Damien Trainor's video: Muay Thai - make your opponent do what you want

A key skill in any combat sport is to learn how to make your opponent do what you want them to do. If you can master this then you will find it easy to set them up. ⁣ Due to our first contest I knew that Rungchai had a good side teep/push kick. I wanted to bait him in to using it on me so this time I could counter it effectively. ⁣ ⁣ If you watch the video you can see me using small nudging steps to emulate as if I was coming in to attack. Rungchai reacts by raising his leg ready to kick. The constant feinting makes him second guess himself and throws it at the wrong time (but the right time for me). ⁣ ⁣ From here I catch the kick and sweep him to the floor. The key thing you must notice is that every time I nudge forward, I’m not actually putting myself in any danger, I just make look as if I’m coming in. The reason for this is to make sure that if I cock it up I’m still in a safe position. If I had gotten too close or my timing was off I could quite easily have been caught by a number of strikes. ⁣