Podcast by Shane

 

Troubleshooting Stance and Footwork Drills For Muay Thai

Sometimes when you are training you might look past your technique and how far it has strayed away from its original form. You’ll find that this mostly happens to practitioners’ bases or foundations. Your foundation is nothing other than your stance and footwork.

Troubleshooting Stance and Footwork Drills For Muay Thai is for everyone because we all fall into bad habits, but not everyone can find solutions that work. This guide is going to teach you how to resolve the problems you’re having with your stance and footwork.

How do you figure out that your foundation or base is incorrect? The only way to realize that your stance and footwork are off is either by asking a training partner or trainer to help you or by using a mirror if you’re training at home by yourself.

If you do have a training partner, it’s a good idea to ask him or her if they see any weakness in your technique when you’re sparring. If you do find out that you’ve picked up some bad habits along the way, don’t worry because we’re going to go over some troubleshooting stance and footwork drills to get you back on track.

But let me warn you right now, it’s up to you to follow along and Implement these drills. If you don’t do anything to fix the flaws in your technique, then just like any weak foundation, it’s going to fall apart when you need it most.

The following problem of spreading your legs too far apart in Muay Thai is something that many fighters find themselves falling into. If you’re one of them, then let’s get started in helping you fix this bad habit by correctly troubleshooting it.

Suggested Reading: Footwork Drills

Do You Spread Your Legs Too Far Apart?

Many fighters find themselves with the problem of spreading their legs too far apart when performing their footwork or getting back into their stance. If this has happened to you, you’ll find that it most likely started in your first year of training. It has happened to a lot of beginners.

Most of the time it happens when a fighter ends up spreading his or her legs too far apart when they begin training in the Muay Thai stepping footwork.

A fighter slides with one foot and ends up leaving the other foot too far behind, instead of keeping the same distance as the sliding foot.

Another way this can happen is when a fighter attacks his opponent or defends against an attack but doesn’t return to his or her correct stance.

The fact is, it doesn’t matter how you ended up with this habit, you don’t want to keep it. If you’re currently competing and you have this bad habit, don’t let any of your opponents catch on because it’s going to be curtains for you.

How do you break the habit of spreading your legs so far apart? A good way to break this bad habit would be to tie your ankles with some rope. The rope should only allow you to move your feet apart just enough to be a little bit more than shoulder-width distance.

As you start to train using this drill, you should step with your lead foot while your trailing foot makes up the distance necessary to get back in your stance before your lead foot can move again. You can keep training like this until you feel comfortable removing the rope.

If you ever feel like you’re spreading your feet too far out again and you’re also losing your balance, then put the rope back on and keep training.

Break Bad Stances With The Blind Jump Drill

You may find yourself spreading your legs out too much because of how you’re positioning your feet when you’re in your stance. Maybe it’s because you’re just forgetting how you need to stand.

If this is happening too often or you’re finding that you also have a problem with your legs being too close to each other, or that you’re just not sure how you should be standing anymore, do the blind jumping drill.

To do the drill, stop what you’re doing right away and close your eyes. Jump in the air as high as possible with your eyes still closed. Do this for a count of four total jumps back to back.

When you’ve completed the last jump, open your eyes and check where your feet have landed. Now, depending on whether you’re right or left-handed, you’re going to move your rear foot just a tiny bit back. This is going to be how far apart you stand in your stance.

This is the distance you want to be at because when you landed, your natural intuition was to automatically establish balance and a firm posture.

Break Bad Stances With The Tire Jump Drill

The tire jump drill is another way for you to keep yourself from spreading out too far.

Look for a tire that has an inner width that is the same as your stance.

Quick recommendation: Apply the blind jump drill to figure out your distance and use it to figure out the width of a tire that best fits you.

Once you have your tire, the plan is to jump with both of your feet at the same time along the inner edges.

This drill is going to force you to be actively aware of how much space your feet have between them. If you jump beyond that space, then you’ll end up losing your balance and falling. It’s a good way to stop yourself from spreading your feet out too far apart.

This drill helps you build a correct stance but a great thing about the tire jump drill is that it also helps you with your rhythm, builds your leg muscles, improves your cardiovascular system, and is even a good warm-up if you want to use it at the beginning of your workout.

Keep practicing your jumping exercise until you’ve stopped falling and perfected your balance.

After you’ve perfected your balance, you can start working on your switch-stepping footwork. When doing switch steps, you’re going to want to change from the jumping method and start using the sliding footwork. Remember that you’re not jumping off the ground when you’re using the switch steps and most importantly, you’re not looking to pick up any more bad habits.

If this is starting to get too easy for you and you want the workout to be more intense, add a punch to it. You’ve got the punching down? Take it beyond this level of intensity, and add hand weights to improve your stamina and strength for your shoulders.

If you start to brainstorm other ideas of how to improve your stance and footwork, that’s great. Just make sure that you stay within the rules of each type of stance and footwork you want to train in.

Everyone innovates sooner or later, that’s how progress is made. A great example of this can always be found in health and fitness, sports, and the human body in general.

Now it’s time to do some jump roping. One of the greatest exercises in human conditioning ever conceived.

Practice Your Footwork With A Jump Rope

If you think jump roping is for play, then think again because it’s an excellent workout. It’s also not an easy exercise to do, but many fighters have learned it and you shouldn’t feel weird about doing it.

How do you know what size jump rope to buy? I know that this question might sound simple, but this is a common question many people ask and it’s a reasonable one. You can do a Google search and you find people asking questions like “How do you know what size jump rope to buy?”.

Don’t just buy any size jump rope, the size of your new jump rope matters. Here’s what to check for when going to buy one.

The first thing to do is get a jump rope that’s good for your specific height. A good indicator of whether a rope fits your body is by standing on the middle of the rope, and taking its handles up to your sides until they reach your underarms.

That’s how you find your correct jump rope size.

How do you Jump Rope in Muay Thai? You can begin to jump roping in Muay Thai by holding the rope up to your waist with your hands close to your sides because if your hands are too far away, then the rope’s length will shorten, causing you to keep stumbling over it.

You measured it for a reason and that’s so you can complete the rotations at the correct rope length and arm distance.

If you already know how to jump rope, that’s fine. I’d still like to go over the process just in case for those people who’ve never done it or for those people who have been doing it incorrectly.

In Muay Thai, rope jumping is a special skill that’s learned and mastered by fighters. The type of jump rope used is special in and of itself, but this information is for another time and can be found in another article we’ll be writing on jump roping and how to choose a jump rope.

To begin this drill you need to stand in front of the rope and begin by rotating only your wrists and shoulders to bring the rope around over your head. When the rope swings forward towards your feet, you need to jump with both feet.

At first, you only want to jump once for every rotation you make. Some people may need to do double jumps for one rotation until they get better. This is because jumping rope has its rhythm that you need to learn and many of us need to develop that rhythm.

One thing that you don’t want to do when you start learning to jump rope is to jump very high just so you can get that rope to pass under your feet. Don’t jump too high because you need to time how long it takes for the rope to swing around before you land.

To make sure that you don’t jump too high, distribute your balance from one foot to the other for every rotation or every other rotation you complete.

Do this until you get better, and then you can start practicing moving around while you’re skipping rope. You can change up your tempo, and eventually implement your footwork drills and techniques into the drill.

Soon you’ll be rewarded for your efforts when you realize how much more agile and nimble you’ve become on your feet, and also by how much your tempo and coordination have been enhanced.

Jumping rope is a complete body workout and is excellent for your health, not just for developing your combat fighting skills. You’re going to feel great during and after training.

Next up is a habit you don’t want to have unless you think your strong chin can handle any blow coming its way. Even then, why would you want the habit of keeping your chin up in a fight?

Keeping your chin up during training or competition is not a smart thing to do it’s one of the worst things you can do. Let’s talk about this for a couple of minutes or so.

Break The Habit Of Keeping Your Chin Above Your Shoulders

If you’ve been keeping your chin above your shoulders while training, or even worse while fighting, then you probably found out the hard way that it’s not good practice. If you have been doing it during your fights, then you’ve found out how much those punches, kicks, and elbows hurt.

The impact of those shots on your jaw and neck may knock you out or even worse, lead to serious damage. One of the most essential parts of your body that needs protection when fighting is your chin.

Some people might say that it’s not intentional and that it’s due to the level of exhaustion they experience. I understand that during a fight you’re going to get tired and you’re going to get a little sloppy. This is precisely the time when you start to raise your head and expose your chin.

This is very serious and it’s something that you need to put a stop to as soon as you notice yourself doing it.

That brings us to the drill you’re going to be practicing to prevent yourself from developing such a dangerous habit, and the great thing about it is, that all you need to perform this drill is a tennis ball.

Can you guess what you’re going to do with the tennis ball? I have to say, it’s a genius and a beautiful thing.

Here’s how to begin this drill. What you’re going to do is take the tennis ball and place it under your chin. Then you’re going to squeeze the tennis ball with your chin and chest. Keep the ball in this position.

We’re not done.

While the ball is between your chin and chest, you can choose to either work on your shadow boxing technique or on a heavy bag to train yourself to raise your chin above your shoulders.

Troubleshooting and fixing this problem is critical when you’re sparring or when you enter a competition.

You have to make sure you don’t drop the ball and that you stay focused. If you’re going to try out this drill because you’re not sure whether or not you raise your chin above your shoulders, then I think that’s a good idea for you to do.

If you do drop the ball, then you now know you have this terrible habit because you’ve lifted your chin too high. If you think about it, it doesn’t take that much for you to loosen your grip to create enough space between your chin and chest for the tennis ball to drop.

You might even be shocked to find out that you’re losing your grip on the tennis ball, and that you’re feeling discouraged every time you drop the ball. Now you have to go pick it up or chase after it, and every time you do, you’re reminded of what this whole drill is revealing about your Muay Thai.

You should find out more early about this weakness than when you’re facing a confrontation, sparring, or in a match. The more you practice the better you’ll get at keeping your chin in place because you know you have to.

Practicing to overcome this vulnerability is not an option if you want to keep yourself from being defeated by your opponent, all because of a bad habit you didn’t choose to break.

Even if you were able to get away with it during some of your fights, sooner or later somebody’s going to catch you off-guard, and you’re going to wish that you put the time in to get rid of this dangerous habit.

Maybe it doesn’t even happen during a fight. It could happen during a sparring session. In my opinion, that’s even more embarrassing because it happened during training and in something that wasn’t as serious as a fight with your reputation at stake.

I like challenging myself and I find this drill and other jump rope drills interesting because most people will shy away from things when they get complicated or hard to deal with.

You wouldn’t think flat feet would be that much of a problem, but it turns out that in Muay Thai it’s a major problem for fighters who suffer from them. Let’s continue into the next drill and you’ll understand what I mean.

Shadowboxing Remedy For Flat-Feet

If you have flat feet and you’re a Muay Thai fighter, you’re jeopardizing your balance. Flat feet limit your mobility and you can’t move offensively or defensively like you should. You’ve got to be able to quickly spring in any direction at any given moment.

I’m going to fix your flat feet, at least while you’re using them in Muay Thai mode.

If you’re not sure that you’re moving around flat-footed, there’s a drill you can use to test yourself. To do this drill you need to get some chalk. Take the chalk and mark your heels with it.

Once you’re done, you can start with your shadow boxing or footwork training.

While you’re training, you’re going to check to see if you’ve marked the ground with chalk. You can also have your training partner watch for any chalk markings you may have made. If you have an instructor, then he will do this for you if he knows about this drill.

If you happen to see that you’re leaving chalk markings on the ground, that is proof that you’ve been lowering your heels. You’ve proven to yourself that your balance is not as good as you thought and that your mobility is also at risk.

At this point, it’s time for you to set some goals for yourself to accomplish during your training. You’re also going to utilize the help of your chalk to achieve these goals.

To begin with, you’re going to perform about five minutes of shadow boxing without lowering your heels on the ground. This means that you’re on the balls of your feet, remember that.

As far as the reasoning behind the five-minute time limit it’s because that’s how long each fight round lasts. This is why you are training on the balls of your feet for five minutes.

If you keep marking the ground with chalk, then just start over until you’re able to complete the five minutes without doing so. Work hard and press on, don’t stop this training even after you’ve completed the five-minute mark. Increase the time as if you were in actual combat.

The next drill is probably making you scratch your head, or maybe you’re experienced enough to know what’s going on here.

Walking Cement Grooves To Fix Your Muay Thai Stance

Walking cement grooves, is another crazy idea, am I right? Can you picture a cement groove? If you can, then you know it’s just a straight line and this is what you’re using to fix your stance.

As I’ve mentioned previously in the article on stance training, you start and end with your stance. Whenever you move your lead foot, your trailing foot needs to make up the same distance so that you can return to your proper stance.

Some of you might be finding this more difficult to carry out than you originally thought. Don’t be discouraged if you are having a hard time with your stance. That’s why it’s the first thing you start training in and why you must master it before you move on to footwork.

What you’re going through is most likely what most fighters normally experience with their rear leg being too far apart from their lead leg, and that they’ve moved outside of their proper stance so much that they’ve now formed a square stance.

Maybe your foot hasn’t moved towards the outside, and it’s moved more towards the inside, causing your stance to become wobbly. If this is happening, now you’ve not only lost your balance but you’ve also completely lost your stance.

Let’s get started with this drill and see about resolving your stance problems.

Okay, so you’re going to walk a straight line to fix this problem. You have a couple of options to choose from. You can walk along the seam of the training mat, you can put tape on the floor and walk along the tape in a straight line, or you can use grooves in the cement outside.

You could probably come up with a million more ideas but let’s keep it simple with what’s readily available and in front of us.

If you choose to go outside you might get some weird looks, or maybe some people will be curious and ask you questions about your training. Maybe you might even find yourself an extra training partner, who knows? The craziest things happen in the most unlikely places.

After you choose your line, stand with the line in between your legs. Take only a couple of steps when you’re first starting and check to see where your feet are. If you find that you need to correct your form because your feet have strayed outside of the line, then go ahead and do so.

Keep practicing this until you feel comfortable walking the whole line without looking down at your feet. You’re going to keep doing this until you’re able to go back and forth along the line without getting out of place.

Once you’ve mastered that, you’re ready to start throwing straight punches, kicks, and elbows throughout the drill. Remember you’re not just trying to stay in a straight line, you want to maintain a good stance throughout.

Here’s a bonus for you.

If you’re able to master the last exercise, try doing the next two. Repeat the same drill but now you’re going to be moving backward along the same line, carrying out the same punches, kicks, and elbows.

Okay, great. After the other drills are mastered, you can complete this drill from side to side.

Good training right?

Get Your Hands Up Or Pay The Price

I’m not trying to hold you up and steal your money. I want to show you how to protect your most important assets, your head and face. Keeping your hands up in Muay Thai is important in helping you protect these assets.

I’d say all fighters know you need to keep your hands up. Probably the most knowledgeable about this fact are boxers. It’s also well-known that Muay Thai is a form of kickboxing, so it’s as important to kickboxers as it is to the sport of boxing.

If you saw anyone getting hit in the head, their normal reaction would be to raise their hands automatically to protect themselves, it’s just an instinct.

So, how come fighters lower their guard by not raising their hands? There are probably different reasons for it, but it could be as simple as forgetting to do so.

Say that a fighter doesn’t raise his or her hands because the reason is that he or she simply failed to remember and it’s at a critical point in the fight, what do you think is going to happen? I’d say that it’s time to pay the price.

If you constantly lower your hands, then you’re fighting against yourself and your opponent. How can you stop yourself from falling into the tendency of dropping your hands? The first thing you need to do is become mindful of this terrible habit of lowering your hands.

I’m about to present to you an idea you may not like. Some of you might find this very extreme or barbaric, but as a fighter sometimes you don’t have a choice. If you have a better idea I appreciate you leaving a comment and letting me know. You’re thinking, “What’s the idea and why is it so bad?”.

Here it is. Every time you lower your hands, have your partner or your trainer slap you in the face.

Ouch, that hurt and yes I’m serious!

Do this when you’re punching the focus pads or when you’re doing your sparring drills.

I can’t tell you how long it’s going to take before you start raising your hands but most people probably start doing so after getting hit close to a dozen slaps. It’s amazing because your hands now are instinctively raised to protect your face.

I mean, imagine someone who’s not even a trained fighter and you slap him or her in the face. Then you attempt a second slap, and he or she will automatically raise their hands, right? Depending on who it is, a person could even avoid the first slap.

Don’t want to be slapped? If you don’t want to get slapped, then stay in shape. I mentioned that some fighters forget to raise their hands, but many fighters simply get tired because they’re not in shape, and their stamina is just not the greatest it could be.

What happens when a fighter gets exhausted? If you find your energy depleted, your fatigue is going to be accompanied by heavy breathing, a lack of oxygen in your muscles, and your hands feeling like they weigh a ton.

Even top fighters are going to get fatigued. The difference between a top fighter and other fighters is that his or her conditioning is in tip-top shape to keep those heavy hands up until the fight’s over.

BONUS: Quick Reference Advice To Keep Your Hands In The Game

1. Keep your hands up and keep them close to your face and head To adequately block any attacks.
2. Don’t ever drop your hands when throwing a punch.
3. Don’t ever drop your hands when you’re bringing a punch back.
4. When in your stance, your fists should always return to the same position.
5. Never drop your hands if you’re throwing multiple combinations because of anticipation.
6. When you’re throwing a punch, keep your other hand up to block any counters.
7. When you’re in the gym don’t be lazy.
8. Bad habits are picked up when you lose focus.
9. Stay focused.

In this article, I have given you a few different approaches to fixing our faulty stance and footwork. We all have bad habits, but we must know how to troubleshoot them.

I hope the takeaway from this article is that there are solutions for most of our bad habits! Use these drills and exercises for your goals as a fighter or as inspiration for other solutions to problems in your life. Just don’t go around slapping people and getting yourself in trouble.

Don’t let the bad things get the best of you.