventh hour of his course in Basic Muay Thai for Martial Arts Cross Training. We concentrated mainly on the remaining elbow strikes. The warm-up consisted of the usual specific mobility exercises, dynamic stretching and callisthenics. We then changed to mirror footwork, looking at placing techniques and gauging distances using teeps. Next we went through the basic punch, kick and knee combinations covered in previous lessons. Moving back onto the […]
