There isn’t a ton of gear in Muay Thai and the quality of the gear remains more or less the same with some brands being slightly better than others. New to the gear scene is Hyena Hybrid. Started by Mark Beecher of Las Vegas, the former fighter and current trainer for fighters such as Nate Chambers, Kevin Ross, and Chaz Mulkey, Beecher started making his own gear because he wanted his own gym with his own gear in it.
One of the first products he made were shin pads. The shin pads don’t look that much different from your normal shin pad shaped similiar to Fairtex’s with a “spine guard” down the shin. Where the Hyena’s differ is in the thickness, and they are THICK. Beecher wanted to make shin pads that you could kick someone with and not hurt them, and in turn be kicked and not get hurt.
these are indeed THICK
I’ve had these shin pads for a while now, maybe two months, and have been using them pretty regularly. I like them better than my Fairtex shin pads because of the above difference. After sparring I don’t get as many weird and odd bangs. Additionally when I do accidentally kick someone’s elbow it doesn’t leave my foot in pain for days.
The drawbacks I’ve had with these is that they are a little big and thus tend to slip around. At 5’7″ the large shin pads are just a little too large for me. When sparring they will occassionally slip around due to that with the foot strap sliding down or up because my foot and leg aren’t quite big enough. Because of the bad sizing one of the foot straps broke and I had to bring it to the tailors to get it fixed. Beecher has, however, introduced small, and medium sized shin pads which should alleviate the problem in the future for people like me.
When I asked Beecher what his plans were for the design he stated that he didn’t want the design to be static, instead he wanted to encourage feedback on his designs and make them better, which is something that I appreciated.
Overall these shin pads are good. They are thicker than normal which should prevent you from getting, and giving too much pain. They are reasonably priced at $80 with $16 for shipping and handling. Beecher has also recently put out some gloves which would be interesting to check out as well. Order them and other stuff here.
July 14, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Where are they made?