Kru Wihok Skarbowsky Gym - Old School Flex | 49 min (Patreon)

Within the first few minutes of working with Kru Wihok at Skarbowsky’s Gym in Bangkok (the old Jocky Gym), I was immediately reminded of my very first trainer - the man who nurtured my Muay Thai Heart and is my deepest inspiration - Master K. He’s a 70+ year old Thai man who has lived in New Jersey since the year I was born. Every night he writes poetry after dinner, then goes into his basement and practices Muay Thai to the insane rhythms of Jazz on the radio. He takes students in a 1-1 basis, which is how I learned from him. I love him more than I can ever say because there simply are not words for it. Seeing anything reminiscent of Master K is a huge thrill and when Wihok shadowed a few things in front of the mirror for me, indicating adjustments he wanted me to make, I saw those forms in him that I recognized from Master K. Kru Wihok is about 18 years younger than Master K, but at 60 or so years old he’s still significantly older than most of the legends I train with. He harkens to an earlier time, his Muay is almost an entire generation before and it’s on the cusp between the Golden Age legends in this library and the men who they likely learned from. It made me very excited to see it and I tried to point it out in this video when I was able to. But, it’s recognition of a form or a kind of style that’s hard to put your finger on in terms of what he’s actually doing. It’s like how you watch a Jimmy Stewart movie and the acting is just very different from any acting you’d see now - it’s from a different time, but it’s wonderful. A large part of this different style is maybe something I’ll call “flex”. You can see a very different version of it in Karuhat’s step back “rubber band” spring back, and Burklerk’s skip back and strike (both in this library), but here it’s a lean back combined with explosive movements, out of a wider stance.

One of the biggest things that can be pointed out that wide-stance, almost Water Skipper-like movements that you see when Wihok is idling. He’s ready to spring forward or backward, which he does to attack or evade, in the femeu style. He was huge on this dodge backwards which was really hard for me. I can do this - and have done this - in fights, but not with the frequency with which he was demanding it. It’s not a “trick,” it’s part of the overall movement. That’s what’s so amazing about these long-form lessons, you can actually see a trainer’s system. Kru Wihok hated my cross-block, which is functional and practical for me in real fight situations where I am constantly closing distance, but it doesn’t work within his system. The omission of moves and techniques versus the emphasis on others is all about a style. When you have a trainer who tells you not to do something that another trainer has specifically taught you, it’s not because one or the other is “wrong,” as so many newer practitioners assume. Pointing the toe or flexing the foot on a block isn’t a dilemma, it’s a small piece within a much larger operating machine. You pick the one that lets the gears move more smoothly, and for Kru Wihok’s style, this constant in-out requires a kind of flexibility and spring-loading in the knees that I didn’t adapt within this lesson. But I see it - you can see it in the video - and it’s worth testing out to see if it works in your clockwork or not.

A somewhat strange thing that Kru Wihok emphasized was spinning around entirely on a missed kick. He wants you to complete the trajectory into a full spin and then pop that same leg you just missed with up into a block. It’s in anticipation of which side your opponent will be attacking on for the counter and, to be fair, I have learned this from Andy up in Chiang Mai before - but I assumed it was an adjustment to westerner’s tendency to spin around anyway rather than being an actual technique. I hated it, to be completely honest, but later on when he showed me the same move on a bag - rather than on the pads - I saw it differently for the first time. He completed the spin into an elbow rather than just blocking and suddenly it occurred to me that there is a potential “miss on purpose” element involved, or at least making an immediate adjustment to flow right into the next move. Namkabuan has a backwards elbow that comes off of an intentionally missed left hook that I really loved. This is similar enough, but I do have to point out that if you throw the elbow off of a missed kick you’re not spinning all the way around… which is maybe the thing that sticks in my craw about the spin around. I just want more control of my kick, and don’t want to habitually turn my back on my opponent. 

What I did really love about Wihok’s system is the teep interruption on kicks to keep in striking distance and close in. It works very much like a jab and you are both keeping your opponent off of you and also putting them at a distance (when they fall back or are stopped in their tracks) that’s perfect for your own step in and kick. In about round 3 or 4 of our padwork he focused on it and he simplified the choice on which side to teep by indicating that if your opponent is kicking with their right leg, you teep with your right leg; if they are kicking left, you teep left. It’s the side of your body that’s closer to them, so it’s very fast and easy, but it also allows you to step down off of that teep as your step forward for the opposite side kick. It flows well. The downside is that you’re hitting the “closed side” with both the teep and sometimes the kick as well, depending on how your opponent falls off of your teep, but for the sake of practice having an automatic response to which side you are teeping with makes it much, much faster. So, it’s not a rule written in stone but it’s a good rule to become accustomed to. Note: Arjan Surat of Dejrat gym, an Old School Arjan, instructed me to do just the opposite for teeps, always choosing the openside leg for teeps. Again, style.

The best part of this whole session was almost not included. Kru Wihok had no intention of clinching with me but I requested it and he generously obliged. It’s some of my favorite clinch training ever, and he’s not even a clinch fighter. You’d be surprised how much clinch technique is out there in fighters who did not resort to clinch often. Everyone learned clinch, hardcore, and 100s of techniques have been expanded upon in the repertoire of fighters. This was really good stuff that I immediately put to work in my next training sessions on my own. The things we worked on were mostly drawn out in regular play-sparring, so the joy of just moving around dictated what moves he was going to be using. But you can see his system within the short timeframe we played and then he breaks each part down for me afterward. When you meet these former fighters you get a super distilled version of their style and then when you go back and watch their fights, all these details reveal themselves. It’s been one of my favorite elements of working with Karuhat, who I already adored but then being able to see things he does now in the fights he had back then is just amazing. Kru Wihok has this tendency to let his arms be on the outside (not an advantageous position, so generally your opponent will allow it). Especially n the west everyone is trained to fight for inside position and control, and as a broad rule the do the same in Thailand. But there are whole systems of outside attack in Thailand that take advantage of the constant work to get in. If you are one of those guys or gals who find themselves in a gym where everyone swims in hard, this will work for you. The technique is really simple: he let’s his arm fall to the outside, but then he slips one hand under a shoulder, by the armpit, and use that leverage point to completely flip the opponent’s balance from an upperbody turn. He does it over and over again, the same turn from a multitude of different positions and scenarios. It’s brilliant and very effective. If your opponent or training partner starts to catch on, just distract first with a head tug or a trip attempt on the other side. I’m definitely adding this to my arsenal as it will compliment all those situations where I can’t get my lock or I find myself on the outside.

As a note: this is very generous clinch instruction. Some krus can be much more protective of their status and just not let you throw or trip them, which is essential to learning. Kru Wihok instead just enjoyed the entire process, turned it into play clinch sparring, and willingly let me experiment and learn what he was showing me. 

Some things to look for in this session:

1. The lean-back dodge and immediate counter. I had a hard time figuring out my balance for this technique; I could get out of the way but not counter, or I could stay in and kind of fail to dodge properly and counter immediately. The trick that I almost understood at the time but is clear as day in watching the video is the position of his back foot. You’ll see boxers use this lean back with a very wide stance, almost turning like a slip of a punch as he leans back. Kru Wihok is an Asian Boxing Champion, so maybe it harkens to that, but it also works in Muay Thai. But the thing to obsess over is the bend and flex in his knees as he does this. I don’t have that when I do it and my stance stays too narrow. It’s not about bending from the waist, it’s about width of stance and the bend in the knees that not only allows you to get out of the way but to immediately counter back because it’s like a springed coil.
2. Distance is a big deal. Even though Kru Wihok is asking for this in/out motion all the time with his lean back and counters, he’s still at the same distance you’d be at if you were “tanking,” as I like to do and just stay in with blocks in order to counter. You’re not jumping out of the way or staying too far back. That’s important. You’re still in striking range almost all the time, but you’re bending like a long reed of bamboo.
3. Teep interruptions to kicks and punches, plus a kick counter. Kru Wihok uses the teep like a jab, interrupting your opponent’s advances, kicks and punches. He simplified it so you can train an automatic response: if your opponent kicks with their right leg, you teep with your right leg and vice versa. You’re teeping with the side closer to their body, albeit to their closed side, but this allows you to use that teep to step down and throw a kick counter immediately. 
4. In the clinch Kru Wihok uses an outside position to get under the opponent’s shoulder (near the armpit) and throw/off-balance from there in a number of different ways. He shows me a few different trips, but the upperbody twist and throw is the center of all of them.
5. Intention in shadow and on the bag: Kru Wihok makes a point about really visualizing an opponent both in bagwork and in shadow. He wants you to picture it so that your movements are in context of finding openings, faking, creating openings and countering. You’re training timing and quick counters all the time if you really focus on this. (The same intentionality is a missing piece of my marching knees, which I mention in the video. Each strike should be thrown with intention and focus, not just zoning out; same on the bag. I’m guilty of zoning out quite a lot, even though I’ve made a point of visualizing an opponent. You really have to train it to make it a constant.)
6. A short discussion about Femeu. Kru Wihok is through and through a technical, evasive, Femeu fighter. Even when I told him that I was a knee fighter, after shaking his head about how this is just asking for damage, he acquiesced and offered that you can be a knee fighter for one round - the highest scoring round (4) - but spend the rest of the fight being Femeu. It’s an interesting point. Even Dieselnoi, the King of Knees, tells me to not bring out too many weapons in the first two rounds and basically just tire the opponent out, then knee like hell for rounds 3 and 4, then be Femeu in round 5. This is interesting, and important, because it tells us about how fights are watched by Thai eyes - both legendary fighters and judges - and if we’re going to be fighting here, that’s something we’d really benefit from understanding.

TIP BOX: if you are inspired by what you see and want to show added appreciation you can send gratuity directly to Kru Wihok. Just message $5 or more via PayPal to the address sylvie@8limbs.us, please in the "add a note" section specify "for Kru Wihok". I will transfer the funds.

KRU FUND: 5% of all pledges go into my Kru Fund, directed back to the Krus and ex-fighters who have helped make this documentary Library possible: http://8limbs.us/muay-thai-thailand/starting-the-kru-fund