Learn about Muay Thai, self-defense, trauma informed training and the mind-body connection as we share what exactly is Empower Muay Thai.
So, what is Muay Thai? You may have read that it is known as the Art of Eight Limbs. This is because traditional Muay Thai not only employs punches and kicks, but elbows and knees as well. As a bonus, we throw in the clinch, which really ups the knee game, as well as allowing for sweeps.
Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand, with Nak Muays going professional as young as 9 years of age. They practice dawn til dusk. It is a high stakes betting sport, and Nak Muays are very dedicated to their training.
Traditional Muay Thai posture differs from other combat styles due to the high fists, palm outward, and flared elbows. This is protective in the traditional Thai style strikes but has disadvantages if your opponent uses a martial art, kickboxing, or western boxing style strike. The stance differs as well, with the hips more squared up than martial arts, but feet less so than western boxing. This results in a sort of hybrid stance that allows for maximum balance and strong, swift kicks.
Techniques differ from other combat sports because punches and kicks are designed to strike while limiting vulnerability to devastating elbows and knees. Once you learn the body mechanics – or unlearn those you may have learned from a more rigid style – you will find Muay Thai techniques to be intuitive to natural body mechanics.
You will learn the slicing elbow that ends fights, and the leg kick that can stop an opponent in his tracks without warning, or slowly chip away at their very ability to stand.
We will discuss the six styles of Muay Thai another time, but know that at Empower Muay Thai, we have borrowed what we have seen as the most effective techniques from two styles that are suited to opposing other combat styles, and developed a flow of techniques that offer maximum efficacy for both Nak Muays who have larger frames than a 9 year old, as in Dutch style, as well as the more slim, lithe practitioner.
We have established the five traditional Muay Thai styles. There is a very clear reason the sixth was introduced.
Before Muay Thai was introduced to the rest of the world, it stood as Thailand’s worst kept secret: a combat sport evolved from military techniques. Honed over decades to showcase a very specific set of skills, it was a formidable combat system in its own right. To showcase elite athleticism, the most challenging striking methods were accentuated, namely the clinch, elbows, and knees. These techniques are particularly suited for the smaller, nimble Thai body structure.
When athletes from the Western world heard about Muay Thai, of course they wanted to excel at this intriguing and devastating combat sport. The most successful of the early farang (non-Thai) contenders were the Dutch. With their larger frames and emphasis on striking with fists, the game was changed in the Muay Thai world forever.
You can still find traditional Muay Thai bouts, especially in Thailand. In these competitions the emphasis is on elbow and knee strikes, which are scored higher than fists. The fights are slower, with the first round being utilized primarily to ascertain your opponent’s timing and strategy. Is he a Muay Plam fighter, or does he prefer to employ Muay Femur techniques?
The bouts consist of five three-minute rounds. They are steeped in tradition and a respect for spirituality, the sport, and the opponents.
The Muay Thai employed in Mixed Martial Arts is much more sports-minded, and the Western style of an aggressive, forward-pushing format is more likely to be employed. MMA rounds are much longer at five minutes, which allows a practitioner to utilize multiple styles, the most common being Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But because MMA is not restricted to a specific fight style like boxing or kickboxing, even the Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are often modified to be more versatile. In fact, often what is considered Muay Thai for an MMA bout is more like kickboxing with elbows, or Western boxing with knees.
The reason we emphasize that we teach “traditional” Muay Thai, although we employ Dutch Style, which is clearly different from older styles, (although Dutch style is used by an increasing number of Thai Nak Muays,) is that we teach Muay Thai on your terms. If you prefer to be a knee-striker, then we will guide you to develop your Muay Kao skills.
This is your gym. We just work here.
Frist let’s define our terms so we can compare the different disciplines.
Martial Arts are stylized fighting disciplines. They are, by and large, adapted from military tactics, defense tactics of citizens protecting themselves from the military arm of a tyrannical government, or a mix of those two. Often when they are no longer needed against an immediate existential threat, these tactics become highly specialized and stylized, losing their effectiveness. While the strikes and blocks still work in a limited capacity within the confines of that style, they aren’t practical in that even for them to be effective in that limited capacity, years of dedicated study are required. A practitioner must adhere to a narrow spectrum of physical movements and somehow make them work against an unknown assailant’s attack. This is why they are arts, not combat sports.
Western Boxing is limited as it is a sport meant to test a very specific set of skills. As a combat sport, it is interesting only insofar as punches are effective. We love boxing and incorporate a lot of aspects into our style, but like martial arts, boxing is limited to contending within its own discipline. A pure boxer cannot contend with a kickboxer with the restrictions of the sport.
Kickboxing as a sport has fewer limitations than boxing in the way of strikes, but the rules are stringent so their usefulness is limited. Like in boxing, the clinch isn’t utilized so opponents are separated within seconds. Throws are not allowed, and sweeps are limited. The venue of the competition determines the type of sweep allowed. Again, as a sport fought for points, strict rules restrict efficacy. Even used outside the ring, a kickboxer won’t be trained in the clinch or effective sweeps in the same way a fighter from another combat sport might be.
Krav Maga is a self-defense system that was created with efficacy in mind. The most effective, compatible techniques are borrowed and adapted from other styles and brought together in a cohesive, comprehensible style. Because of this, many Muay Thai techniques can be found being taught in Krav Maga schools. Unfortunately, due to its ambiguous nature, almost anyone can marry a bunch of “moves” together and call it Krav Maga. It has been watered down to various versions of “habeas grabbus” (as they call it in law enforcement,) where ineffective moves that look impressive if done exactly as choreographed are taught as “self-defense.” Krav Maga is also more of a crash course in self-defense, not a fighting style. It doesn’t take into account different body types, athletic ability, or fitness. It is normally a short-term course without true real-world testing.
Why do we prefer Muay Thai?
Like Martial arts and Krav Maga, Muay Thai adapted military combat methods for non-military combat use. This allows for vetting of the techniques. Like Western Boxing and kickboxing, Muay Thai is essentially a combat sport, emphasis on sport. Because of the culture from which it originates, being adapted for entertainment purposes does not water it down as in other cases. Instead, Muay Thai is taken very seriously, and many strikes disallowed in other combat sports are legal in Muay Thai bouts. The clinch is an important part of traditional style and strikes from the clinch are scored higher than simple punches. More kicks and knees are allowed and striking points that are illegal in other sports are allowed in Muay Thai.
As a self-defense tool, this means you will train to do things that work against opponents in the real world; opponents you can’t predict who won’t grab the wrist you were trained to defend, who do elbow to the back of the head and knee to the face. You will hone skills to apply to innumerable situations, not “moves” that work as choreographed.
Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand. But unlike our national sport, there is not one way to be a Nak Muay.
Each fighter has their strengths, preferred techniques they’ve honed and perfected.
Below are the five basic Muay Thai styles and one that has recently been recognized as a separate style.
Muay Femur:
Highly technical, and calculating, Muay Femur fighters are known for their proficiency in all techniques, often alternating and confusing opponents. Their specialty, however, is speed and timing. They outscore their opponent with a strong defense before using their speed and agility to finish the fight.
You may hear Ajarn Eric speak about Saenchai, a champion Muay Femur fighter.
Muay Kao:
This fighter is a knee striker. A Muay Kao fighter will utilize the clinch to deliver their devastating blows. Cardio and strength conditioning are paramount with this style.
Ajarn Eric loves to watch Dieselnoi demonstrate the effectiveness Muay Kao in the ring.
Muay Mat:
Of course, conditioning and strength are always important, but when your style relies heavily on punches, this is even more important. Muay Mats are knockout artists. Strong and aggressive, these fighters push forward relentlessly, and it pays off.
Ajarn Eric’s favorite Muay Mat is Ramon Dekkers, because it is conducive to his larger, Norwegian frame than styles suited to native Thai fighters. Because of this, some call Dekkers’ fighting “Dutch Style.”
Muay Tae:
These are your kickers. What is the favorite Muay Thai kick, you ask? The roundhouse is such a powerful kick that some fighters build their whole style around it. How do they build a strong offense around kicking? They work tirelessly on form, perfecting balance, and strengthening those shins! Can they break ribs, and even arms? Yes. Yes, they can, and they do. Not only that, once they have worn you down with relentless, devastating kicks, they often move in for the knockout. This is a strategy employed by famous Muay Tae fighter Yodsanklai Fairtex
Muay Sok:
This style has got to be the most damaging of the lot. Elbow strikes are rained down on fighters, causing cuts, stopping fights, and knocking out opponents. These fighters often play the counter game, waiting for their opportunity to overcome their opponent. This style is less common, but always action-packed.
Muay Plam:
These fighters work from the clinch. Inside the clinch, they bring knees, throws, elbows, and sweeps. Again, strength is brough to bear. These fighters train for hours on end in the clinch alone.
What is our style? Some Thai call it Muay Farang. Foreigner’s style. Ajarn Eric’s lineage of different martial arts, as well as kickboxing and western boxing (not to mention 28 years of law enforcement experience with real-world application) give him a more rounded perspective on what does and doesn’t work in the ring.
Our school style concentrates on Dutch style; while incorporating much of the boxing he’s done over the years, but other styles are brought in depending on each student’s body style, strengths, and preferences.
The important thing to remember is that while it’s fun to watch fighters and be able to see what style they’re using, or which seems to be their favorite, none of these are written in stone. They can ebb, flow, and overlap. If you do that with good speed and timing, you can be an effective opponent.
Because quite frankly, these populations are targeted in very specific ways. We are seen as weaker, more vulnerable: an easy target. Even in domestic partner violence, the attacker is attempting to dominate and control their target, regardless of whether the encounter began romantically. The idea is that we are easy to dominate and control. The goal is to disabuse them of this idea. With prejudice.
General self-defense skills are taught in traditional combat settings. Our self-defense focuses on scenarios where vulnerable people are specifically targeted. People who attack weaker individuals each have a particular goal, and learning skills to thwart their efforts to reach that goal; whether it is to rob you, hurt you, sexually assault you, or abduct you.
Generally speaking we are smaller and our strengths are different from aggressors. (Though we do have them, and you will learn this.) We have to employ tactics that are different than those a larger, stronger person might bring to the table. But that’s okay. You will. We’ll teach you how. You will walk away with a particular set of skills, and the confidence to use them.
Let’s be clear: there are no set of choreographed techniques learned in a one-day seminar that will help you in an assault. The techniques learned in most self-defense classes depend heavily on your attacker following the script. I’m going to be honest; I don’t think he did the homework.
However, if you learn skills and understand the dynamics of how physical altercations work, now you’re cooking with gas.
Fights are unpredictable. We can guess the three most common ways a person may approach you and lay hands on you. But a bad actor is a wild card. “When he does this/you do this” is not particularly helpful if he does “that” instead.
The first aspect of self-defense that must be understood before any others will work, is that you are worth killing and dying for. If you can embrace that, then you will do whatever it takes to protect yourself.
Maybe you start small: for your loved ones. Think “HOW DARE YOU HURT MY MOTHER’S CHILD! SHE LOVES ME!” “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO TAKE MY BABIES’ MOTHER! THEY NEED ME!”
Then we graduate to, “YOU ARE NOT TO TOUCH ME!” In other words, know your worth. When we teach escape, we emphasize that you are the most important person in this scenario. If others get hurt, that’s on the attacker. If something gets broken, that’s on the attacker. If gramma’s 17th century 2karat diamond ring forged by dwarves in the third realm to honor your family name for millennia flings off your finger into the sewer? THAT IS ON HIM.
You are worth killing and dying for. Know that, and when you move through the world, others will too.
By now you’ve learned that we don’t employ the self-defense tactics you’ll find in other seminars or on YouTube. That’s because we bring decades of experience to the table. Our stand-up classes were developed with the assistance of a police defensive tactics trainer who has investigated countless assaults and interviewed as many perpetrators.
Most of those “tactics” work in a classroom setting and not in real life because
Now to be fair, the environment should be a safe space. No one goes to a self-defense seminar or class to be traumatized. However, we can help you work through the realities of an assault without causing further harm.
You have been introduced to the idea that if you understand the dynamics of combat in general, you will be able to act, even without thinking, to protect yourself. Not specific tactics, but a situational understanding. So instead of “poke him in the eye just so” you’ve got the concept of making yourself as much of a nuisance as possible. You will make noise, you will move whatever limb you can and strike it against any part of his body it contacts. That’s more effective than trying to remember a specific sequence of movements that are no longer appropriate because he changed his position while you were thinking about it.
Come play with us, we’ll make beating up bullies second nature.
When offering one overarching piece of advice to people who want to evaluate the safety of an environment, the overwhelming response from everyone from first responders to neurobiology researchers is “TRUST YOUR GUT.”
There’s a good reason for this. First, people whose job it is to assess danger, namely law enforcement officers, soldiers, firefighters and even paramedics, have demonstrated the powerful accuracy of intuition in unpredictable situations since time immemorial. This advice is passed on to young parents by not only their parents, but by their pediatricians. Therapists spend years teaching clients this skill.
Why? Because it works, and we can now measure it scientifically.
There are entire schools of education on the subject, so I’ll try to nutshell it for you.
As humans, we are designed to detect danger, as much now as when we lived closer to nature. Because our environments are so complex and we have stuff to do like writing emails, grocery shopping, and getting to Empower Muay Thai to practice our self defense skills, our brains are on autopilot, constantly scanning our environment for threats. This includes tiny micro behaviors (not to be confused with microaggressions) that indicate a person’s intentions before they even have the conscious thought to carry them through. While your brain is observing this, it is categorizing these behaviors as safe or threatening depending on previous experiences, whether firsthand or not. (Meaning whether you experienced them or witnessed them.)
Neurobiologists call this ‘thin slicing,’ and it’s not only incredibly accurate, it’s just as useful as it was designed to be, giving the observer time to proactively protect herself. Unfortunately, one billion years of evolution have been undermined by 6,000 years of conditioning to distrust instinctive feelings, or intuition, for many of us, especially in the Western world. Now that science has caught up, we are embracing our natural tendency to look for the danger in our surroundings.
So that guy, who should be perfectly nice, seems somehow off and you can’t put your finger on it? He’s off, sis. Let him be. At that house party there’s an area of the house, a hall, a bathroom, or a group of people you just don’t feel right about? Steer clear, dear. You can’t articulate why? No matter. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone.
TRUST. YOUR. GUT. Always.
“But Empower Muay Thai,” you say, “I don’t want to live in fear. I just want to protect myself.” Fair enough. None of us wants to live in fear. But I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “The best defense is a strong offense.” That is our strategy, as well. You will learn to be aware of your surroundings first. You won’t think “oh my gosh, if I have to escape this building, where will I go?” or “Okay someone may try to pin me in so I have to keep an open path to the exit. Or know where all the exits are.” Or even “who can I trust here? All these people I don’t know might hurt me.”
Instead, we will teach you to simply be aware of things. You can have a good time and clock that Tim has been leering at Tiffany all night and hasn’t moved from the left side of that doorframe. Good on ya, Tim, I’ll stand over here, where Joel is telling hilarious stories and I only get good feelings from him, anyway. Besides, the dog seems to like him.
You will notice entrances and exits by second nature, and not give it a second thought. You will TRUST YOUR GUT, and let thin slicing do the work. You will see something brewing before it pops off, and be halfway down the driveway, the length of which you already noted in the back of your mind, before any shenanigans are afoot. And if someone does get in your face, you will have skills you have honed and will reflexively employ.
Any attacker will be unpleasantly surprised and rue the day they tried to touch a Empower Muay Thai Self-Defense student.
These tenets we’ve covered but they’re worth remembering:
Take note: while law enforcement officers must employ good, actionable self defense skills, they have a very different motive than we do: they must stay with their opponent, submit them, and apprehend them. We need to ensure that they are disabled for long enough for our escape. I have never taken a self defense class from a law enforcement officer that effectively taught how to escape without being pursued until our retired law enforcement officer at Empower Muay Thai Jiu Jitsu assisted in the development of our classes.
So take heart, you will have a leg up, and YOU CAN DO THIS.
Besides his martial arts and combat sport resume, Ajarn Eric, co-founder of Empower Muay Thai and creator of the programs, was a police officer for 28 years. He’s been in plenty of scrapes. He was also a POST Defensive Tactics instructor.
He first began practicing Muay Thai because he saw the advantages it provides in a real fight. Admittedly, police officers are not fighting to escape their opponents, but Eric understands the difference and how to use the unique techniques employed in Muay Thai to get out of scrapes, as well.
Elbows, knees, and leg kicks are particularly effective in “discouraging” would-be attackers. One well-placed elbow or knee can devastate a foe; especially if they aren’t expecting it. Practiced with any regularity, the skills learned in Muay Thai will make anyone think twice about messing with you.
Children Humans are intrinsically somatic and tactile. In Western Society, that with which I am most familiar, we lead children away from this experience as they age and mature. Some of that is appropriate, as we navigate interacting with our family members, peers, and the world at large. But some is not. This is evidenced by the universal understanding that as adults we still crave some sort of physical outlet.
In more recent decades we have increasingly encouraged physical activity for physical wellness, and even more recently, for psychological and neuropsychiatric wellness.
The benefits of somatic therapy are recorded with activities as simple as movement exercises through those as intense as competitive sports.
Our Muay Thai program isn’t part of a somatic therapy program, but it is appropriate to add to a lifestyle that incorporates somatic work for physical and mental wellness.
In my Youth Muay Thai classes, I take into account the students’ physical and psychological developmental stages and teach to that. I am not concerned with children who will grow up to be UFC champions. What I am deeply concerned with is that children who are asked to conform to rules and regulations that restrict the use of their bodies to express themselves have a safe place to just be.
Whether my kids are neurodivergent or just exhausted from 'keeping it together' at school all day, they deserve a place where they can rest their brains and exercise their bodies in a way that allows them to maintain the mind/body connection that will serve them their entire lives.
If you visit my class, you may see children spinning in circles, running around, and playing with each other or sitting in the Calm Corner or the Sensory Spot. When I call them to attention, I do so at a specific point in the din. If I try too early, while they fully feeling the freedom of the mat, they can not and will not comply. Could I run a class where none of this happens? Yes. They could stand at attention and be silent the whole class. That would accomplish absolutely nothing but blindly compliant children who become blindly compliant adults. This is not the space for that.
When I call my students to attention and quiz them on rules, I am setting the boundaries for our interactions and our time together. Because at citizens, as members of society, as humans, that is the “self-discipline” they will need to take forward. Not blind compliance, but empathy and respect out of that empathy, not “respect” out of fear of retribution or their perception of my dominance over them.
This has resulted in emotional growth for my students and displays of empathy and kindness that frankly leave my flabbers completely gasted.
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