Muay Thai Clinch

When it comes to stand-up fighting, Muay Thai has been widely considered as the most effective combat sport. Known as the “Art of Eight Limbs”, its arsenal includes clinch. The latter is definitely an art on its own.

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To my knowledge, over the last 20 years there haven’t really been that many farangs [not Thai], who were able to compete against the authentic representatives of muaythai in clinch on the same level. Belarusian “Bullet” Andrei Kulebin is perhaps one of as many as ten.

The advanced Muay Thai practitioners fairly understand that in addition to strength, clinch requires co-ordination, balance and certainly footwork. Its technique has very little to do with “trying to rip your opponent’s head off”, which can be quite often seen in the gym among novices.

Muay Thai clinch is a stand up grappling, where knee and elbow strikes can be set up and executed. It also includes sweeps, performed while using the momentum, and quite often opponent’s energy against him. One may say, it is similar to Jiu-Jitsu or Aikido, although there is no ground fighting in Muay Thai.

Following the second episode of Round 2 which covers some of the aspects of Right elbow strike techniques, the third clip hit the stream on Monday. It features Dechsak Sangmorakot who demonstrates one of the ways how to block a clinch attempt in Muay Thai, counter-strike with knee and elbow, as well as a series of training exercises.

The next episode is scheduled for this coming Sunday. It covers Teep, known in western world as a push or front kick.