The Clinch Techniques of Yodwicha - Session 2 | 34 min

Yodwicha 2

Yodwicha is one of my favorite fighters to watch, especially in his Rajadamnern fights against other top Thai clinchers. He was voted Yod Muay or “Fighter of the Year” in a shared award with Sangmanee Sor. Tiempo a few years ago, which was interesting because their styles are total opposites. As a clincher, Yodwicha held a kind of odd position because people either loved or hated watching him because of his clinching style. He was still growing at the time and basically grew out of his weight class, making his weight cuts terribly difficult and at times unsuccessful. He’s only about 20 years old now and still an active and top-ranked fighter, but since moving to Kem’s Muaythai Gym in Khorat, Yodwicha has mostly been fighting in Europe and on Super Muay Thai (Buakaw’s promotion) rather than in the National Stadia of Lumpinee and Rajadamnern. So he’s had to adjust his style, but he’s been very successful as Kem has reshaped him.

For my own purposes, I want to learn clinch from Yodwicha. The thing about Muay Khao (knee fighters) is that they have to be relentless and always pushing. Because Yodwicha can clinch, too, which doesn’t always occur in tandem with knee fighting, his style includes locks and turns that are really beautiful. He’s like a ring shark. I was really excited to work with him this second time - patrons can watch my first session with him a few months earlier here - because I’d learned a great deal from our first encounter and he’s an incredibly nice and patient instructor as well. I’m amazed at how well he can actually engage in clinch with me given our size disparity, which I believe is a testament to his thorough understanding and skill within the specialized art of clinching. Because we’d worked together before he built on some things we’d already covered, but I also was much more comfortable and so I was able to move with him and learn on the fly in a much less structured and far more organic exchange than our first lesson. 

Here are some of the aspects covered in this session:

1. Catching the arm of your opponent as they’re trying to grab your neck on clinch entry
2. Controlling and “steering” from the elbow joints
3. Locking behind the elbow for leverage
4. Pushing with your forearm behind the neck as an alternative to pulling the neck
5. The advantages to always angling for side-control
6. Timing for turns and throws
7. Agreeing with Dieselnoi and Yodkhunpon, “don’t lean back” on straight knees
8. Bend in the knees for constant control and flexibility
9. Using the shoulder for escapes and turns

If you have any questions at all about these techniques or my explantions of them, check out the corresponding Facebook post in the Patreon Only Facebook Group  and ask me there. I'd love to help.

You can read about Kem's Muaythai Gym in Khorat , one of the few gyms I heartily recommend, where this was filmed, and where Yodwicha trains.

This is the public companion post to this 34 minute video.  It contains additional explantions and descriptions and a few GIFs that might make the video even more meaningful.