Adding Dirt (diary entry)

19.05.20 My first Tuesday night lesson was my teacher training. My client and her lockdown partner (daughter) continued their Muay Thai training and kickboxing with some much-needed sparring before we began introducing some Dirty Boxing concepts. The lesson began with a build-up of kick exchanges and partner footwork. This was increased with set combinations and counters, encouraging rapid recovery and interception of kicks. Punching combinations were then brought in, chaining a kick onto a series of 1-6 punches. This moved them both onto semi-free and then free kickboxing sparring. We used restrictive sparring as the final stepping stone before K1-style kickboxing sparring, pitting boxing against kicks. Both fighters began to get more comfortable with the new ranges and eventually I began to see more kicks being added onto punching. The lesson marked another big step forward by using the Dutch approach to close-range kickboxing. We will look more towards cutting down ranges and angles with footwork, walking down opponents and the high guard. Moving more into pure Muay Thai territory we revised some clinch-work. This began with a simple curved knee drill. One fighter throws a knee to prompt a reply whereby they then break their posture. This is performed from the collar/elbow tie rather than the plum position. We then moved onto one-for-one knee strikes using both plum and the collar/elbow tie. Dirty Boxing was introduced with the use of the knee bump from the clinch. Like the previous knee strikes, the bump was coupled with footwork and posture breaking. This was trained on a one-for-one drilling basis. Next we isolated elbow bumps from the collar tie. This is the spear elbow position and relies a lot on forward and backward footwork. Next lesson we will move onto the under-hooks and fighting off the wall. BOOK