Namkabuan Explosive Knees & More - 28 Min

This session was an incredible influence on me as a fighter.

I had never heard of Namkabuan even after a few years in Thailand, to be honest. Sometimes even absolute legends slip through our fingers in the West as news about them comes to us haphazardly through YouTube. Straight out, he may be the the best fighter I've ever seen. He's no doubt one of the best of the best in  the Golden Age of Muay Thai in the 90s and held the very competitive 130  lbs Lumpinee title for 6 straight years, a feat which is unreal...  its unreal until you see him fight. My first introduction to him was when my  trainer, Pi Nu, started plowing me across the ring into the ropes during  padwork. He'd triumphantly cry out, "Naaam-kabuaaan!" as he did so,  like someone yelling Geronimo. He still does this, actually, but now I  understand the context. I had the golden chance to go train with Namkabuan in this  private session, which is one of my favorite experiences ever. He's  incredibly verbal for a Thai trainer, but he's talking about theory and why  you do each thing and all the while moving around to demonstrate the  physicality of it. One of the best things about training with elite top fighters who don't really train people often is that they are still in "fight" world, they are still thinking like fighters, they are fighters. His movements are so effortless, smooth and yet so  unbelievably powerful. He would wave his arms to tell me to get out of  the way for his "slide knee" when he was a good 5 feet away from me  already. After he performed the knee, I felt it was probably safer to  just jump out of the ring all together.

 TIP BOX if you want to show your appreciation you can send gratuity directly to Kru  Namkabuan, $5 or more via PayPal to the address sylvie@8limbs.us, please in the "add a note" section specify "for Kru Namkabuan". I will transfer the funds.  Go to PayPal now.  

Watching his old fights on  Youtube  is a thrilling experience. I think I would say that Namkabuan is the most  complete fighter I've ever seen. He just can do pretty much anything between the ropes. Despite being an electric striker, he was nicknamed the "body throw  expert," for his ability to just throw people around in the clinch,  but he could also engage in the clinch, working for angles and advantage. He had every tool, could use every range. Some of the most esteemed names of Muay Thai (Somrak, Samart, etc) were not great in close, not like this. His kicks are fast, his punches are super powerful and have some amazing footwork to go with them, his knees  are a million miles long and his elbows are thrown with some seriously  nasty intentions. But it's how he moves in space that drives me crazy.  He has a fast, but smooth, idle between his explosive onslaughts and  once he gets his opponent into the ropes it's almost as if he's striking to try to burst through them. And occasionally he does, throwing his  opponent, himself, or in one case his opponent, himself, and the ref  all out of the ring. After training and talking with him it strikes me that even though aesthetically very different Namkabuan is like Dieselnoi in that he seeks out the ropes as a way to capture his opponent in order to assure the delivery of his most powerful strikes; but unique to Namkabuan is that he seems to almost not even recognize the ropes as a  boundary. What he taught me is that you can use the ropes to bounce your opponent back into you, or to shove them hard enough that they kind of  "pop open" when their back hits the rope (almost like a bird dropping a  snail to crack its shell), but that's only what he taught me when he's already 20 years out of fighting. When he was still fighting,  he appeared to not care whether the ropes bounced you back at him or  whether you just snapped them all together and fell out of the ring;  he'd follow you either way.

In this 28 minute segment these invaluable things are covered:

1. Throwing from a low clinch position, both with your leg inside and outside position
2. Elbows from the clinch
3. The lock-and-release with knees from a body lock (low clinch)
4. Knee up or fake teep with stomp down to an elbow
5. The  "slide knee," which Namkabuan credits to his brother Namphon. It covers  an insane amount of distance and is so powerful and fast. Not easy to  execute, but once you get the relaxation and mechanics it is just  unreal.

If you love this 28 minutes there is also nearly a full additional hour of our session on Nak Muay Nation for members there. 

This session with Namkabuan from a few months ago really did something to me personally as a fighter. It touched on a nerve awakening the fighter I want to be. Here was a "Muay Khao" fighter (he calls himself a Muah Khao fighter) but with an absolutely explosive, dynamic attacking style from distance too. He possesses a certain kind of energy something I call the Nongki Energy (he's from Nongki) that is just incredible, and I've been training it every day since this session. That slide knee towards the end of the video really captures just what that is.

You can read my public blog post about this session here , including some nice GIF breakdown and some commentary on my favorite Namkabuan fights. In a few months I'll try to return to Namkabuan and film a full hour for my supporters, moving to the next level of understanding