Muay Thai Sport Science
March 9, 2009 by nopstar
Hi guys- I’d like to introduce you to Matt Obrien. Matt is a friend of mine from the Fairtex and Fight & Fitness days in SF Bay. Matt has spent considerable time analyzing and disecting the body mechanics of world class Nak Muays. This is his premier post for MMT, hopefully we can convice Mr. Matt to keep dropping some science on us.
Muay Thai Sport Science by Matt Obrien
Sport science! It seems like there’s not much out there in general…and specifically for thai boxing.
I went to school with the sole purpose of figuring out how to improve my thai boxing. With that in mind, I managed to get a professional thai kickboxer (record: 68-15-3) and dragged him into the laboratory. I also took a randomly selected college girl (record: 0-0-0!) who had taken some 24Hour Fitness aerobic kickboxing classes.
I made them fight to the death. Just kidding. What I really did was record them in 3D, both doing a low kick to the thigh. I used advanced calculus and mechanics concepts to derive about a gazillion numbers: joint angle information, speed, force, etc. It was like I was in that movie The Matrix there for a while. But without the glamour and movie star paycheck.
Seriously, I wrote a massive study on these two individuals. I wanted to find out: what makes the pro good…and what makes the unskilled person, well, not-so-good? The key is to do a comparison. If we try to see the differences between him and her (pro and beginner, respectively), we can figure out how much better body mechanics the pro has. Then, we can apply that to our own training.
(By the way, this is what we usually do in the gym anyways – we watch our teachers, training partners, etc, and see what they’re doing, and try it out for ourselves. The process in sport science is very similar – but a little better, because we can see the movement in 3D. Have you ever seen a kick from overhead? Also, we can watch the same kick over and over again – and really let it sink in. Not to mention the quantitative part. The numbers.)
Here is an vid of the pro and the beginner:
Here are some results:
The pro’s leg kick was a lot more direct than the novice. See this image, which show the overhead view (and I apologize for the lousy stick figures! Hey, this is sport science, right, we’re not going for looks!):
Although a leg kick is a “roundhouse” kick….it’s really not that round at all. Hummm…chew on that one for a while. Post your comments!
Next up, if you look at the support leg during the kick, it’s clear that our college girl makes a classic beginner mistake. She doesn’t have the coordination necessary to rotate on her support leg! See below (it’s a little hard to see because the feet are small):
Since the graphics are small, let’s graph the rotation as well. See below:
It becomes clear that rotation is a big part of the kick. The expert’s foot rotated 42.8º. The novice’s foot rotated 0.5º. This rotation allows for successful rotation to occur at the hips and shoulders. There is something you really need to work on when you are kicking the bag.
Let’s work our way up. We started with the foot. So when it comes to the hips, what were the differences there? This picture shows that a solid kicker really can rotate the pelvis.
Since we are dropping the science here, another graph is in order. (After all, we have number for every joint at every 1/60 second of the kick.) Check it out:
The expert has a phenomenally clean, sharp curve (blue). The beginner (pink)? Well, not so clean.
The graph above also shows how unstable the novice was, AFTER she hit the target. Aside from a flatter curve, which shows less pelvic rotation, the professional finishes the kick a lot earlier. Look at all the wibble-wobble at the end of the pink curve. The novice actually spent a whopping 0.9 seconds getting her balance after hitting the pad (and if you watch the video, you she also took extra steps during this process). Think about this for a second…crappy pelvis rotation…slow return to the original stance. What this says is that the pelvic rotation in the kick plays a KEY ROLE in returning to your stance after you hit the target. THINK ABOUT THAT WHEN YOU ARE KICKING PADS!!! Judge for yourself!
There are a lot more insights into the kick that I gained as a result of doing this research on the low kick. I also got a lot of headaches. Regardless, if this feature gets any interest, I’ll come back with Part 2 of the low kick, and bust out some more information. If you like it, please let us know.
Train hard…and SMART!
Excellent article and very informative! Thanks for sharing your research. Looking forward to more from you Mr. Obrien.
p.s. that’s Enn right?
Matt-
I new about the rotation of the plant foot, but Looking at the graph of the girl, and her wide arc… is that akin to a looping hook versus a tight hook? the tighter the rotation the more power? I’ve never actually thought about that. Thanks for puting this together great insight, article.
Great post. I’d love to see more of this – and on more techniques too.
Both points make good sense. The plant leg rotation is a classic obstacle to the beginner along with throwing the hips into the kick. The curve of the kick also makes good sense. Watching beginner and advanced thai boxers I’ve noticed the beginners have a wider, looping kick that goes out wide and takes a lot of time to strike the opponent. When I describe the advanced kick to students I tell them to think of it as half round kick and half straight forward….
Looking forward to more.
Informative article – I’d definatley like to read the more on this.
Will be looking forward to part 2 and any other future posts.
dont think this needed an analysis…
it doesnt help that one s female and ones a male.
Yes, that’s Enn! I think the southpaw stance gave it away! Matt, this is a good analysis, but don’t you think it would be nice to have a larger sample size for both control groups?
SE-
Why don’t you think this needed analysis?
Nice piece guys. Thanks. The overhead view stick figures was very eye-opening for me… I’ll be looking forward to more stuff like this.
I didn’t recognize him without a drink in his hand hahaha
hip rotation almost seems to come back at the exact spot as it started out from, looking forward to some more graphs
Hey,
Does it make a difference whether or not you swing your arm while throwing a kick?
yes-
It acts to counter balance the rotation. Try sprinting and keep your arms still. actually shit, I’m not the expert… Matt you wanna jump in?
I’m wondering if you took any data regarding how fast the ankle+hips rotates in relation to how much surface area of the support foot is on the ground during rotation?
I would think the less foot on the ground the faster you would spin? Would that ultimately mean that being off the ground would yield the fastest spin?
yknocka – while you may spin marginally faster, you still want good contact on the ground as without it, you lose the power in your kick.
agree Frank, , with the balls of the foot planted as an achor it allows the hip rotation and counter torquing, leave the ground too early, and you are losing power..u lose your anchor, thereby losing power. I am sure that it looks quite nice to leave the ground, but I have heard the power is less, but then again if u connect upstairs you wont need max power=). Does anyone have any insight as to this.?
After college physics…I imagine it is energy transfer. As you put your weight down on the left leg for a right kick, you exert force on the ground which in turn returns an equal amount of force (Newtons law-). As you start pivoting and engaging the hips and arms you can multiply the force, and pivoting on the balls of your foot ensure max hip angle w/o losing contact. As long as your are connected to the ground, the energy connection remains..hence the powerband. Break the connection by jumping and you remain wiht whatever power you already built up..
Thats the old college try!=) btw I have never seen my Khru leave the ground for a high ick. I have tried it, but they never teac us that..so that alone tells me something
Here is the real kicker. here we are using fight science to perfect our kick. A long long time ago when this art was evolving, how did they know to do it this way?!! This is what I find amazing about the tradtions and cultures of older civilaizations. They perfect things that only now we comprehend using our “modern” science and technology
btw thank you for the upload, nop, this was a cool piece. hope we can see more..especialy on knees…!
i thoroughly enjoyed this, thanks. I agree, some knee business would be awesome. Even though that one television show with Melchor Menor kneeing that trillion dollar crash dummy was silly, it was interesting.
The diagram of the path of travel of the foot is the most interesting for me here. It seems other people feel this way too. It’s very surprising that the foot effectively travels in a straight path after all of the emphasis we are placing on rotating the rest of the body: throw arm back, pivot the foot, turn the hip over, etc. If you really think about it though, it is all of this body rotation that is allowing us to throw the leg along a straight line through what could be thought of as a projection on the xy-plane. (it may arc through the z-direction if you think about it). Good stuff.
I agree with the comment about a larger sample size though. Different builds might make for nuances in body mechanics.
the comment about a woman vs. a man might be relevant actually, given body structural differences with regard to hips.
Well I don’t quite agree with this. As someone mentioned, the sample size is too small to make an accurate judgement.
Rotation of supporting foot and hips are something that’s taught as the basics of muay thai when kicking. However different fighters kick differently. If you watch Sakmongkol kick, you can see that he has very little hip and foot rotation as compared to the pro here, but yet Sakmongkol is one of the hardest kickers around and a champion fighter.
It also very much depends on how the pro fighter wishes to kick. Was he given any instructions on how he should kick? Was he trying to kick as fast as possible and still make a huge impact? If he were told to kick with all his might, without having to make contact as fast as possible, would he then kick with a larger arc to gain more momentum?
I think this would be more accurate if you can do this analysis on more pro fighters and observe the common patterns.
How is this comparison needed at all? I agree with Horc00 and others here. Who doesn’t know that a pro is almost always better than an amateur?
Stack and others- I don’t know that this entire exercise is actually “needed,” however, it is interesting to note the differences, hence why I was asking for the larger control groups.
What tong po said, and as stated in the article: the interest is obviously not in “who is better, a pro fighter or a girl in a cardio kickboxing class,” the interest is in specific nuances of body mechanics that might come to light once analyzed in depth using sophisticated modern techniques. and charts, lots of charts.
so i’ve got a friend who’s contributing to the community and to the blog, writing for you. He spends several years studying the subject, and you guys are like this is totally unecessary? He should have thought of that before wasting all those years right?
The point of the post isn’t to illustrate that a pro is better then an amatuer. It’s to show you what’s going on behind a proper kick. A lot of you know to rotate your your plant foot, etc. but I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen it broken down like this. I’m sure there are plenty of site’s you can go to to read about the mechanics of a Muay Thai kick right?
speak your mind, this why we’re here. what I’m not down with is people dismissing the time and effort of a community member who’s sharing with you guys.
I liked the article and thought it was one of the best reads I have had about muay thai in a while. BTW I thought that was enn just by the way he kicked. I remember thinking How big his legs were for such a small person.
As for the “Necessity” I think it is totally relevant and Agree with Nop it isnt that the pro is going to kick harder than the novice/tae bo practitioner it is why.
Great read and I hope to see more.
Hey nop, don’t get the wrong idea. We aren’t dissing anyone here. In fact I find this quite an interesting read and it sure opens up a lot of new ideas. I believe most of the guys here are giving comments which they feel would make the research here better. I like the intention and purpose behind this study. Just that I don’t think the mechanics of how one pro fighter kicks is representative of all pro fighters.
Well besides finding out how pro fighters kick, perhaps it might be interesting to also find out why pro fighters kick the way they do. How does hip/foot rotation affect the kick? How does the arc change with regards to how pro fighters wish to kick? How does all these change the stability or the momentum of the kick?
That’s just my 2 cents though =)
I’m not dismissing the time or effort either Nop. As a study it’s ok but there is precious little to determine from it other than that someone who knows what they’re doing is better than someone who isn’t. It’s not as easy as boiling it down to physics and a graph (however interesting it is).
I hate using this example but someone like Hoost kicks completely wrong and he had one of the nastiest kicks in his heyday. Hoost absolutely had a wide looping angle on his kicks and his punching to put it mildly was kind of sloppy as well including his weird long body hook. Now may be it’s just that K-1 heavies are more sloppy but even in that instance my point sort of makes sense.
Like horc it’s just my 2 cents and I am glad for the study.
I guess it would be good to see beginner-amateur-pro charts. It would be good to see how the pros kick differently from regular guys who train MT.
This is Matt here…thanks to everyone for their interest and responses!! I really enjoyed reading them. The fact that the post stirred up some conversation was great. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on the post.
* natemuaythaimaster, I love your conclusions from the graphs, regarding the symmetry of the graph! That one graph says a lot, doesn’t it? Basically, the kick is only halfway through when impact occurs!
* Nopadon, that was an excellent parallel between a beginner’s looping punch and a beginner’s looping kick. I suspect very similar mistakes are made!
* yknocka, neither kickers were coached in any way other than saying, “Give us your best kick, whatever that is.” Anything more would pollute the study!
* great stuff about the arm swinging…more on that in Part II!
* As for the interaction with the ground that happens as the kicker rotates on the support leg…we were able to calculate how much of his/her weight was pressing down. I’ll save that for Part II as well!
* Stack — sloppy is great too. I’m just not personally too interested in how to throw sloppy kicks and punches, effective as they might be in K1 or other competitions. I love muay thai for it’s precision, efficiency and power, so that’s what I’ll be studying. (It would be freaking cool to check out Hoost tho!! I’m with you on that one.)
A lot of the comments were concerned with the flaws of the study, and reasons why it may not be the ultimate final word on how to train for Thai boxing (imagine that!)!
As far as the scope of the study goes…well…that’s exactly it. The scope of the study was not some insane, multi-year, multi-million dollar effort involving hundreds of researchers. There’s very little funding for sport science, and when it comes to muay thai, you may as well forget about it right now. This was me working my ass off in college. If you find anyone with a few million they want to put towards researching muay thai…please, don’t hesitate to give them my email! LOL However — regardless of the limits of the study — there is still a really large “bang” for the buck available here. I suspect nobody has done much of this, and there are issues that nobody has formally approached yet. So, please, use it, don’t abuse it!
Folks seemed concerned that there was a “small sample size.” Obviously, this was not a statistical study. Not all useful studies have to be, especially in sport research. It was not meant to be empirical in any way; it was merely a study of one skilled kicker’s body mechanics. (And, for the record, If I was stupid enough to claim that the mechanics of how one pro fighter kicks is representative of all pro fighters, I’d hope you guys would roast me!) Still, there is a lot to learn by watching one particular skilled guy do what he does. As a matter of fact, I bet that’s what everyone who trains in muay thai does every day — watch their instructor closely. In this study, I was able to not only watch the kick closely, but I watched it faster than the human eye could; I quantified all the joint angles and calculated a variety of forces; and, I was able to do it in 3D. It’s like regular observation, just on crack! : )
Ok, this is turning into a novel. Once again, thanks for EVERYONE’S comments and support. I guess I’m going to get to work on Part II!
~ Matt
Good job, Too Tall Jones!
kru told me to rotate my hip and spin on the balls of my feet in the beginning. then i remember him telling me like 30 times to keep rotating my hip. dont need some cracker ass analysis…..for real. everyone has a different style[AS WELL AS PHYSIQUE]. it might be interesting or useful for someone who wants some more instruction in addition to their JWP training DVD.
padkeemaw,
they had fighters of a whole ‘nother level back in the day. martial arts has nothing to fucking do with modern science or graphs….they had more culture, discipline, focus, and genuine need to learn the art. that is ten times better than a chart..
And yet you continue to post in the comments of this article. That’s fine if you can’t grasp how this kind of stuff helps. But you probably aren’t going to convince anyone else that the analysis is useless. Especially with your condescending attitude.
I think this is a really cool way of thinking about ways to analyze and potentially improve technique. It is ignorant to dismiss the roll of sport science in any athletic activity. If you can get something out of this, then great. If you don’t, then thats fine, but don’t try to suggest that it is useless. In fact, for those of you that think this is irrelevant, I heard that you can strengthen your shins by kicking bamboo plants and hand/eye coordination by catching fly’s with chopsticks – give it a shot.
I would love to find out how exactly do the champions lowkick.
I have seen different Krus teaching low kick differently.
Some Krus say you need to twist your supporting leg at the ball of your foot (similar to doing body/head kick) While other Krus say you need to keep your foot planted. I use the second technique and works well for me, but I would like to know exactly how most top thai fighters lowkick.
SE – quit being a dork. If you don’t like the information, simply go to the next post. Or to a different blog. Your negativity gets you nowhere.
Personally I love stuff like this. The sample size doesn’t matter, as the project was not intended to prove or disprove anything, simply showing the differences between a skilled person and a beginner. I took something away, a few things actually. Which is worth the price of admission.
SE,
Evidently in your presumptuous haste to self aggrandizement you misconstrued the intent of my content to a parody of the original.
IN rudimentary terms, I was merely stating that only now are we fundamentally appreciating and quantifying what they developed back then with the use of science.
We obviously are making the same point, yet we obviously have very paradoxical ways of conversing with others.
I appreciate your comment to me, but you may get more bang for your buck on a yahoo or youtube group
its safe to presume any thai kru would laugh at this shit. i feel the same way. sorry.
Yeah it’s safe to say that because Thai’s are totally opposed to new ideas. Maybe I should start kicking trees so I can start working with “real thai” kru. Oh yeah should I definitely drop the interval training too.
“its safe to presume any thai kru would laugh at this shit. i feel the same way. sorry.”
You could ask the Thai kru who was part of the project. He wasn’t laughing; he thought the whole project was cool.
I could see him thinking you are pretty lame though. Because of your misguided attitude. Fortunately, most Thai boxers I’ve met are pretty down-to-earth, friendly and open-minded. Can’t say the same for everyone posting comments though!
SE is showing everyone what a big man he is. Good work and more power to you!!!
You may have mentioned it in your work, but it may be good also to notice the angle of the shin kicking. You can clearly see on the thumbnails from the kick that the pro arrives at +- 0° and the girl is like at 45° with her foot, which totaly changes the impact.
Nice article!
cheers
Without a doubt there is way too many ‘krus’ in the world.
*litle edit:
of course this comes from the hips rotation.
this reminds me of that history channel show, the human weapon. hahaha
mastamax, that is a good point. I think we got some specific numbers for that.
Will check out and see if I can dig up more detail about that for Part Two!
Cool post, More of that please, I love emerging myself into analytical thoughts about Muay Thai!! Would love to see if you can incorporate some Clinch techniques in there, Though I think it would be a bit harder, but hope to see more!!
[...] Muay Thai Sport Science : My Muay Thai I like how they break it down on this page….puts a little science behind it all… [...]
very nice and interessting post- Thank`s mate