Sylvie’s Tips: Gaining Control of Your Muay Thai Kick – Floating Block

Sylvie’s Tips: The Floating Block Sakmongkol was the first person to tell me not to turn around on kicks.  He was adamant about it.  It’s very awkward when you...

Sylvie’s Tips: The Floating Block
Sakmongkol was the first person to tell me not to turn around on kicks.  He was adamant about it.  It’s very awkward when you first try and your kick can be really flicky and horrible, but the more you get it under control the more you realize how much this increases power.  Basically you want to have confidence that you can control your kick at any time, so if you miss your target you’re not going to spin all the way around.  Honestly, you’ll seldom if ever see this in a Thai fight and when I see it now in the octagon or in western fights, I cringe.
I got control by practicing stopping my kick and pulling it off of the bag.  It’s good to have a reference point – Kaensak used to have me kick the wall, which was padded at AMA – and a bag is a good tool for that.  But I really honed the skill in shadow.  Lots and lots of shadow. This Sylvie’s Tip was in answer to a request from a follower who said he had trouble turning over his hip too much in his kick. I think this control exercise can solve a lot of hip turn and even confidence issues.

You can see video of Sakmongkol teaching it to me back in February (2014) here: 15 New Techniques That Will Improve Your Muay Thai – From My Training in Pattaya.

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A 100 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100, and then 200, becoming the westerner with the most fights in Thailand, in history, my new goal is to fight an impossible 471 times, the historical record for the greatest number of documented professional fights (see western boxer Len Wickwar, circa 1940), and along the way to continue documenting the Muay Thai of Thailand in the Muay Thai Library project: see patreon.com/sylviemuay

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