Putting Elbows to the Test (diary entry)

19.03.19   Tonight’s lesson brought my client up to the seventh hour of his course in Basic Muay Thai for Martial Arts Cross Training. We concentrated mainly on the remaining elbow strikes.   The warm-up consisted of the usual specific mobility exercises, dynamic stretching and callisthenics. We then changed to mirror footwork, looking at placing techniques and gauging distances using teeps. Next we went through the basic punch, kick and knee combinations covered in previous lessons. Moving back onto the clinch, we looked at breaking the posture, breaking holds and setups for sweeps.   We revised the horizontal and slashing elbow strikes before bringing in the elbow uppercut, chopping elbow, diagonal elbow, backward elbow, spear elbow, side elbow and smash-down elbow. We looked at likely punching, clinching, knee-striking and kicking combinations that support these individual elbow techniques as well as linking different elbow strikes together i.e. diagonal elbow/chopping elbow.   The lesson finished with one light round of full Thai rules sparring using full head cages to facilitate elbow strikes, emphasis being on using elbow strikes to the head. Then we finished with our normal European rules Muay Thai sparring (no knees or elbows to the head).