Introducing the Muay Thai Clinch to Karate

190.09.2025

Hour eight of my client from Cotswold Karate School's current course and we turned our attention to the Thai clinch. He is looking at ways to add to his attribute training better enhance his Karate bunkai (practical applications of kata) and sparring. The last three lessons were concerned with knee strikes and how to layer them into sparring. Learning the Thai clinch, an area where the application of knee strikes in grappling is probably at its most proficient, seemed like a logical next step.

Muay Thai Clinch

The clinch has become the most sophisticated area of Muay Thai. It is the range that distinguishes it most from other stand-up arts. Going by the line drawings we have of nak muays training and the earliest footage of fights, we know that the clinch has been an integral part of the art for a long time. We also know that it has gone through some major changes over the past 100 years. Firstly, the influence of Judo through the early 20th century Thai school curriculum clearly had an impact. A lot of nationalistic propaganda will us believe that the throwing techniques were gone by the 1930s when gloves were made mandatory in Thailand. However, footage from 1959 shows nak muays executing perfect hip throws on their opponents, which are now banned in the sport. Regardless, modern clinch fighting in the sport has become a very subtle game of balance disruption and pairing with strikes. In essence, the success of the clinch hinges on striking. The nak muay seeks to throw their opponent into a whirlpool of either being unbalanced or being struck.

How This Applies to Traditional Martial Arts

Martial arts, such as Karate, were originally conceived to be taught to individuals more experienced in fighting than the average student of today. Furthermore, those students would have grown up in an Okinawan culture where grappling knowledge or Tegumi was a given. When this is properly understood, so too are the pre-arranged forms or katas. Martial arts like Taekwondo, Kong Soo Do and Tang Soo Do imported Shotokan Karate to Korea, but by this time the art had been restructured for school education in Japan. Here larger class sizes married with Imperialist values and the introduction of a sport that took its inspiration from Kendo, Fencing and Savate, had transformed a comprehensive system for civilian self-defence into a formalised, ritualised practice where trapping, gripping, framing, throwing, locking and choking aspects of the art had been re-adapted into stilted stances, impractical blocking against unlikely strikes and unscientific concepts regarding striking force generation. Likewise, the Koreans began making their own modifications, additions and changes.

These days clubs like Cotswold School of Karate as well many others I have been working with, have strived to take Karate back to its roots. Armed with historic knowledge and critical thinking, they have sought to use the past as inspiration to make their art practical again. In order to improve their overall martial arts training and enhance their teaching in Karate they have cross-trained. Such ideas were once considered heresy, but again this is pseudo-traditional at best.

All the pioneers of Karate's most influential schools were avid cross-trainers who inspired cross-training and encouraged their students to do the same. Wado Ryu has elements of Ju Jutsu thanks to its creator being an instructor in this art. Kyokushin's legacy in the Netherlands has seen the creation of Dutch Kickboxing (a blend of Boxing, Karate and Muay Thai) and John Blooming's proto-MMA system. Even Shotokan's founder was a contemporary of Judo;s founder taking not only the art's wearing of gis as the uniform as well as its belt system but also many of its training methods in the early years.

So we come to Muay Thai. The clinch represents a crucial element found in the heart of many comprehensive traditional martial arts forms. Much of the fight information involves striking a clinching adversary. This is where the Thai clinch comes into play. Here the martial artist can learn how to coordinate head, limb and hip control whilst administering strikes.

This Morning's Lesson

My client learnt basic footwork patterns whilst clinching. We began with forward and backward sparring, encouraging pull and push actions from the plum double collar-tie. He also learnt how to dominate the plum. From here he learnt how to set up spear knees, feeding an opponent who has been pulled or tricked into pushing forward into this straight knee. Next, we trained lateral footwork. This is where we brought in the rhythmic skipping motion. This was then accompanied by curve knees. Finally, we moved onto pivoting and the V-step. This is the most dramatic off-balancing action. We also brought in the diagonal spear knee.

Moving Forward

Next lesson I will teach more drills to encourage better flow and timing. We will also look sweeping and more upper body clinching holds.

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