Intro to Uppercuts:

New video up on detailing introductory uppercut techniques from both sides.

We cover:

✅Targeting 

✅Footwork

✅Pivot

✅Body Mechanics 

✅Hand Positioning

✅And much more!

The post Muay Thai 101: Introduction to Uppercuts appeared first on Thai Boxing Institute | Muay Thai West Los Angeles | Venice.

Appreciation and gratitude, the intangible feelings of respect and admiration, the things money can’t buy, the things expressed in the symbiotic relationship between teacher and pupil.  

The many layers of this and the understanding of it all can only be attained through growth, knowledge and life experience.  

In my youth, a basic level of appreciation and gratitude were present, but not understood like it is now.  It was through growth of my personality, the process of learning; learning how to learn, the transition from boy to man and letting go were all fundamental processes to understanding the significance, importance and impact a good coach has.

When i started, i was so young, angry, selfish.  Full of negative emotion. These things swelled inside me like tidal waves pounding the sand of deserted beaches.  It’s what i felt: deserted and alone.

I was incapable of understanding what love, admiration, selflessness, compassion and empathy were.  I grew up in a household that was absent of all these things. The only thing i understood was negativity.  My story was one long chapter in a history of violence. It was the path i was shown and the only one i understood.

From the way i dressed, to the music i listened to, to my style of fighting.  It was all volatile.

From fighter, to budding coach, to business owner.  The process of learning and understanding these things took about a decade.  The learning hasn’t stopped, and i continue to try and understand these things.  Letting go of the ego, being understanding of all people, ideas, beliefs. Keeping an open mind and reserving judgement.

Being driven not by rewards, but rather things of the intrinsic nature.

‘What’s in it for me?  What’s in it for you? What do we stand to gain?’

Things i still hear often and are reminders of what it is to just do things without gain or reward.  

Things i was taught by my instructors, whether it was done blantlty or taught through their own acts of kindness.

These are the lessons that remained with me.  

Any decent instructor can show you what a punch looks like, or teach you the physics of an armbar and then go off and play with their cell phone for the remainder of the class.

It takes a special kind person to open up to you and really be attentive of your growth.  Technique and personality wise. The technique is the body, the personality is the mind. They want you to be a better fighter, but especially more so, a better person.  They care, they sacrifice, they work for free, they’re patient and really, they don’t ask for much. Just for you to be better.

The concept of human nature is complex, and each individual is as different and as complex as the next.  

In no regard is all this under the veil of them being perfect beings.  Like myself, i try my hardest to be good but at times fault in ways that are regretful and shameful.  

There are aspects of all these people that perhaps fall under that line of thinking; but for them to allow themselves to be vulnerable and admitful of these things is what makes their character truly shine.  

No one is perfect and we all make mistakes.  The difference being owning up to your mistakes versus passing on the blame.

That is the key.  

Anyways.

These three instructors have had the most impact in all my training, and please, i am not discounting anyone else that was a part of martial arts life.  Throughout Muay Thai, Judo, BJJ, Wrestling, MMA and Boxing i did take a piece of their instruction and wisdom with me, and many of you remain in my heart, but the bulk of my teachings now stem from these three figures.  These are the stories of them.

Kru Santi:

He is the basis for everything going on in my life at the moment in the 14 years now doing Muay Thai.  He was not my first instructor, but is my only instructor. He laid the foundation and the framework for everything i teach.  Stoic in nature and hard to please, a praise from him meant the world. Aside from him teaching me the techniques, rules, understanding of the sport, he taught me the art.  There are two parts of this. The practitioner/fighter side, and the coaching side. He taught me what it is to have tight technique. An understanding of the fundamentals, the finesse.  He helped me develop an eye for movement. We would watch fights together at the gym and he would point out the little itty bitty things. He taught me the psychology of fighting, how to play around with opponents, not to be afraid, void yourself of feelings and emotions and go in there.  To not be a pussy about things.

Taught me how to develop your skill in the gym.  The importance of repetitions. Doing the same thing hundred if not thousands of times.

From his teaching style i learned to coach.  From his coaching style i learned how to fight and coach fighters.  Even in his old age i would watch him play spar with his clients or other members.  No wasted movement. Amazing timing and impeccable technique.

He was made of stone.  Watching him hold pads for world class fighters and hardly bat an eyelash at their explosive power and technique was such a sight to see.  We would all stand in awe as they would crack the pads only for him to not move an inch and continue walking forward.

He was scarred, battle wounded.  Left deaf in one ear by muay thai legand Coban “The Crusher” Lookchaomaesaitong’s infamous right hook, he would always lean his good, cauliflowered ear and say ‘eh?’.  His hands calloused and fractured. His feet blown the fuck out by years of fighting, kicking pads and heavy bags.

He was patient.  Taught me about patience.  To not be so erratic and wasteful with my fighting, but to be exact.   Precise.

He was smart, receiving a bachelor’s degree in thailand.  When he spoke, it was wise, analytical, thoughtful, insightful.  Much like his technique, he wasted no breath in unnecessary words.  Concise and to the point.

And in all this, he was broken.  Sometimes in spirit, sometimes in body.  The years of training, fighting, and now coaching would take their toll.  Always injured but never complained and followed through with his word, took the abuse of fighters like myself, still donning his smile and chuckling at our lack of stamina and power.  

Now as a coach i can barely start relating.  Every morning i wake up in pain. Elbow, back, shoulders, knees, wrists.

The mental anguish of every day being the same.  With a sliver of rest on sundays, only to go back to the grind the next day.

He was both the anvil, and the hammer that forged steel.  He sharpened the blade.

The job of a muay thai coach is tough, arduous.  We are in the profession of abuse. Our job is to make people, stronger, sharper, faster.  Hit harder. Not hard enough. Harder, for a longer duration. We gauge performance by the amount of pain our arms feel after every subsequent kick.  Until our forearms are numb from the impact of kicks, knees and elbows.

And at the end of the day, i never appreciated.  

Fighting is such a selfish thing.  You breath, sweat, spit and abuse your pad holder, your coach.  You think because you pay a gym membership you are entitled to this.  

He sacrificed his well being for my success.  Never asked for anything other than to be a good fighter and a even better person.  Win or lose. To fight with spirit, to take no shit and go out there and fight my hardest.  We had good days, we had bad days. He always stuck by my side. He is a great man, a great teacher and continues to be successful in his coaching.  He is an asset to the muay thai community. Humble, thoughtful and kind. Everything i strive to be in a coach and in a man.

He is imperfectly perfect.  He is my inspiration and proud to say my muay thai coach.

Khup Khun Khup for everything Kru Santi.

The post The History of Coach Vik and TBI. My Coaches: Kru Santi appeared first on Thai Boxing Institute | Muay Thai West Los Angeles | Venice.

Along with video, there’s audio commentary as well as a pretty dense explanation of the technique in the blog.  Of course there are some mistake but that’s part of the learning process!

/shrugs

ANYWAYS.  i’m pretty happy of the overall product and am excited to present:

MUAY THAI:  DECONSTRUCTED.

THE RIGHT ROUND KICK

(should be ‘the rear round kick’, whoops!)

((continue to scroll past video for full technique explanation))

A note on ‘learning’:

One movement in, execute technique, and return back to stance.  

Sure,  sounds easy yea? But, it’s the little things that make a world difference between just ‘doing the technique’ and ‘doing the technique correctly’.

Not just once though, but consistently.  We are trying to create consistency. Consistency to the point where every movement is done without effort.  Where all parts of the body are moving efficiently. The end goal really is to execute any sort of technique utilizing the minimum amount of energy.

We are attempting to produce a result that is equal in balance, finesse, ease, and power.  The outcome should feel almost as if one were floating. That feeling is what i call ‘flow’.  

Creating this harmony of elements requires practice.  Practice is key, and practice makes perfect. Practice isn’t just repeating the movement, but rather being conscious of what you are doing.  Digesting, reflect and repeat.

How did it feel?  How did it sound? Did you feel light, heavy, clunky?  Did it hurt? Haha.

Once you get the beauty of the technique down you can start adding the element of style, but that’s for another time.  😉

On to the show.

Ok, let’s preface all this by saying this tutorial is meant for right handed (conventional, orthodox, whatever you wanna call it) fighters.  If you are left handed (southpaw) then your right leg leads. As a whole, the concept is the same for both stances, difference would be the sides i use to describe the actions,  left hand, right hand, left side, right side.

For the sake of ease i will try to use lead and rear as often as possible, or when possible.

In regards to this instance, for reference:  Left side will be ‘lead’, right side will be ‘rear’.

Capiche?

Ok, moving forward.

There are different styles and variations of the round kick, with each instructor teaching the kick differently.  This is one of many; the way my instructor taught me, and the way i teach it.

I believe this is the most difficult thing to teach and even though from an outsider perspective it may seem simple.

Wrong.

My method of teaching is what i call ‘big picture first’, then we widdle down the details.  This is just a general overview of the round kick plus some basic details. I’m sure we can distill it even further but i’m hoping this provides some good insight into getting down the basic form.  

Remember, practice is key, and practice makes perfect.  🙂

TLDR  (too long didn’t read):

(Range Find)

((inhale))

1.  Step (we need momentum)

1.1  Lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

1.2  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

2. Pivot  

2.1  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

2.2  Shin to target

3.  Turn

3.1  Turn ( your body along with your foot)

3.2  Hit target (exhale)

3.3  Follow through

3.4  Pivot out back to stance.

4.  Look cool.

4.1  Film yourself kicking, tag all your friends, set location to ‘Thai Boxing Institute’

The nitty gritty:

The round kick can be simplified into 3 different steps.

1. Step (we need momentum)
2. Pivot
3. Turn

Range finding:

Get in your fight stance, lead leg steps, rear leg follows.  Notice the my lead hand extends and the fingertips touch the bag.  If i can touch it i can hit it. I return back to my stance, rear leg first this time, lead leg follows.

I call this ‘ballroom footwork’.  We want to avoid a shallow step so that we don’t kick with our foot, or to be too close to the target resulting in our technique being smothered.  

Lead foot positioning:

If we imagine a clock, and our body is positioned at 6 o clock, once we initiate the technique, the first step with our lead leg will position itself towards 11 o clock.  I like to make a point of saying ‘leg’ rather than foot is because if we look down from our perspective, we have to pay attention that toes, ankle, knee and hip are all aligned, meaning that entire plane of our body is pointing towards 11 o clock.  We do this because if we understand the trajectory of the kick, it follow thats much like a baseball bat swinging (or pretty much any sport that requires swinging an object). Thus, in order for us to understand and apply the idea of falling through (continuing our own momentum once we struck our target), we must position our body (mainly hips)  in a way that will allow our leg to follow through it’s ‘swinging’ plane. Amongst the many factors that contribute to ‘power’ or strength of technique, positioning our hips in a way that will allow us to generate torque is key to the proper execution of this particular technique.

Ankle lock and toe point:

Lastly, before we actually kick something, i like to show how i flex my foot in order to isolate both the top foot, and shin.  This plays many different roles. One is safety, safety in that my toes aren’t in the way in case i accidently kick with my foot.  Second is i want to make sure i kick with as much as my shin as possible. When you first begin sometimes you end up kicking with the instep which isn’t entirely wrong, but we want to get into the habit of kicking with the shin in order to avoid any injuries as well as to become the conditioning process of being able to kick with your shin and it not hurting.  🙂

Ok, let’s finally kick something.

As a trainer i’ll demonstrate a few times slowly, and then have the member practices a few times with their own rudimentary version of what they just heard and saw.  From there we widdle down the details.

1.  Step (we need momentum)

A:  lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

B:  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

The biggest thing people have trouble with is the pivot.  Whenever i assess someones technique the first thing i pay attention to is what their foot is doing.  Are they stepping out? Is the foot engaged and pivoting?

When we first execute that first step to 11 o clock, you must step on the ball of your foot, sit your weight down and turn your heel.  We call that pivot. Another important element to proper technique, and torque development. Once we’ve hit the object and felt our ‘follow through’ or momentum stop, we use that same pivot to drive ourselves back to our fighting stance.  

Pivot in, pivot out.

Another point i make is that both legs are dependent on each other.  Meaning once i step and pivot, my rear leg begins the kick sequences along with the lead legs’ pivot.  Once my rear leg begins it’s return, so that does my front leg’s pivot.

Confusing?  Watch and rewind a few times.  :B

Shin  position:

1.   Step (we need momentum)

A:  lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

B:  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

C:  Pivot in

D:  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

This maybe bit of an intermediate/advance concept but what’s very important to me is how much shin makes contact with the surface area of my target.  I like to get the entirety of the shin across whatever i’m kick, but that requires a bit of practice with the frist couple fundamental steps of the kick technique, as well as balance, and proper torso positioning.  Yet again, these are all elements of developing torque, which develops effortless technique, which develops power. I’ll say a little more about this in our conclusion, but if you start thinking about these things and applying them to your practice, i believe this will expedite the process of learning how to round kick.

1. Step (we need momentum)

A:  lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

B:  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

C:  Pivot in

D:  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

E:  Shin to target, follow through

F:  Pivot out back to stance.

Rear foot details:

Earlier i made a mention of balance;  once the member is getting the ‘gist’ of the technique, i like to point out what the rear foot is doing.  Once i complete the ‘pivot out’ and i’m arriving back to my stance, my rear leg’s foot lands on the ball first followed by the heel (if necessary).

If necessary?  Necessary meaning if i’m only doing a single kick then i proceed to place my weight back, but if i’m doing multiple kicks at once (5 left, 5 right?) then i forego that step.  I’ll land on the ball and use that to drive myself back into the second, third etc kick. Another intermediate concept which can be a whole nother’ video of it’s own.

Anyways, balance, sometimes people get into the habit of landing straight on their rear heel, which sends them stumbling back. Landing on the ball prevents all this and makes for a smooth landing.

Breathing:

Breathe in, breathe out.  The kick should be a relaxed technique with the exhalation of the breath being the moment of tension that your body creates in any explosive movement.  

Breathing is a pretty broad subject itself, and another factor in efficiency and power.  BUT, baby steps.

My tips are:

(before you initiate the kick)

Breathe in through your nose (nostrils)

Feel your lungs fill with air.

Commence kick sequence.

Exhale once your leg reaches the the target.

Simple?

The exhalation should come out as a form of a tight breath from the diaphragm.  Imaging yourself sprinting fast and hard in a face, you give yourself that extra push, maybe even scream as you do.  That’s a breath from your diaphragm.

Merely exhaling the air from your lungs isn’t enough.

To recap:

 (inhale)

1.  Step (we need momentum)

1.1  Lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

(Range Find)

((inhale))

1.  Step (we need momentum)

1.1  Lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

1.2  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

2. Pivot  

2.1  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

2.2  Shin to target

3.  Turn

3.1  Turn ( your body along with your foot)

3.2  Hit target (exhale)

3.3  Follow through

3.4  Pivot out back to stance.

4.  Look cool.

4.1  Film yourself kicking, tag all your friends, set location to ‘Thai Boxing Institute’

See!?  3 easy steps.  Practice makes perfect, now get at it.

A note on ‘learning’:

One movement in, execute technique, and return back to stance.  

Sure,  sounds easy yea? But, it’s the little things that make a world difference between just ‘doing the technique’ and ‘doing the technique correctly’.

Not just once though, but consistently.  We are trying to create consistency. Consistency to the point where every movement is done without effort.  Where all parts of the body are moving efficiently. The end goal really is to execute any sort of technique utilizing the minimum amount of energy.

We are attempting to produce a result that is equal in balance, finesse, ease, and power.  The outcome should feel almost as if one were floating. That feeling is what i call ‘flow’.  

Creating this harmony of elements requires practice.  Practice is key, and practice makes perfect. Practice isn’t just repeating the movement, but rather being conscious of what you are doing.  Digesting, reflect and repeat.

How did it feel?  How did it sound? Did you feel light, heavy, clunky?  Did it hurt? Haha.

Once you get the beauty of the technique down you can start adding the element of style, but that’s for another time.  😉

On to the show.

Ok, let’s preface all this by saying this tutorial is meant for right handed (conventional, orthodox, whatever you wanna call it) fighters.  If you are left handed (southpaw) then your right leg leads. As a whole, the concept is the same for both stances, difference would be the sides i use to describe the actions,  left hand, right hand, left side, right side.

For the sake of ease i will try to use lead and rear as often as possible, or when possible.

In regards to this instance, for reference:  Left side will be ‘lead’, right side will be ‘rear’.

Capiche?

Ok, moving forward.

There are different styles and variations of the round kick, with each instructor teaching the kick differently.  This is one of many; the way my instructor taught me, and the way i teach it.

I believe this is the most difficult thing to teach and even though from an outsider perspective it may seem simple.

Wrong.

My method of teaching is what i call ‘big picture first’, then we widdle down the details.  This is just a general overview of the round kick plus some basic details. I’m sure we can distill it even further but i’m hoping this provides some good insight into getting down the basic form.  

Remember, practice is key, and practice makes perfect.  🙂

TLDR  (too long didn’t read):

(Range Find)

((inhale))

1.  Step (we need momentum)

1.1  Lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

1.2  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

2. Pivot  

2.1  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

2.2  Shin to target

3.  Turn

3.1  Turn ( your body along with your foot)

3.2  Hit target (exhale)

3.3  Follow through

3.4  Pivot out back to stance.

4.  Look cool.

4.1  Film yourself kicking, tag all your friends, set location to ‘Thai Boxing Institute’

The nitty gritty:

The round kick can be simplified into 3 different steps.

1. Step (we need momentum)
2. Pivot
3. Turn

Range finding:

Get in your fight stance, lead leg steps, rear leg follows.  Notice the my lead hand extends and the fingertips touch the bag.  If i can touch it i can hit it. I return back to my stance, rear leg first this time, lead leg follows.

I call this ‘ballroom footwork’.  We want to avoid a shallow step so that we don’t kick with our foot, or to be too close to the target resulting in our technique being smothered.  

Lead foot positioning:

If we imagine a clock, and our body is positioned at 6 o clock, once we initiate the technique, the first step with our lead leg will position itself towards 11 o clock.  I like to make a point of saying ‘leg’ rather than foot is because if we look down from our perspective, we have to pay attention that toes, ankle, knee and hip are all aligned, meaning that entire plane of our body is pointing towards 11 o clock.  We do this because if we understand the trajectory of the kick, it follow thats much like a baseball bat swinging (or pretty much any sport that requires swinging an object). Thus, in order for us to understand and apply the idea of falling through (continuing our own momentum once we struck our target), we must position our body (mainly hips)  in a way that will allow our leg to follow through it’s ‘swinging’ plane. Amongst the many factors that contribute to ‘power’ or strength of technique, positioning our hips in a way that will allow us to generate torque is key to the proper execution of this particular technique.

Ankle lock and toe point:

Lastly, before we actually kick something, i like to show how i flex my foot in order to isolate both the top foot, and shin.  This plays many different roles. One is safety, safety in that my toes aren’t in the way in case i accidently kick with my foot.  Second is i want to make sure i kick with as much as my shin as possible. When you first begin sometimes you end up kicking with the instep which isn’t entirely wrong, but we want to get into the habit of kicking with the shin in order to avoid any injuries as well as to become the conditioning process of being able to kick with your shin and it not hurting.  🙂

Ok, let’s finally kick something.

As a trainer i’ll demonstrate a few times slowly, and then have the member practices a few times with their own rudimentary version of what they just heard and saw.  From there we widdle down the details.

1.  Step (we need momentum)

A:  lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

B:  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

The biggest thing people have trouble with is the pivot.  Whenever i assess someones technique the first thing i pay attention to is what their foot is doing.  Are they stepping out? Is the foot engaged and pivoting?

When we first execute that first step to 11 o clock, you must step on the ball of your foot, sit your weight down and turn your heel.  We call that pivot. Another important element to proper technique, and torque development. Once we’ve hit the object and felt our ‘follow through’ or momentum stop, we use that same pivot to drive ourselves back to our fighting stance.  

Pivot in, pivot out.

Another point i make is that both legs are dependent on each other.  Meaning once i step and pivot, my rear leg begins the kick sequences along with the lead legs’ pivot.  Once my rear leg begins it’s return, so that does my front leg’s pivot.

Confusing?  Watch and rewind a few times.  :B

Shin  position:

1.   Step (we need momentum)

A:  lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

B:  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

C:  Pivot in

D:  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

This maybe bit of an intermediate/advance concept but what’s very important to me is how much shin makes contact with the surface area of my target.  I like to get the entirety of the shin across whatever i’m kick, but that requires a bit of practice with the frist couple fundamental steps of the kick technique, as well as balance, and proper torso positioning.  Yet again, these are all elements of developing torque, which develops effortless technique, which develops power. I’ll say a little more about this in our conclusion, but if you start thinking about these things and applying them to your practice, i believe this will expedite the process of learning how to round kick.

1. Step (we need momentum)

A:  lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

B:  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

C:  Pivot in

D:  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

E:  Shin to target, follow through

F:  Pivot out back to stance.

Rear foot details:

Earlier i made a mention of balance;  once the member is getting the ‘gist’ of the technique, i like to point out what the rear foot is doing.  Once i complete the ‘pivot out’ and i’m arriving back to my stance, my rear leg’s foot lands on the ball first followed by the heel (if necessary).

If necessary?  Necessary meaning if i’m only doing a single kick then i proceed to place my weight back, but if i’m doing multiple kicks at once (5 left, 5 right?) then i forego that step.  I’ll land on the ball and use that to drive myself back into the second, third etc kick. Another intermediate concept which can be a whole nother’ video of it’s own.

Anyways, balance, sometimes people get into the habit of landing straight on their rear heel, which sends them stumbling back. Landing on the ball prevents all this and makes for a smooth landing.

Breathing:

Breathe in, breathe out.  The kick should be a relaxed technique with the exhalation of the breath being the moment of tension that your body creates in any explosive movement.  

Breathing is a pretty broad subject itself, and another factor in efficiency and power.  BUT, baby steps.

My tips are:

(before you initiate the kick)

Breathe in through your nose (nostrils)

Feel your lungs fill with air.

Commence kick sequence.

Exhale once your leg reaches the the target.

Simple?

The exhalation should come out as a form of a tight breath from the diaphragm.  Imaging yourself sprinting fast and hard in a face, you give yourself that extra push, maybe even scream as you do.  That’s a breath from your diaphragm.

Merely exhaling the air from your lungs isn’t enough.

To recap:

 (inhale)

1.  Step (we need momentum)

1.1  Lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

(Range Find)

((inhale))

1.  Step (we need momentum)

1.1  Lead foot at 11 o clock, rear leg lifts up, ankle locked.

1.2  Rear arm swings back as a counter balance and to aid in torque development

2. Pivot  

2.1  Rear leg brings hips up and over in a tight arch

2.2  Shin to target

3.  Turn

3.1  Turn ( your body along with your foot)

3.2  Hit target (exhale)

3.3  Follow through

3.4  Pivot out back to stance.

4.  Look cool.

4.1  Film yourself kicking, tag all your friends, set location to ‘Thai Boxing Institute’

See!?  3 easy steps.  Practice makes perfect, now get at it.

The post How to throw a Muay Thai Round Kick appeared first on Thai Boxing Institute | Muay Thai West Los Angeles | Venice.

Vancouver b.c., canada.  First time heading here, and really, the only thing i ever heard about canada was BC bud, nature, rain and that the people were really nice.

As always when i travel, i look forward to:  walking, eating, drinking, shows and of course- muay thai.

First thing on the agenda as soon as we fly in is of course, to eat dinner but more importantly is check out the local music scene.  I like to see touring bands play, check out the crowd, the venue, the environment, the fashion.  I decided on watching Death From Above 1979, a canadian band i followed here and there in my youth, but never had the opportunity to check out live.  Great show, great sound and not bad considering they’re a bass player/drummer duo.  

After many drinks, it was time for a drunken midnight snack and off to get some rest for tomorrow’s muay thai session.  That hot dog was probably my favorite thing i had to eat the whole time there, it was fucking tremendous.

Much to my remorse in a hungover stupor, it was time to train.  I always say- ‘hey take it easy because you gotta work out the next day.  Fuuuuuck that! few beers later you catch me grooving to the music.  Live, laugh, love or whatever bullshit i see on stickered on people’s walls.’

I checked out district warrior in downtown vancouver.  A muay thai fitness gym owned by husband wife duo Ali Khanjari and Farinaz Lari, two former Iranian Muay Thai national team members now located in Vancouver.  The training was a bit dutch style, with pads, some drills, bag work and sparring.  Ali was pretty serious at first and it took me a good half hour to finally get him to laugh but the training was tough, the sparring was great and picked up some new training techniques to torture my members and clients with.

After getting my ass kick thoroughly it was off to explore the rest of the city.

The majesty of nature in vancouver was something to behold.  The air was clean, the leaves were colored and the landscape was sprawling.  A huge difference from the concrete jungle and palm trees that is Los Angeles.  There is a such bareness to LA that you almost forget that nature still exist.

All and all, an excellent time was had, a ton of drinking, eating and walking and exploration.

MUAY THAI:

http://districtwarrior.com/

FOOD:

(gastro pub new american/new canadian)

http://theflyingpigvan.com

(oysters, awesome happy hour)

http://www.fannybayoysters.com/location/oyster-bar–shellfish-market

(brunch spot, amazing belgian waffles, expect a 2 hour wait.)

http://www.medinacafe.com

(french dessert and wine bar, great ambiance)

http://mosquitodessert.com

SIGHT-SEEING

(45 CAD entrance fee)

https://www.capbridge.com

The post IMPRESSIONS. A Muay Thai Travel Vlog. appeared first on Thai Boxing Institute | Muay Thai West Los Angeles | Venice.

under 100 lbs to 120lbs:  10 ounces

120 lbs to 150lbs:  12 ounces

150 lbs to 165lbs:  14 ounces

over 165 lbs:  16 ounces

The post The Definitive Muay Thai Glove Buying Guide appeared first on Thai Boxing Institute | Muay Thai West Los Angeles | Venice.