Peek-a-Boo & Muay Thai (diary entry)

10.09.18   Tonight’s family lesson consisted of half an hour peek-a-boo inspired Western Boxing for the junior client and advanced Muay Thai combinations for the senior client. Uncle and nephew did their own warm-up based on the fact that the uncle has been a client of mine since early 2014. This is a great way to keep the interest going outside of training time and in the family. I later had a report from the junior client’s mother that her son was dutifully doing his homework exercises. We began by learning the peek-a-boo guard. This is quite different from conventional boxing, but I think it is a great method for building confidence in a new fighter. It also teaches the importance of constant movement, an integral part of combat. Early on the fighter learns to move forward, cover up and be a moving target.   We drilled jabbing from a straight punch and then jab/slipping inside and outside. The cross was then brought in and the two were combined. Footwork naturally came into play before we started doing some angle work.   The Muay Thai lesson began on the focus mitts. We began with a jab/rear round kick/lead round kick/cross combination. Then we broke down these movements, replacing the lead round kick with a shin-check. Next we began work on same side combinations. I was keen to cover the same side hook/round kick combination as it is such an effective and powerful yet simple tactic. We covered the jab/teep set-up, which was combined with v-stepping techniques. The rationale here is that jab makes the opponent raise their guard and the teep to the mid-section, if delivered with enough force, prompts the opponent to use a shell defence or double-up from the impact. With both of these attacks coming forward, the opponent is left vulnerable to an angled attack. The round-kick is an option, but we focused on the over hand punch. This led us onto the superman punch, which has its own variation on Muay Thai. This set up then moved us onto the jumping smash-down elbow. Finally, by reversing this logic we used a high round kick to set up for a jumping knee bomb.   The lesson finished with a round of free-sparring.