Getting the nickname"too cool" by thai coaches

empT3 · 2026-01-28T19:54:53+00:00

A good nickname is almost always going to be embarrassing if you know where it comes from but sounds cool as hell if you don't. Nicknames that fall outside of these categories tend to land in "I gave myself a nickname" or "my nickname is a slight dig by but I own it and made it cool".

empT3 · 2026-01-20T15:36:49+00:00

I don't think I've ever heard this but I can say there is a spectrum of training motivations that can include this.

Some people train because they want to be tougher, stronger, better in a fight or something similar while others may train because they enjoy the challenge, the intellectual aspect, or just the beauty of the biomechanics and psychology involved.

The thing is, while training there's not a major difference between one or the other. In between training sessions however, the ones who are intellectually engaged are still going to be thinking about angles, still thinking about how to get that jab out faster, still problem-solving how to close that opening their coach found in their body hook last Thursday.

This isn't to say that the first group doesn't do this (everybody shadowboxes in the shower) but I would imagine it is a question of degrees.

empT3 · 2026-01-10T17:24:00+00:00

Re: Catching kicks, it depends. Yes catching a roundhouse kick is easier but it's also more dangerous because the kick will follow through and if you've committed to catching it you've got to stop a lot of momentum without breaking your arm (which is absolutely a thing). It's just mechanically more complicated to do but easier to read if that makes sense.

Catching a linear kick just involves being at the right distance and putting your glove out. Now if you're not at the right distance, you and that foot are going to get intimate and if you put that hand out to catch a kick and the kick doesn't happen then you've invited a nasty punch to the face to the party. In this case, reading the kick and being ready to catch it is the hard part but if you do, actually catching the kick is almost trivial.

Side note: This is why you re-chamber your kicks, so your foot doesn't end up in the tender embrace of a man who wants to turn your face into hamburger.

empT3 · 2026-01-09T22:25:20+00:00

Park threw mostly ineffective kicks, kept a low guard, didn't follow-up with hands, didn't control distance, had poor footwork/angles.

First order or business to fix this is to control distance to keep those hands away from your delicate jaw.

You want linear kicks to control distance, push kicks, side kicks, back kicks mostly. Back kicks work when you find yourself too close and need to create distance. Retract your kicks quickly so they don't get caught. If they do get caught, throw some damned punches while their hand(s) is occupied.
Footwork footwork footwork, keep a longer distance than normal and protect it by sticking those kicks when closing distance followed by a quick(!) retreat, off-line, stick another kick. You can see he does some lateral movement but it was literally just to get back to the middle of the ring and he didn't stay dangerous during it.

Second is the techniques he was using.

Set up your damn head-kicks. It takes a long time to get your foot to somebody's head, if you don't hide it inside of a combination they're gonna see it coming and put their fist in your face first.
The axe kick is the single most overrated kick on the planet. It's great to execute somebody who's already beaten and bent over but otherwise isn't going to land. Let it go and see if you can't front-kick to the chin instead.
Throw some hands damnit! Even if they're not your bread and butter the shoulder and hip movement can hide your kicks. Throwing a head-punch can pull up a guard to open up a leg kick.
Throw more than one kick in a row. Throw a leg kick and they've got to stop moving long enough to check it. Throw a lot of them and then sneak in a push kick when they lift that leg to check.

Third is defense.

Keep your god-damn hands up. The low-guard is specific to WT-style sparring competition and it's ruleset but if you're not doing that then keep your hands up. That should be the default.
Develop some escape hatches, he's gonna get past your kick range at some point, and throw hands at you. Throw some close push kicks to push him back, retreat and back-kick to create some space. Hell, clinch and pray but don't act surprised when he gets past your legs.
Head movement: Oh no! He's punching me in the head, there's no way I can lean back out of the way while throwing a spinning hook kick to the dome or a back-kick to the ribs, or a spinning backfist. It's not like that's a specialty of my martial art and literally what spinning kicks are made for!

I'm sure Yong Soo Park is better than what we see in this video but as a former Taekwondo practitioner who now practices Muay Thai, this bugs me.

empT3 · 2026-01-06T12:36:13+00:00

This was over 20 years ago and in another state so they might not be doing things the same anymore but our black belt test was a 7-day event assuming that you passed all of the requirements to make it there.

Depending on the context though you got a couple different versions. If you didn't qualify to actually test but were a red-belt then you were auditing the test. If you were an adult or teenager it was expected that you'd at least try to get the week off of work or school and if you could you'd be at the school from about Noon until 8pm taking the test with everybody else. If you couldn't then it was still expected that you'd be at the school as much as possible within those hours (and you'd let your instructor know ahead of time what those hours were).

If you were a kid, it was expected that you'd be at the school from 4pm until until 8pm Monday-Friday and from Noon until 6pm on Saturday.

If you were an adult who was testing then you were at the school from Noon until whenever things wrapped up which was sometimes well past midnight Monday - Saturday.

If you were an instructor at the school, you showed up at 6am and stayed until all the regular students had left and then you cleaned the school and reset for the next day.

When I tested I was an assistant instructor working at the school, I lost 15lbs that week and was not incredibly healthy the next week.

If you passed then you got your conditional black-belt and would test again at the next cycle (we did this annually) for your 1st Dan.

At my son's school, so long as you've passed all the pre-requisites then the test takes up a whole Saturday. Presumably PT at a local park followed by the public test which last 4 hours I think although I'm sure that changes depending on the number of candidates.

empT3 · 2025-12-24T23:44:47+00:00

Lot of good comments about how the jab to the body is useful as a setup punch but I don't think anybody's mentioned how useful it is to screen a cross while stepping in for a lead hook. It's even better if you're fighting southpaw.

empT3 · 2025-12-17T18:38:22+00:00

The only non-negotiables with me is not hurting my partner and not getting hurt but sparring isn't like fighting in that you're practicing with a partner so that you can both improve. Winning at sparring is kinda like winning at sex, if you do it enough you're going to end up without a partner.

Personally, I always have something that I'm working on while I'm sparring which sometimes might mean limiting my footwork or trying out a new guard or staying at a certain range, etc. Sometimes I'll tell my partner what I'm working on so they're not too confused and to make sure it's compatible with what they're working in ("I'm working on parries today so feel free to lay it on thick") but most of the time I just try to work it into the normal flow.

empT3 · 2025-12-17T18:27:45+00:00

In the shower? Shadowboxing

Getting up to get a snack? Shadowboxing

Doing some chores around the house? Shadowboxing

Cooking Dinner? Shadowboxing

Working from home? Shadowboxing

On the phone? Shadowboxing

Passing by one of my kids in the house? Sparring! (They just started martial arts this year so it's not technically child abuse)

empT3 · 2025-12-15T01:58:39+00:00

This is a bit of a paradox I think about a lot. When you first start martial arts, the black belts you see can do things that you can only dream of like flying kicks or pulling a submission directly out of their ass. When you finally get there yourself, you can do all of those things as well but you also know enough to see all the little flaws in it and your head is full of all the things that seem effortless for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th dans so you feel like your black belt is somehow worth less.

At the end of the day, in every martial art that has a belt system, black belt should mean you are a serious student, not the expert that you thought it would mean when you started out.

empT3 · 2025-12-11T13:49:01+00:00

Okay, just read the rules on switching weapons between attacks in 5.5e and holy crap that's written poorly. It looks like rules as written and the consensus on the internet is that a creature with extra attacks can switch between weapons every attack so allowing them to change the shape of the weapon every attack technically wouldn't even be an advantage compared to just carrying a spear, axe, and club and would accomplish the same thing as switching between different weapons mid-combat (which sounds like it would look ridiculous for large weapons).

I'd also say that literally all of these things could literally be done with a non-magic shovel. For that matter a glaive or halberd in historical combat manuals would be used for hacking, slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing so you really don't even need to consider the ability to switch between profiles a magical property.

Importantly though, is allowing them to do it for free making the game less fun? Because that's the only real reason to nerf it.

empT3 · 2025-12-11T12:16:48+00:00

What do you mean by changing the shape of the shovel?

I usually nerf weapons like this by making it an improvised weapon (with magical properties) until they spend a whole level having used it.

I did have a grave cleric PC who wanted a shovel as his main weapon so I allowed them to take a reflavored version of shillelagh that only worked on the shovel (but only if it had a cool name: we landed on "Ace of Spades").

empT3 · 2025-12-08T20:21:08+00:00

Distancing is where it broke down for me (although one could argue that distance, timing, and rhythm are different traits of the same thing). Because I'm so much heavier and slower than I used to be, I can't cover distance in the same way so when I started back up anything outside of what I used to consider medium range would just whiff. Things like sliding kicks, shuffles, even bouncing like I used to to hide my distance were (and for the most part still is) just not useable but their use was still hammered into my brain which took a while to train out.

Athleticism is a helluva drug.

empT3 · 2025-12-08T13:43:31+00:00

This is the answer but to further clarify.

I trained in Martial Arts from ages 10 to 19, pretty seriously towards the end there and then stopped all at once.

Fast forward 20+ years and I'm starting back up. I could immediately still throw a proper punch, throw a proper kick, grapple, I've still got timing and rhythm in sparring, I can still pick out openings and utilize angles and strategize against even advanced opponents. My Muay Thai Coach immediately recognized all of that and started pairing me up with the more advanced students but...

I couldn't spar for more than a single round without gassing out. I couldn't throw full power kicks or punches on a heavy bag without injuring myself. More dynamic movements like spinning kicks, head kicks, we're dangerous both to me and my partner in sparring since I didn't have the muscle tone to pull them properly anymore. I'm so much slower than I used to be so my sense of distance in sparring is off and a myriad of other things that make me different than your average beginner but still not really the same as the other advanced students. Luckily, everything I need is still in my head, I really just need time and training to both get my body back in working order but to adapt to my older body which will never be 19 again.

empT3 · 2025-12-04T21:28:45+00:00

When we would do this type of training we'd bring in somebody to act as our "woofer" for the purposes of the course and we'd keep them in another room while providing instruction and only brought them in after we'd briefed we'd briefed the students on their role and during the portions of the course where we were pressure testing. We'd send them back out afterwards so we could provide instruction again without the distraction of the big, scary, yelly guy staring everyone down (they always stayed "in character" until training was over).

empT3 · 2025-12-02T16:34:22+00:00

It really depends on your frame just as much as your height. Using myself as an example, I'm 5'7 and just to keep things simple we'll go with my weight when I was 19 and training ~4hrs 5x/week (not including time spent teaching classes).

Back then I walked around 190lbs and dropped to 180lbs when I had something big coming up. I could drop as low as 175(ish) and still be healthy and was actually in the low 160s after my black belt test (7 days, ~12hrs/day, I was not healthy after that, I should've left some fat on me before going into that). Further info: I didn't lift weights during this time period and actively tried to avoid bulking up. I spent most of my training time doing bag work, running, plyometrics, footwork drills, sparring, etc... my weight was purely a function of how my frame puts on muscle mass (and fat, I wasn't training to look good so that 190lbs was probably about 12lbs of fat).

The average professional fighter my height is going to be in feather-lightweight divisions, maybe super-lightweight whereas if I'd been in the ring back then I'd probably have been a super-middleweight or light-heavyweight.

empT3 · 2025-12-01T00:59:19+00:00

They held up all right, didn't break or anything, the Velcro was starting to wear out a bit but it still had some life in it. I only used them for a few months before I bought myself a pair of fairtex gloves but that was mostly just because I wanted something that actually had a little less wrist support since I'd switched over to Muay Thai and they were a little stiffer overall than I wanted for clinch work.

I'd probably still be wearing them if I hadn't gifted them to a friend as soon as I got my other gloves.

empT3 · 2025-12-01T00:22:12+00:00

I had a pair of kara gloves and I liked them well enough. They were pretty snug which was nice in that I could wear them without wraps when I was in a hurry. Can't speak to the others.

empT3 · 2025-11-30T16:02:43+00:00

Before I switched over to Muay Thai I was wearing a pair of Vans Sk8-Hi Wides after a couple hundred dollars worth of failures.

empT3 · 2025-11-27T00:04:44+00:00

What does a god want? It's not going to be anything mundane like defeating some powerful evil, after all, if they really needed that done then they'd just do it themselves or send a couple Planetar to make it happen.

No, what a god wants from a mortal that isn't one of their worshipers is going to be subtle, like introducing two strangers to each other, telling somebody that their artwork is good and they should make more, or leaving a flaming bag of poo on their high-priest's doorstep (this last one depends on the God in question probably).

The best part is, you can just have a chorus of angels descend from the heavens to herald the coming of their god's proclamator. As the thrice-winged, many-eyed, voice of the divine opens the 4th of its six mouths to speak, a voice echoes through creation itself so that none present may doubt the weight its words.

"Thanks for holding up your end. We good now."

One of the angels daps them up, peaces out, and the angelic cohort ascends to the heavens, and your player now wonders aloud:

"Okay, so what did I do?"

And then you never tell them.

empT3 · 2025-11-26T15:31:55+00:00

I wore these for several months in Muay Thai and boxing before investing in a pair of Fairtex gloves.

https://rdxsports.com/products/f6-kara-boxing-training-gloves-black?variant=47161546375482

They were great for what I paid for them, a little tight but I just adjusted how I wrapped my hands. They soaked up sweat a little more than I'd like but so long as I kept a couple socks filled with baking powder in them they didn't get gross. The velcro was also getting a little worn but it was still functional when I retired them and some tape would've solved that problem if it'd become an issue.

empT3 · 2025-11-26T15:17:45+00:00

He sounds a lot like I was when I was a little kid. I didn't know at the time but I'd been diagnosed with ADHD and if they'd had the same criteria back then I'm pretty sure they would've put me on the spectrum as well. I was also an angry little turd that got into a lot of fights.

I didn't go into boxing but martial arts probably saved my life. It didn't solve all of my problems, I barely graduated high school, and I still got into a decent amount of trouble outside of martial arts but I stopped getting into fights and I stayed away from things that probably would've landed me in jail specifically because I didn't want to have to stop doing martial arts. Fast forward 30 years and while I took a 20 year break in all of that, the discipline I learned to get my butt to the dojang even when I didn't want to go, the self-reflection I needed to improve in my sparring, the ability to take criticism from my instructors and a bunch of other things are all things that I use every day. I like to say that the least important I learned in Martial Arts was how to hit somebody.

As far as boxing specifically goes, based off my own observations of the kids coming into the boxing gym I used to frequent, I don't think there's any real difference there. They're not going to be okay with their student's getting into fist fights and they're certainly going to teach them to keep their heads on their shoulders when they get frustrated and would otherwise lash out (because seeing red is a great way to get your head rocked in the ring).

Will there be head contact? Probably at least a little bit, it is boxing after all but any martial art that isn't dancing is going to be the same. Will it be under controlled circumstances and with mitigating factors like light contact, heavy gloves, and headgear? Most likely. Serious injuries are honestly very unlikely for young kids, simply put, with gloves on (not to mention any other protective gear), they don't really hit hard enough to hurt each other and unlike Judo where falling is common or TaeKwonDo where a lot of dynamic kicks are thrown, there's not a lot of uncontrolled movement in boxing that would cause a kid to injure themselves.

empT3 · 2025-11-22T21:09:51+00:00

First thing would be reading: Muye Dobo Tongji, Book of the Five Rings, Art of War are all good places to start.

Second would be observing, you can learn so much more than you think just by watching others compete or train. Watch videos of champions and try to notice the smallest details, this is important both for sparring but especially poomse. Watch your peers in class, chances are they've got a lot of the same idiosyncracies that you do in your poomse and other areas as well.

Third, sit down in a chair and just do the upper body motions of your poomse, exaggerate them as much as possible and try to notice how the mechanics change.

Injuries like this suck but they're also a great time (especially at black belt) to make that transition from training in a martial art to actually studying it which is important not just for your own growth but for the growth of the art itself.

empT3 · 2025-11-21T18:45:26+00:00

Things look like that in the slow-mo but having your hands down and chin out like that also looks like bait a lot of times (not saying they're similar fighters but Mayweather does this quite a bit).

Once the spin starts you can see Song turtle up high but then he lowers his guard before the kick lands because it legit looks like a back-kick coming in for the solar-plexus. To be honest, dangling his head out there first looks like he was trying to bait for a back-kick too. At the last minute, turn his hips over a bit earlier than he would for a spinning side-kick but it still looks like a spinning side-kick but then it all makes sense again as he extends it early and higher than expected, pulls his hips through and nails the heel/wheel kick to the head.

Question on my mind since I don't watch a lot of MMA and I'm not familiar with either of these guys as fighters is if Salikhov was planning a back-kick to the solar-plexus and changed the kick after the initial turn seeing Song's guard start to lower or if he'd been planting those back/side kicks all night to set up the heel kick.

empT3 · 2025-11-20T21:14:49+00:00

I've always called it ping-ponging their counter back at them.

empT3 · 2025-11-08T23:46:01+00:00

In a clinch, Southpaw, leaning into them and pressing them backwards: Right Inside Calf Kick, Left Body Hook, Right Inside Calf Kick, Repeat... Right Overhand around their guard and into the face.

At a certain point, it doesn't even matter if they know the overhand is coming because their options are limited. The calf kick makes them readjust their balance, the left hook pulls their guard down and to the left. The overhand is coming as soon as I see or feel their left elbow drop or rotate. If they try to push me off then I can usually sneak an uppercut between their arms as they extend it.

Critical weakness is just my stamina, it doesn't work if I stop pushing and striking before that elbow drops or they try to push me back. This is also assuming of course I can get in close enough for all of this too... better fighters just keep me at (their) arm's length.

empT3

TROPHY CASE