Muay Boran is a traditional Thai martial arts style. Translated into English, the name literally means ancient Fighting . This highly organised system of unarmed combat designed to face the enemy in a real fight on the battlefield. Muay Boran is the ancestor of modern Thai boxing, Muay Thai. Classic Thai boxing featuring modern elements named the science of Nine limbs, whilst Muay Boran bears the name of nawaawut, meaning nine weapons. The science of Nine limbs involves the use of eight joints of the human body: two fists, 2 elbows, 2 knees, and two feet. The nine weapons also feature striking techniques, adding head butts or Brain . MuayBoran is an application system of unarmed combat, and Muay Thai is its athletic interpretation.
MuayBoran has been popular and much in demand in the armed forces of Thailand. Mastered throughout the centuries, the fighting technique of the ancient has been adopted by the modern army along with Krabi-Krabong, the art of armed combat. In the old days, MuayBoran fighters used to stage fight demonstrations in villages during the holidays, increasing the popularity of the martial arts style among common people. Later, the tradition of demonstration fights also become popular at the royal court, which served as a powerful impetus for further development of the style at a different level. MuayBoran was taught to the court aristocracy and guard units, as well as soldiers in the army.
The period of the greatest popularity of the paramilitary arts occurred during the reign of King Rama V, crowned in 1868. The king was not only a passive national martial arts connoisseur, but also regularly practiced MuayBoran, tempering the spirit and subjecting the body. He strongly contributed to the spreading of this discipline among common people through regular competitions with prestigious awards. Increasingly, Thai masters such as Grandmaster Chinawut Srisampan Woody and Grand Master Sane Thubthimthong are working to introduce Muay Boran to the modern world as both an art to augment Muay Thai (competition) techniques and for self defence.
It is very necessary to learn how to clench your fists correctly in order to use them effectively and safely. Clench your fists improperly may cause injuries with hands and fingers. The power of the punch could will increase if you clench the fist correctly. Please follow these following steps:
finger tips towards your palm.
It is essential that you first apply the hand-wraps to both fists before wearing gloves. As I mentioned above that clench your fists correctly is very important, but hand wrapping is much much more important. This is because ineffective hand wrapping will not only cause serious injury during the fight or training, but also effects to your arms and fists movements, which related to overall performance.
Hand wrapping method has to accommodate boxer to wear boxing gloves comfortably and allow boxer be able to use punch effectively. Boxer have to balance the weight of boxing gloves and weight of hand wrapping material and make sure it will fit their most comfortable the total weight of gloves and wraps must not too heavy or not too light.
The length, width and thickness of wrapping materials are also important. They need to fit to boxer’s hand, too short stripe may not wrap the entire hand and too long may generate unnecessary weight to boxer’s hands as well as uncomfortable. It is a responsibility for each of boxer to try and test which kind of wrapping material, how long and how thickness that will fit to them for the best performance.
Prepare yourself Now we are about to start to learn basic principle of Muay Thai, like any other kind of sports, you need to prepare yourself fit to make sure you ready for trainings as well as start to learn to get to know your organs and use them as weapons. Here is the list of important organs that need exercise continuously, if you think you never give exercise to these organs, it’s time to start. head, shoulder, elbow, arms, palms, fists, finger, knees, shins, feet, heels and hips. Apart from give exercise to these specific parts of your body, and the best way to exercise is running. You can start from jogging for about 1-2 km./day and continuously increase the distance when you fell you are ready to do so. Important : do not be too rush, you need time to prepare yourself ready for the training, when I first start training when I was 12, I did nothing but running and a bit of exercise of those mention above for about 1-2 months before I start to get the real practice. And here is the lesson for beginners about stretching and conditioning before training. The video demonstration provide guidelines and instruction on how to exercise your body including basic warm up, muscle relax and flexible.
The Muay Thai stance is about the basic position represent you are ready to fight. The Muay Thai stance, in the past, have many of forms depends on it’s origin varieties such as MuayChaiya, MuayKorat etc. Today, the remaining Muay Thai stance of these kinds can be seen in Muay Thai shows, not in the ring fight. However, the correct form of Muay Thai stance used in ring fight also vary despite the description on how to do Muay Thai stance are identified but Muay boxers are always adapt the form to fit to their style.
In Muay Thai, we use straight punch mainly to attack opponent’s facial area such as chin, nose and mouth. To increase the effectiveness of the punch, use the knuckle to attack the opponent as well as twisting the shoulders.
Hook punch mainly used to attack side facial area such temple nose and ear. To do the hook you need to bending elbow a bit, then using the back of the knuckle to attack. To increase the effectiveness of the hook, use the same technique as do the straight punch by twisting the shoulders.
Uppercut punch mainly target to attack chin and stomach, Ribs. When do the uppercut you should bend the knee and the elbow a bit, then make a punch vertically to attack opponent. Uppercut will be used effectively when opponent is very close or when they are stooping, but sometimes, it is also possible to attack by knee kick instead of uppercut.
The jump punch can be used when you are in mid-air. The power of the whole body will go into the punch so it can bring more powerful attack than normal punch. Only one weakness of the jump punch is opponent will immediately attack when you landing and losing the balance.
Spinning punch could be done when you have missed the first kick by turning around and swing the fist to attack the target.
Tae is vary commonly use in competition, due to its power that may give the opponent knock outin one shot. Normally, we useonly some part of lower leg from shin to foot to kick. However, use shin to kick is much more powerful than using foot, but its disadvantage is opponent can grab your leg easier and attack.
Dtaed tahd are commonly used in Muay Thai as they are very easy to control and we can maintain the balance after the kick to defend opponent’s strike back. Dtaed tahd can be done by swing the leg to attack the target, and in the same time, your hip should also be twisted in the same direction of the swing.
The main target of the diagonal kick is to attack lower rib-cage and we normally use shin to attack. The kick can be done by swing leg diagonally upwards to attack against the target.
Roundhouse kick are also commonly used due to its full of power, which more than side kick or diagonal kick. This is because when you kick, your hip and body will fully twisted in the same direction of the swing, which will increase the power of the kick. Theroundhousekick can be used to attack opponent when he is ducking down or in the lower position. However, the major disadvantage of the roundhousekick is if you miss the target, you may totally lost the balance and give a chance to opponent to strike back.
It seems that the elbow strike is very unique weapon that make Muay Thai different from other martial arts sports. Elbow strike in Muay Thai can give very severe injuries to the opponent as it will be used to attack when opponent is closer distance and the major target of elbow strike are generally head facial area including jaw, temple, neck and so on. Using elbow strike is very flexible, you can move or swing elbow in any direction to attack, both vertically and horizontally but different method will give different impact to the attack. Variety of Muay Thai elbow strike are described below.
It is quite similar to the elbow slash technique. The different is only wee have to swing the elbow horizontally, parallel to the ground. However, you need to make sure that you must stand firmly when attack, because attacking with full power, you may need to twist to shoulder and hip along with the elbow swing and this will make you losing balance easily.
The uppercut elbow can be done by swing the elbow diagonally upwards to attack target especially chin. This technique requires speed when using it, which means you have to do it as quickly as you can. However, in the competition, some Athlete avoided to use it, but use horizontal elbow or elbow slash instead.
The spinning elbow technique is quite different from other elbow technique. As you have to turn the body around to generate the elbow strike. To do the spinning elbow, we generally use the rear elbow to attack and make sure that you will always look at you opponent while turning the body around and making the elbow strike.
To do straight knee Strike , you just simply grab the opponent’s neck with two hands and raise the knee straightly to attack the target. However, try to grab your opponent’s neck is not easy if you fight with experienced boxer. Also, as I mention above, you must always be careful of your opponent attack by use the elbow. Straight knee is generally target to body, stomach and you can not knee strike to the opponent’s groin as it is against the rule.
To do diagonal knee, it is quite similar as doing straight knee strike. Try to grab opponent’s neck with two hands, but raising knee to attack in different direction, diagonally. By using the diagonal knee strike, we intend to target to the thigh, rib, and side of the body, which the straight knee kick can not reach these targets.
The horizontal knee strike is slighly different from both knee I mentioned above as we will grab the opponent’s neck with only one hand and the other hand remain guard. Then swing the knee horizontally, moves parallel to the ground to attack the target and when you do the attack, twisting the hip in the same direction of knee strike will increase power of the attack. Make sure you always keep the other hand guarding your chin.
The knee-slap is one of the weapon that are most-used in Muay Thai competition. In my feeling, the knee-slap may not be one of the most powerful and dangerous weapon to knock out, but it is a good to be used to correct points. However, in the real fight (street self-defence situation), the knee-slap also may not a good option to use. The target of the knee-slap are generally trunk and ribs and to do this, grab opponent’s neck tightly with both hands, raising the knee to attack be using the inner part of the knee joint to slap on the target.
This technique is quite difficult to do as it require more skill as well as the right time to do. To do this kind of knee strike, you have to use lead leg to step on the opponent’s thigh and raise your body up then thrust the knee of other leg to attack the target, which mainly are facial area and chin. It’s quite rare to see any of boxer in sport boxing use this technique, but if you have a chance to do this, it may be the most powerful knee strike technique among them all.
To describe the foot-thrust weapon, it is the method of bend at the knee, then quickly extending your leg to use foot or heel to attack the target. “Teep” weapons are different from any other Muay Thai weapons in terms of objective to use. Foot-thrust will be mainly used as offensive technique to block the opponent’s attack. The foot-thrust also use for make the opponent off balance and take a chance to attack. It is quite rare to see fighter use the foot-thrust aggressively as a deadly weapon to knock out, but using foot-thrust first then follow by kick or other weapon quickly maybe the good practice to learn.
This technique is quite straight forward to do not use, you just to bend the knee joint and then thrust the foot quickly to attack the target. the target are vary from face, chest, abdomen and down to the lap. Also you can use different part of the foot to attack the target such as toes (teeb Jik) and heel (Teep Yan) and you need to find out which method is fit you the best.
The usage of sideway foot-thrust is similar to the straight foot-thrust but sideways will be used when you are in the position turn the side of the body facing the opponent. However, using the sideways foot-thrust, you need to be careful of maintain the balance when you turn the side to opponent. The sideways foot-thrust generally be counter-attacked by side lower kick to your leg.
Donec congue est non iaculis ultricies. Maecenas quis velit magna. Maecenas sed fringilla nulla, vitae varius erat.
Copyright ©2023 Muay Thai Boxing Academy by Buranding. All Rights Reserved