04.05.2023 Thursday night saw my couple clients begin a new Mixed Martial Arts course. Upon their request, we began work on building their individual fighting styles. Styles are built on a range of characteristics, including but not restricted to personality, preferences, experiences and body types. My job isn't to pigeon-hole either of my clients under labels but the styles act as helpful guides and options. In boxing terms, one of the clients suits the southpaw out-boxer style. From a Muay Thai perspective he appears to be an aggressive muay femur (technician) although expresses an interest in the Muay Mat style and is a pressure fighter rather than a counter-fighter. I had him use the angled southpaw stance with his lead foot placed outside an opponent's lead foot and make extensive use of the rear hand straight. This rear hand is not only used to strike but also as a pawing tool and as a long guard. His teep was then added as a kicking version of this strategy. My other client is a fairly natural swarmer. In hindsight of the lesson, I notice that she suits more the muay bouk (aggressive fighter) style than the muay khao (knee fighter). We included aspects of the peek-a-boo style from boxing, encouraging more head movement and I tightened up her guard to be a high, helmeted cover. Her elbows were used more to block and smash limbs as she waded in with round kicks body shots. Because we are training Mixed Martial Arts, the next stage was to look at clinching. This is not setting up for takedowns as such, an area we will come back to in future classes, but more trapping and tying up. Here the out-boxer might look to methods of old where wily fighters would jab and tie-up their opponents. In this instance, the clinching is used as a counter-move and as a means to spoil an attack. The swarmer learns to effectively merge their punches with clinching entries. I had spar both approaches and then test against them - the out-boxer used longer range techniques and footwork to prevent the swarmer from clinching whilst the swarmer would burrow in with a constant barrage of punches to cause maximum damage before the inevitable clinch. https://clubbchimera.com/services/
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