Many of you know I train Muay Thai very regularly. I train at least twice a week, with doubles on Saturday.
Muay Thai is amazing. You can learn so much about yourself by learning to fight.
One of the coolest aspects about Muay Thai is the dichotomy between flow and muscle. To punch harder means you actually punch lighter. Instead of “throwing” a hard punch, you learn to let your body do the work for you. The more you flow, the harder you throw.
The same is true in clinch work.
Now, anyone that knows the slightest bit about clinch work (hi wrestlers) knows that it is by far the most exhausting part of any fight. It’s interesting, because on the outside looking in, it appears as though it’s two people hugging and almost dancing with each other. How hard could that be?
But take it from me, fighting in clinch will make you 10X more tired than throwing punches and kicks at each other. There’s nothing more demoralizing, then coming across someone who is better at leverage than you, and just owns you in the clinch.
You can’t breathe. Worse of all, you know that you can’t do anything about it.
What’s interesting is that clinch work follows the same principles. Eventually, when you get good, you learn how to do a lot of work without expending a lot of effort. You can flow and use your opponents movement and energy against them.
You can trick your opponent into suffocating themselves.
There’s a lesson in there.
One of the many secrets to life is learning how to do more with less effort.