Got my ass kicked in Muay Thai today

Nnedd said:
Give it another six monthes of sparring and you'll be amazed.

As for the flinching, try working only defense against a controlled opponent who isn't trying to take your head off. Let him land shots on you, lighter shots that won't do serious damage. You'll get over the flinching

As a kid I would turn away from hard hit baseballs, so my dad put me in the back yard and pelted me on a regular basis. I'm not afraid of baseballs or punches anymore.
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I have to agree with you. For some reason, that's the threshold for everyone. If you can spar consecutively for 6 months, you'll see yourself improve faster you would in TMA.

In my ol gym, my Kru put me in against one of the pros training for a fight on my first day of training; granted I had experience competing savate, I was still fish out of water in the ring. I stayed with it; busted shins, black eyed, hair line fracture on my ribs; but after a few months, I started to feel comfortable and actually hanging with most of the guys.

He (my Kru) also asked me to fight smokers after month of training. I didn't do it, but atleast two guys that started with me did. They bought had a long successful amature career. I started fighting smokers after 6 months; it's the best feeling. I still miss it. Wish I still heel lke i did before.

Enjoy your training.
 
Thanks, there's been a lot of good input on this thread, I've gone over every page.

The two tall guys a went with were not instructors they were just students. I don't think they knew I was new to sparring though. I didn't say anything. I just kind of went in and got handled. My gym is kind of lame about sparring too. They make you take a test. Its not an insanley serious place. Most people there just do it for fun but there are a decent amount of guys who compete too.

The instructor is about my height but probably has 30-45lbs on me. He knew I was new. I remember him telling me once before in practice to try and relax while the punch is being thrown. I did learn a lot from my experience with him.

I'm definetly going to keep at it. As painful and humbling as it was, it was kind of an addictive experience. I was just shocked about how difficult it was for me to integrate all the technique and speed into sparring. It's like you have to compeletely start over and slowly work to integrate that progress you made from the drills into sparring.

Seeing my instrucor effortlessly step and slide away from a tentitively thrown low kick was especially humbling.

Thanks for the advice though it is very encouraging.
 
You feel embarrassed? Don't, I got it much worse than you in my last class.

It was my last class before coming back to Trinidad, my Kru gave me the honor of playing with the A-Team (my name for the elite group in the class) as a send off. I've only been training for two months so was kinda nervous about sparring in front of the class against guys (and girls) much better than me. All in all I was very happy with my performance, I even got the better of one of the new athletes, he wasn't dominated but I controlled the session, it also should be noted that the "fighters" were all amature fighters, in fact the one I beat was having his first fight that Saturday (which he lost by unanimous decision in a very good match). After a short break my Kru called me out and then proceeded to tool me using nothing but his legs. As soon as I would rush in to trade he would kick be back to the outside. He push kicked me to the point where I was about to vomit. Quite honestly the most embarrassing, degrading moment in the gym, mind you I sucked it up and kept on going at him.

Now in hindsight that session against my Kru made me realize a huge hole my game, I'm too boxing-centric. I have my kicks in order but I just love my hands. I could have preformed a lot better against my Kru had I used my kicks to get on the inside.

I'm still fucking bitter about that class though, every time I think about it it makes me wanna knock that fucking smirk off his face :mad:
 
Mastodon2 said:
If you dominate your partners the first time you are sparring, then its bad news; you are probably training with a bunch of lame ducks and will need new partners to if you want to get better.

If its not tough, you won't get better. Progress comes quicker in adversity.
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that's a great point, who wants to train with a bunch of guys you can dominate or even hang with your first time ever sparring, not me
 
utd1977 said:
so good that the uk has had more world champs than the us in fact the first non thai world champ
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you misunderstand the quote you are commenting on, read it again
 
I'd be thankful that your sparring partners are better then you, When your sparring partners are cake walks, then its something to worry about tbh..

Sounds like your having fun though, so gratz to you.
 
You got served up a heaping helping of humble pie. Sounds like you needed it.
 
I've been boxing for a little while and have worked my way up to sparring now. We have a specific sparring class and I've been doing some one on ones with my instructor so I kind of know what I'm doing. It's helpful when we spar for 5 rounds and I get bruised up a little. Even as we go he tells me little things to pay attention to. I like this approach because it will help me understand how to react when I start attending the class. There are a few guys that came into it without any experience and they were shocked at the difference between drills and sparring.

I say stick with it. If you can, try to find a partner that you're comfortable with and get in the ring to work on some fundamentals. You can actually make sparring really drill-intensive. One round you might just work on defense. One round you might just work on slipping the jab and countering. One round may be just checking kicks.

If you do that two or three times and then get back in the ring for real...you might find that your confidence is a little higher and it will be more rewarding.

Just a thought.

Good luck!
Dan
 
remember its better to be shit, then u can only improve if u were the best u were not being challanged, dont worry same shit happened to me,
 
Nothing wrong with getting beat up in sparring.

Keep your head up and keep moving forward.
 
youve been training for 6 months and only just started sparring?

thats crap.

Either way, the biggest thing about sparring is not being afraid of getting hit. Overcome that and thats atleast 50% of it right there.
 
Fighting Sports revolve around getting hit so you better not mind and start getting used to it. Hopefully you weren't turning your back or putting your head down in addition to the flinching.
Try to focus more on doing the hitting with controlled aggression and ignore the hits that are landed on you completely.
Six months is a long time to train without even some light sparring , and then to get thrown into a hard sparring session with a pro who has reach on you is pretty fucked up and or stupid on your trainers part in my opinion.
Getting schooled in a sparring session is bad but at least you know where you stand and what needs to be worked on .
It is a lot better to be humbled in the gym than to be over confident and get KTFO in front of a large crowd of people in an actual match.
Good luck .
 
I dunno... Some of the more experienced guys here might disagree with me, but I always thought the point to sparring was to improve your technique... Not to "win".

Every time you got rocked was an opportunity to learn. Think about why you were getting hit. Ask your trainer for advice on what you were doing wrong and how to fix it.

In short, ego is bullshit and only hampers progress. No offense intended, but that's how I'm interpreting things here.
 
Sparring is difficult. It's a hell of a lot harder than people think. You can train for years and have all the moves down perfect and look like hell the first time you spar. It's when you go from playing to the real deal of what your learning. Applying what your learn is not as easy as it sounds.

Also, you may have done better than you thought. It's hard to know whats really going on in the middle of the action. A LOT of times when I'm sparring I feel like I didn't do a thing to the opponent only to have others tell me I landed a lot of good shots and my defense was good etc. I think it's because you literally have to accept that you are going to get hit a lot. You think you can go in there and avoid everything and land all your strikes, but in reality, you give and take back and forth.

Don't worry, it gets better and better. This is the part where you really learn your strengths and weaknesses and everything starts to come together :)
 
i've been training muay thai for just over a year and from my experience you absolutely have to practice sparring to be good at sparring. the fastest hands and most sound technique tend to go out the window when you are worried about getting punched in the face or (worse) clinched and kneed in the gut.

my first time sparring i looked like a complete tool swinging wildly, hands down, terrible footwork... it takes time.

there are drills that will help you keep your wits in the face of return fire. you and a partner can both wear gloves and do all sorts of attack/evade and counter drills.

i can't speak to your gym, but where i am from we have no fear asking questions (i.e. "why do i suck so bad at sparring?"). usually if I point out where I feel weak the instructor will throw in a drill or two to work on it.
 
vjvj said:
I dunno... Some of the more experienced guys here might disagree with me, but I always thought the point to sparring was to improve your technique... Not to "win".

Every time you got rocked was an opportunity to learn. Think about why you were getting hit. Ask your trainer for advice on what you were doing wrong and how to fix it.

In short, ego is bullshit and only hampers progress. No offense intended, but that's how I'm interpreting things here.
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:icon_lol: I keep telling myself that but I'm extremely competitive when put against equal or better athletes. I agree though, sparring is about improvement not competition, but a competitive edge is healthy IMO.
 
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