In Muay Thai, there are many styles of fighting, from the aggressive Muay Bouk, to the usage of aggressive knees also known as Muay Khao. While each style comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses, there are few styles more frustrating or difficult to face than the counter-fighting, Muay Femur.
A talented Muay Femur uses your strengths against you, reading your rhythm and intentions to exploit the openings that are revealed when you attack. If they have enough success, it can drain your confidence, making you hesitant to attack which creates a vicious downward spiral where you become easier to counter as your confidence drops.
Luckily, like every Muay Thai fighting style, a Muay Femur can be defeated once you understand their strengths and how to effectively turn them into weaknesses. In this article, we are going to give you 5 tips for defeating a Muay Femur. But before we do, let us look at the key strategies a counter-fighter uses in the ring so that you understand why these tips are so useful.
Common Counter-Fighting Strategies
Before we dive into detail on the 5 tips, let’s first take a brief look at how Muay Femurs employ 3 interrelated strategies: range management, second-phase fighting, and ring craft, and we’ve summarized how they employ these below:
- Range Management: A Muay Femur needs time to see the openings revealed when you attack and strike before they land. Therefore, an effective counter-fighter will often stand just out of your effective striking range, waiting for you to over-extend yourself in an attack so they can strike.
- Second Phase Fighting: This is exactly what the name suggests. A counter-fighter goes second in an exchange so that they can use the openings in your first-phase attack to their advantage.
- Ring Craft: To maintain range and ensure they are always in an effective defensive position a counter-fighter will be mindful of where they are standing in the ring, so they aren’t surprised by the ropes on their back, and they don’t get trapped in the corner.
1) Fakes And Tempo Changes
A counter-fighter loves to wait for you to attack first so that they can exploit openings and if you are constantly charging at them at one speed then they’ll have an easy time of picking you apart with scoring shots. By mixing your tempo—going fast and then slow at irregular intervals—and adding feints into your attacks you can make it harder for them to predict when you’ll be open to counters.
Not only will this make them hesitant to attack, increasing your success when you deliver your own strikes, but it can also trick them into throwing when you are either ready to defend or too far out of range. In the latter case, your roles will be reversed, and it will be the counter-fighter who has overcommitted to a missed strike, open for an easy scoring shot of your own.
2) Get Into Range Safely
Feints, fakes, and tempo changes are great skills to use if you want to get into effective striking range safely but, if you’re only pretending to throw strikes without ever committing then a smart Muay Femur will soon figure you out. You’re going to have to throw some real strikes in the mix to keep them guessing but when you do, don’t throw high-risk shots that leave you exposed if they miss.
This means you need to avoid throwing massive head kicks or flying knees in the first phase of an exchange. Instead consider coming in behind a probing jab or cross where your weight stays balanced above both hips where you have the best chance of defending. Alternatively, you can attempt The Muay Thai Hop or high marching, two techniques that allow you to press forward while tightly defended.
3) Countering And Prepare For The Third Phase
No matter how good you are at feints, tempo changes, and encountering a teep is something you’ll encounter eventually in order to create more distance between you and your opponent. When this inevitably happens, you need to remember; there will be a brief window of opportunity where they are exposed after throwing their counterstrike. So, instead of giving up when your first strike misses, occasionally double down and look to get the final say with a second attack while they are off balance.
This can be risky if you are reckless in your first phase attack or off-balanced by their counter, so when you initiate an exchange make sure you are well-balanced and enter striking range safely to maximize your success on the third phase.
And of course, if they answer your second strike with yet another attack, you can always go again. Watch the above video on how to counter the Teep and enter into range safely.
4) Out-Craft Their Ringcraft
If you do decide to pressure a counter-fighter, it’s not just a matter of how and when, but also where. As we’ve said, Muay Femurs love staying just outside of range and are gifted at using ringcraft to evade you. If you choose to pressure a Muay Femur while they are standing in the center of the ring, don’t be surprised if they hit and withdraws repetitively into the third, fourth, or even fifth phase of an exchange, racking up more and more points as you chase them. By the time you catch them on the ropes, it could be impossible to do enough damage to flip the scorecards.
Therefore, you should try to save your pressure fighting when they are already close to the ropes. From here they will have trouble retreating and, if you maintain your composure, you can pressure them right into the corner where they don’t have a chance of escape. (Just don’t let them tie you up and spoil you from the clinch!).
5) Clinching & Striking
A counter-fighter cannot use any of their counter-fighting strategies when you have them tied up in a collar-tie or body lock, so clinching is a great strategy for defeating them, especially if you need to rack up points to overcome the lead they gained at range.
That being said, a good Muay Femur, will have trained to spoil the clinch, forcing the referee to separate you and reset the fight to their advantage. They’re also pretty good at sweeping you if you lose balance as this leads to the same result. So, if you choose to clinch make sure you keep a strong base and stay active with scoring shots.
In Summary
Muay Femurs love to use range, ringcraft, and second-phase fighting to capitalize on the openings that are revealed when you are initiating exchanges. While pressure and aggression can work in your favor whenever you meet one of these tricky opponents in the ring, they can be used against you if you aren’t smart. Using fakes and tempo changes as well as low-risk opening strikes can get you into effective range but once you’re there, make sure you keep your composure as you drag the exchange into the deeper phases, where it becomes increasingly difficult to counter-fight.
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