Taking muay show on the road, old style muay thai seminar in FL

Man, I love puns.  I just wanted to give my readers a heads up. I will be hitting the road and conducting a seminar in Orlando, Florida on Saturday December 4, 2010.

 My focus will be on leveraging muay thai for street combat.  We'll cover the basics of old style muay thai and how it differs from modern sport muay thai. I'll go over the bio mechanics of specific muay chau cherk and lerd rit strikes, and how to take advantage of physics to maximize your power. I'll also cover defense tactics, pad holding techniques, combinations, and multiple opponent tactics. And knowing me we'll probably end up geeking out and go over weapons disarms, CQC tactics, and delve into combat / operator mindset theory. My goal: provide you with some basic tools to help you protect yourself in the street, and to help you recognize the rules that apply to fighting in the ring or the cage do not apply in combat.

 If you're in the Orlando / Central Florida area I encourage you to check it out. I promise you'll learn something you won't see at the MMA gym. No prior experience in muay thai or any martial art required. Here's the dirty details:

Date: December 4, 2010
From: 12:30pm to 5:00pm
Cost: USD$50.00
Location: Martial Arts World
6606 Old Winter Garden Road
Orlando, FL 32835

Register online or contact me via email for more info or if you have any questions.

Benefit From Training Muay Thai Without Pads

If you subscribe to my YouTube channel you've probably already seen the above clip, what I don't mention in it is the importance of training without pads.

We can all agree that thai pad and focus mitt drills are vital to any muay thai or mma curriculum, but it does have a few drawbacks - including reinforced bad habits and a false sense on security in one's skills.

Striking pads is actually a very different sensation from hitting a real person. Aside from the actual impact, the entire interaction is entirely different when you strip away the pads, gloves, and other protective gear. I'm not saying that you go all-out on someone else. I suggest you learn to play with your combinations and get a feel for where the true targets lie. This is especially important for those of you who are learning close quarter combat (self defense) systems.

So, what do you really get out of this? Here's the truth: you can master any fighting system, but when it comes down to it: when you find yourself in a fighting situation in the street, your subconscious, reptilian brain is going to rely on a handful of strikes or combinations. All of those fancy, technical - fine motor skill - small joint locks are going to wash away with the adrenaline rush.

Repeated drills such as the one in the video can help you train your subconscious mind so that when its called upon, your animal brain won't freeze on you. It becomes a natural reaction. John Grissom, author of the combat blog, 1Urban Warrior and fellow Muay Thai Academy International alumni covers this topic extensively. Dave Grossman's book, On Killing also provides some interesting insights into the application of the fight or flight mechanism in combat.

Other variables including target selection, environment, and the unpredictability of your attacker all factor into the equation. And that only adds to the importance of training your subconscious mind. Oh boy, I'm gonna have to expand on this a little later.