Switching between Karate and Muay Thai

My Experience

Muay Thai is a great form of Martial Arts if you are looking for a close-range hand to hand combat, so it happened that in the year 2020 during the lockdown I decided to learn a new form of martial arts and I had few options like kickboxing, taekwondo, etc so out of all I decided to learn Muay Thai and managed to learn most of it in 15 days through Youtube. Before this, I only knew only one form of Martial Arts that is Karate which I learned for approximately 2 years.

So after I learned Muay Thai one of my main issue was that I used to mix both the styles which is not bad if you are going for MMA but as a martial artist one should know to use only one art at a time when one wants to fight in particular fighting style. So I decided to sort this issue out and try to make a video while doing both the fighting styles separately.

I will say that I partially succeeded in it as while throwing punches in Karate style I sometimes used to throw hook punches and similarly while use front/forward kicks I used to mix both of them. Below are some of the issues I have discussed in detail that can help you to effectively switch between Karate and Muay Thai.

Movement

But the main issue was with the movement, as in Karate you are supposed to be hopping while fighting which is not the case with Muay Thai, in Muay Thai one is supposed to be moving a step rather than hopping you are supposed to take a step forward, backward or in whatever position you are supposed to move, which often used to confuse me in the beginning and especially when I used to switch between both the fighting styles. It took me little time to settle this issue to a large extent as I practiced more and more of it separately and then switched back and forth between these styles.

Guard & Stance

Another issue while switching both the styles is that the stance in Karate is more wider and the guards are supposed to be more towards the outside in alignment with your forward leg and the fist is close to the chest or a little distant from your chest. This is so that you can defend against attacks like punches and kicks while they are still away from your body and hence do very little damage to you. So do remember to change your guard and stance while switching between the styles.

While in Muay Thai the guards are close to the face while protecting the face so that any attack that comes on the face is blocked by the guards and does not reach the face.

Blocks

While there are not many blocks for punches and kicks, there are only three options

1) take hits on your guard

2) dodge the attacks while moving your neck or body

3) to block the roundhouse kicks you can use 'Check' which is basically lifting your leg up to a 45-degree angle to block the kick.

Kicks

The Kicks in Muay Thai are supposed to be more aggressive and damage inflicting than the kicks in karate. The forward kick in Muay Thai is called as 'Teep' and is supposed to be a thrusting kick with the top of the foot pointing outside and is aimed towards the center of the abdomen.

While in Karate kicks are a little less aggressive, require a little less force and also have a recoiling sort of mechanism which is not there in Muay Thai, the recoiling mechanism absorbs shocks and gives a soft landing to your foot while also protecting your knee joints from damaging. You also have many varieties of kicks in Karate like the front kicks, roundhouse kick, tornado kick, back kick, revolving kick, etc.

Conclusion

The only way I could figure out to keep these two separate is that practice these two forms of martial arts separately as much as you can and while practicing their respective techniques keep in mind how the same technique is different in the other form.

Secondly whenever you switch between these two forms take few seconds to keep in mind the stance, guard, kicks, punches and blocks that are used in this respective form. Try to minimize the time gradually as in a real fight you will never get this time to set your mindset.

I hope that my experience and tips will help you to synchronize between these two fighting styles.