Getting Your Ass Kicked

The last two week’s have been clinch week at Muay Thai.

Clinch is different, because there levels of understanding involved.

Let’s imagine two people get in a fight and one person is really good at striking and the other one isn’t. In that scenerio, it’s still possoble (however improbable) that the person with no skill could catch the highly skilled person with a punch and knock him out.

Like I said, it’s very unlikely, but it could happen.

When it comes to clinch, that’s just not possible. There are levels to it and the person who is a level above will always win.

You can get lost in clinch. If someone understands leverage and has a feel for the positions, you just go flying and you don’t even know why. It’s much easier to get lost when someone is smothering your face.

Tonight we did some live clinch sparing.

I got my ass kicked.

I love clinch. I usually have much better cardio than the people I train with, and so it’s only a matter of time until my opponent gets tired.

But that doesn’t work as well when you clinch against people that are better than you, because they know how to flow and conserve energy and avoid straining themselves.

I was feeling good until I got matched up with Brock.

Then he just completely beat my ass.

It’s humbling. I’m like a foot taller than Brock, but he simply knows the positions. It’s like speaking a language. If someone knows a language better than you do, there’s really nothing you can do to win a debate against that person. They simply know the language and you don’t.