Karate. Muay Thai's Favorite Cousin.

What Muay Thai Taught Me About Karate

The Muay Thai Clinch

I never gave the clinch much consideration. That all changed when I spent time in the land of smiles. See I had been learning, practicing, training, and teaching martial arts, karate, kung fu, aikijitsu, and iaijutsu specifically, for many years. I would say a combined twenty five years. And you learn in cycles. First you learn a little bit. Then you work on it. Then you think that, that is all there is so you depend on it. Then if you are lucky you get good at it.

Then the fun part comes. Then come the real lessons and they always seem to come about when you forget to be humble about whatever it is you are learning. It is at this point that God sees fit to put someone or something in your life that either makes you slowdown or brings you crashing back to reality. You are human and you can be hurt and the age old truth that there is always someone better. It takes everyone different amounts of time to learn this lesson but when they do they are all the better for it.

My lesson came in my early thirties. I began to fall in love with the most devastating of striking arts, Muay Thai, Muay Thai Boran specifically. I liked the simplicity and effectiveness of the Mae Mai muay Thai techniques. This took me on a search of the city to find a “kru”, muay Thai master. Well what I found was a coach. And I will admit I was only mildly disappointed until I had my first class. By the end I was so tired that two things happened. One, I was far too tired to be disappointed. And two, I was hooked.

Studying the traditional Japanese arts that are geared toward personal development and self-defense were very different from muay Thai, fundamentally so. Being in with fighters is a completely different feeling and training has a different rhythm and tempo. I had only felt that when I was in basic training. Only the stress of a MTI killing you was not there.

I have never been around a group of martial artists that were so humble to the core. I thought I had but I was very wrong. All fighters are martial artists but not all martial artists are fighters. I didn’t realize that until I was in with the fighters. Where a martial artist will have a whole library of theories and untested techniques the fighters will have only those things they have used and work for them. Their movements are absolute and with intent.

Not only that but they have absolutely nothing to prove. They don’t get mad during training and try to ramp a sparring session up to the point of a death match. I have seen this happen many times in karate and kung fu classes but never in a muay Thai gym. I am sure that it does happen, humans being what they are, but they just don’t seem to have time for that. They are always planning, training, and preparing for their next fight.

The level of dedication and discipline was second to none. They were simple people and linear thinkers. Not stupid by any means but direct. When they fought there were not many “tricks” when they attacked you. There was nothing for you to fall for really like in karate. They just swung and either hit or missed. It was all the same. If they got hit they didn’t spend time trying to figure out what happened. They made up their minds long ago and accepted the fact that they would be hit so when it happened they were already passed it.

Now let’s get down to the lessons I learned with my introduction to muay Thai First off studying karate you understand that it is for defense only. We have that drilled into our heads from day one. All of the training was centered on that one philosophy. Because of this many of the techniques were aimed at causing serious injury to our opponent. This sword was one with two edges though. We were trained with a wide range of potentially devastating techniques but were could not fully execute them, which caused me to instinctively pull punches, and we spent a lot of time not getting hit because all punches were pulled.

This latter fact was probably the most devastating to my development as a martial artist. Sure pulling punches is easily remedied with an assortment of drills but the ability to deal with being struck and getting comfortable with it was a bit of an adjustment. This was compounded by the deeply ingrained notion that to get hit meant death so I had a deep seeded loathing of even being touched. On the upside it made me work extra hard on evasion but I took it personally when I was struck. I would then spend precious time and energy trying to figure out what the hell I did wrong. BIG MISTAKE!!

That always got me into more trouble. It took some doing but I got used to being hit. I did not care about that anymore. And this was immensely liberating because that left my mind free to respond to attack faster and adapt to my opponent sooner. Now I want to be very clear that I am not saying I was just taking punches to the face. This would have been silly. What it did help me with was flinching, blinking, wincing, and overdoing my defensive motions. Slip an inch and not a foot.

I also learned how to breathe and relax when I was under pressure. Ask anyone that has ever been where the fists are flying what it feels like. I guarantee you they will not tell you like a bubble bath and shiatsu massage. So to relax during the fray was a huge step.

The beauty of muay Thai is its simple effectiveness. The techniques are not overly complicated. It is a combination of four or five punches, three or four kick variations, knees, and elbows. Really there is not much to it. The real art comes from the artist and how they put those techniques to use. In karate we have about twenty different ways to do just about everything. I am not advocating one over the other. I love them both but different aspects and for different purposes.

Just like in a movie, every great martial artist has to go abroad to study with some distant master. Daniel went to Okinawa with Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid 2 and Gordon Liu went to the Shaolin temple in The Thirty Sixth Chamber. So after training for about a year I decided that it was my time to go on a journey. My land of choice, Ko Samui, Thailand. My distant master, none other than Wech Pinyo himself.

Thailand was wonderful. And by wonderful I mean everything was really cheap, the people were nice, and the weather was extremely hot and humid. You may be thinking that last bit was a terror but I am a Texan and I would take Thailand heat over the waist-high snow of Washington State. I was the dumb-ass that decided it was a good idea to wear five finger shoes up into the mountains but that is another story for another time.

But really, Thailand was great. The food alone was worth the trip. Everything was in walking distance. There were open air markets, food stalls, and carts all over the place. Lady boys are a thing. It’s true! Thai boxing is their national sport. You can find boxing at multiple venues every weekend. Here is a funny thing. Everyone boxes. Let me say that again. EVERYONE BOXES!

And when I say everyone I really mean every type of person. I watched little kids fight. I watched lady boys fight, yes lady boy boxing matches are a thing and they have bets placed on them and they fight for money. I even watched a senior woman’s fighting. That’s right. I have seen two silver haired grandmas get into the ring and beat the crap out of each other. You don’t believe me? Go to Lamai in Ko Samui and look for the lady boxing. You’ll see.

Training in Thailand is like nothing I had experienced in all of my years of studying martial arts. First off they train twice a day for six days a week. In a day they may put in 5 or 6 hours of gym time, not to mention the time they spend running. As far as the material in the sessions went it was not too different from back home. We warmed up by skipping rope and some jogging. Then we moved on to light conditioning and shadowboxing.

After everyone was warm and had their hands wrapped it was on to heavy bag work, focus mitt and Thai pad drills, and sparring drills with a partner. This was pretty standard stuff. The differences came with the atmosphere. Back home the trainers ran the training with a sense of urgency. They never let you stop moving. They kept pushing. In Thailand, where I thought it would be so much harder, they often told us to slow down and take breaks. I found this a bit perplexing. That was up until day three when I was severely dehydrated and could not get out of bed for two days.

It made sense later. They knew the weeks were long and skill building was cumulative. Back home I trained two or three times a week for an hour maybe an hour and a half a stretch. In Thailand were putting in many time that amount of training and it took its toll. Lesson learned.

Where the training was the most helpful though was clinching. There is no clinching like clinching with the Thais. It is just different. Americans and other farang for that matter are larger people overall. We value larger and stronger bodies for doing work. They are leaner and lithe. They are flexible and built for speed and endurance. The way we clinch is very brutal and violent. The way they clinch is much more artistic.

It is not any less brutal but their techniques are much more subtle and smooth. With another American I can feel a sweep or a throw coming and can block it unless I am too late. With the Thais you will never feel the throw or sweep coming. You are “swimming” your arms to gain position and moving around then BANG! You’re on the mat wondering what just happened. Also they have this ability to hit you with a knee from pretty much any angle. I never learned that phantom knee strike.

Overall my time in Thailand was an enriching and life changing experience. I will always be in Mr. Pinyo’s debt.

When I got back home I went back to my karate training and teaching my students when one day I realized that every clinch grip, every clinch enter, every clinch sweep, and every clinch throw was an exact technique or a variation on a technique from many of the kata I had been practicing. MY MIND EXPLODED!!!

From then on I could not un-see muay Thai clinch techniques in karate kata. The training I had undergone had unlocked knowledge and applications I had not thought of. This in turn caused me to look deeper into my karate. What I found at the bottom was a wrestler. Now you are probably going “WHAAAAAAT?!”

Yes, a wrestler is what I found. Some of the oldest documented forms of martial arts are wrestling arts. Ancient Egyptian wall paintings depict two beings in mortal combat not striking one another but locked in a battle of strength and skill, a wrestling match. Ancient Greek urns have unarmed men grappling with one another. Why is that? I will tell you.

It is because with have fingers and thumbs. Naturally our hands are dexterous but very delicate, a terrible instrument for striking something but the perfect tool for manipulation. Infants instinctively grab what is put into their hands. We, as a species, are grabbers.

Okay let’s reel it back in a bit. Watch any street fight on YouTube. The two combatants begin by trying to strike one another but usually this modality of attack is soon abandoned and they begin to grapple and wrestle around. So history and science, if I may be so bold, dictates that instinctive human fighting is based in wrestling. Once I held that notion in my mind I began to look at my forms in a new light. I had concluded long ago that the movements were different ways of body manipulation but it had not occurred to me until I clinched with the Thais that my opponent may be wrestling with me before I begin to apply my techniques.

I had always been trained to defend against a punch, a kick, or some sort of static hold of some kind. Now I know that it is all so much more dynamic.

I will leave you with this. Take any one of your empty hand forms. If you do not know any then now is a great time to learn one. It does not have to be advanced or anything just a pattern you can follow. Now take that form and apply it like you were already in the middle of a fight scuffling with someone in your kitchen or better yet your bathroom. Keep your imagination in a confined space where you will really have to work. You will not have the range to really rear back and deliver a powerful strike. Keep it in the wrestling realm.

Now see how devastatingly you can make this form work for you. You will have to modify the techniques to some degree of course but try to stick to the form as closely as possible. Remember this one rule: “Anything goes.” Now get up and go train.