Change up your muay thai with the lost art of 'shifting'

Here's a post that Daniel drafted but hasn't posted yet. I've been busy with a move this week, and didn't have time to write a post from scratch. I went through this, added my own ideas & tips, so you're stuck with some really great advice, and a few of my snarky comments thrown in for good measure.
 
Definition: Changing foot position and stance in order to make your punches more powerful.

Shifting allows a fighter to remain in constant motion. You can attack, evade, and change leads while remaining rooted, centered, balanced and stable. You'll will be able to change sides and increase speed without sacrificing power. You be able to move faster without bobbing up and down. That bobbing is actually a drain of vital energy. You can change sides so that by the time your opponent realizes what has happened he has been hit many times.

Whether you're boxing, training MMA, or fighting muay thai, you can still switch sides easily and continue fighting without upsetting your  flow. It actually serves to confuse your opponent, throwing both his timing and balance off.

So, you want to throw strikes with significantly more power, eh? Shift your weight as you throw punches and elbows. Energy travels from the ground through every joint of the body and finally into the fists. If you're pivoting your hip while you strike, you're generating toque. If you're shifting your weight, which includes that whole 'mass x acceleration' bit, you're generating more force. If you add that torque to the drive and the shift you're got a little something called compound momentum. But I digress. I mean, what do a couple of muay thai instructors know about physics anyway? We'll save the compound momentum theory for another post.

By never having to re chamber or telegraph an attack, your punches come at you like a rattlesnake strike. Shifting is especially effective in a street fight, or multiple opponent situations, where continuous movement is an imperative. Also, think of this: in the ring, muay thai matches are a sort of gentleman's agreement. Both fighters square off and exchange blows back and forth. I don't care how conditioned I am, I hate getting hit. The less you get hit the odds f you winning and/or surviving go way up. If you shift or drive while you strike you move as you throw - meaning that after you've thrown that punch, you are not in the same place as you were when you started the technique.

Here's a litany of benefits that will improve your fighting abilities when you integrate shifting into your training regimen:

• Trains you to “hit off your move” with either fist, from any direction with power and stability
• Helps you develop “controlled aggression” in your power punching (another post for us to cover)
• Will confuse and frustrate opponents that know how to box or fight. Really effective in muay thai
• Allows you to hit from any position at any angle with either fist powerfully
• Shifting is a lost art that most have forgotten how to do or have never seen or heard of
• Teaches you to stay relaxed as you strike and move without telegraphing your intentions
• Brings your whole body weight explosively into your strikes as you fight
•  Teaches you to fight up close without worrying about what your opponent’s counter will be
•  Trains you to step with your punches instead of dancing around like a ballerina
•  Helps you become comfortable hitting while moving backwards, forward, laterally or diagonally without missing a beat

Shifting will make you a very dangerous fighter with no equal (at least at your gym).  It really will add a completely new dimension to your combinations and fight game. Combinations will flow more easily, and transitions from punches to knees to elbow to kicks will feel much more natural. Shifting trains you to become an ambidextrous fighter, which I cannot evangelize enough. You do not want to be a one-sided fighter.

I'll let Daniel's words send us off here. But as you read this, imagine a large, somewhat scary Hispanic man yelling at no one in particular, with an extra bit of emphasis in the 'And' that start each sentence. If you know Daniel, you understand.

"And finally if you’re not shifting, you’re not fighting as well as you could be, in other words your fighting sucks! And that will make you twice the fighter you are right now! So start shifting when you train; cause you don’t ever wanna meet a fighter who does."

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.

Does MMA help or hurt muay thai?

I think I've made my opinion on the use of muay thai in mixed martial arts abundantly clear, but I want to hear from you, my readers.

Perhaps I'm a purest, or perhaps its the blatant lack of actual muay thai technique used in UFC fights that has forged my opinion. Perhaps its because I believe that combat sports is an oxymoron and every time I see a TapOut t-shirt I equate it to little penis syndrome.

Most MMA fights bore me with their predictable series of half ass leg kick, a couple of wild punches, someone shoots in and it goes to the ground, hooray. Yes, there are effective stand up fighters like Anderson Silva who are proficient at muay thai, but fighters like him are few and far between.

I want your opinion. Take the poll to the right of this article or leave your comment and elaborate on what you think. Has MMA, UFC, modern StrikeForce (they used to use ISKA rules) helped bring credibility to muay thai, or is it misrepresenting a martial art with watered down techniques or lack of focus on its training? You decide.

Adaptation is important in fighting and online videos

Last week I shot a quick video to throw up on YouTube that covered basic defense and counters to a hay maker punch. The key take away from this is not so much about technique, but more about developing the ability to recognize targets and exploit those opportunities on the fly.

Shooting a YouTube video with an experienced partner is completely different, and less realistic than doing that video with junior students or individuals who have no martial arts training. Experienced training partners know what is expected from them, and they react exactly as you want them to. That's how the technique on some of those martial arts guru videos appear so clean. But if you try and shoot an unrehearsed video with a newbie you'll get a reaction that is true to what you'll see in a real street fighting situation.

This video, I think, proves the point. I did the shot with a newer student who had not yet learned the techniques I was demonstrating. His reactions forced me to adapt to the situation in real time in order to eliminate his threat. This is especially true against multiple opponents.

I highly suggest that you add "playing" to your training regimen. Playing, as I call it is having a partner throw a specific technique (punch, elbow, knee, kick, knife attack, etc.) and as you counter you play with various counters. Look for targets, and use angles & footwork to move around your opponent. And drill this over and over, It really helps develop quick thinking and situational awareness.

Remember, there's more than one way to skin a cat, especially if you happen have a karambit!

Old Style Muay Thai Clinch, Whoohoo!

The standard muay thai clinch simply isn't effective in a street/combat scenario. Once you grab onto your attacker his natural instinct will be to grab you - now you're wrestling with one (or more) opponents.

The ring style muay thai clinch serves two main purposes: 1. It gets you inside your opponent's strikes, providing an opportunity to score points (take down, or knees), and 2. it gives the winded fighter a short break. But in a street combat situation points don't count and your attackers certainly aren't going to tie up with you to catch a breather.

It's super important that you keep a hand free, and (more importantly) that you don't lose your ability to maintain visibility of your environment. The old style (ledrit, muay chao churt, muay baron) clinch allows you to control your opponent, use him as a shield from other attackers, and enables excellent visibility.

It's difficult to change old habits, and if you've been training to clinch up as soon as you get inside a one handed clinch is going to feel foreign (and maybe a little unrealistic). But if you give this technique a shot, I'm willing to bet, you'll soon realize that it opens up your striking & controlling options. Now you can throw elbows at different angles, knees, and even round kicks to your opponent's front and back. Try it out with a partner, you'll like it!

Watch video below. I provide technique and I touch on just a few of the options that open up. You won't learn this stuff at Fairtex.



Watch out for the man sandwich!