Langsuan Panyutapum - How To Train Traditional Muay Khao (66 min) (Patreon)

This Muay Thai Library session was so good and inspiring it gave birth to a 1,000 knees & 1,000 teeps challenge for me. This is what he said a serious Muay Khao fighter of his day would train, so I dove right in. I've opened this up to a 30 day public challenge so everyone can try and push their limits along with me, giving away some gloves signed by Langsuan, and some other good things too. Read how to enter this challenge over the next 30 days here celebrating this master knee fighter.

Legendary Golden Age Muay Khao fighter, 1987 Fighter of the Year: Langsuan Panyutapum 

In this session you will learn something of how traditional Muay Khao fighters trained

I love watching Langsuan fights. I never care who he’s fighting, it’s always, always exciting. There’s a kind of breathlessness to watching him “stick” to his opponents, like an alligator that has trapped a leg in its jaw and you’re not sure whether or not the lithe deer will escape or be consumed. That breathlessness is shared by his opponents, apparently, as both Karuhat and Kaensak independently said he was absolutely exhausting to fight. He just never gives in, he never yields. His nickname, as fighters have them, is “khun khao rai nam jai” or Mr. Merciless Knees (ขุนเข่าไร้น้ำใจ). Watching him shadow around the ring while I jumped on the tire, I could see him living up to that moniker, even now.You don’t get that way by accident. 

For starters, Langsuan put me on the tire and told me, “20 minutes.” That’s not a light warmup, but it’s also only the warmup to his warmup, as he also had me shadow and throw those merciless knees with full clinch turns at the end of each round. Then the relentlessness of pads. Then endless knees and teeps on the bag. Then conditioning. This is, for him, a watered-down workout. When I asked him why there are no true knee fighters nowadays, he frowned and made himself very flat-footed, planted as if he were afraid to be thrown. Then he shook his head and changed position, getting up on his toes and locking his arms around an imaginary opponent’s neck and just pivoting and driving his piston knees over and over – light on his feet, always turning, always on his toes. You exhaust yourself in training so that you can be that light on your feet even deep into the fight. You can still swim when you’re opponent is drowning. It’s no joke.

One of my favorite things in watching Langsuan throughout this lesson, and I talk about it in the voiceover, is how he “latches” himself onto his opponent, like hitching a trailer, rather than “locking,” which you’ll see a lot more in contemporary Muay Thai. The hitching/latching technique allows for a lot of flexibility and endless movement, changing of position, like a fishtail. The “locking” tactic is more of an immobilization, which can be broken by the referees more quickly. Nobody broke these clinch exchanges in the Golden Age, they just kept moving and going like snakes wrestling. That’s what allowed the likes of Karuhat and Kaensak to feel exhausted – the ref wouldn’t save them from Langsuan’s clinch because he was always moving. When I lock on Karuhat he just wiggles out immediately. Langsuan, it’s more like wriggling on a hook… not so much wiggling “out” going on.What to look out for:

1. Langsuan’s relentlessness is built into everything he does. The way he marches with knees at the end of shadow rounds and does a deep pivot clinch turn at each rope is something to steal from him.
2. Even in shadow you’ll see him cock his hip back as he grabs in the clinch or throws his final strike before he wants to drive that knee in. It’s not “ass back,” as many westerners will favor, but the hip and leg make a deep pull back before launching into a knee that angles upward.
3. Tucking the heel of the foot on the same side that you’re kneeing with is something he emphasized over and over again. You almost want to be touching your butt with your heel, if you can. By folding the leg this hard, the hip drives all the power with the standing leg as kind of fulcrum. It gives the whole shape of the knee an upward swing, but the heel being outside and tucked also angles the knee to the center without you having to think about it.
4. When Langsuan grabs the neck for a long knee, he grabs on the same side as the knee. That’s a bit odd from what I’ve learned, as so many people like to grab across as there’s a built-in defense against counter punches, elbows and grabs. The upside is that you can knee and grab the other side and keep switching as you march forward almost without any distraction at all.
5. When he gets the double-inside lock on the neck he really pushes forward and steers with his elbows and forearms into the opponent’s collarbone. He doesn’t use his head in the clinch, probably because he doesn’t really lock, but the head is always tucked pretty deeply. This allows him to be protected from punches and elbows, hard to grab in the clinch, but also helps to drive the hips back for his jumping knees. He knees his opponents exactly the way people practice jumping knees on the bag. Not a lot of fighters can actually do that in fights. He’s incredible.
6. The teep is super important for creating the distance you want. It allows you to breathe when you need space, but it also puts your opponent on their back foot, which a “dern” or forward fighter absolutely wants.
7. I asked him about his uppercut, because it’s a prevalent feature in many of his fights. Not only does he throw it over and over again in beautiful dedications, but when he had opponents who wanted to clinch also, he’d hang his right hand down by his belly as he was grabbed and time that uppercut with the opponent’s knee. It’s crazy. He never got elbows off of it.
8. He makes a big deal about conditioning to be a knee fighter. Dieselnoi says the same. If the two most relentless knee fighters tell you, “when everyone else is done, you’re still working,” you f***ing believe it’s gonna be a lot of work to be Muay Khao. (Karuhat admitted he used to be Muay Khao, but changed to Femeu when he came to Bangkok because he was “too lazy.”) So Langsuan says you finish every session with at least 500 knees and 500 teeps. Then you increase the next day to 600, upward and onward. He said 1000 knees and 1000 teeps per day was standard when preparing to fight – this is in addition to two 10k runs per day, clinching for at least 30 minutes (man in the middle style) with other legends in both AM and PM sessions, padwork, bagwork, conditioning… and then the knees and teeps. Idol.

You'll noticed that his extreme bent knee is different than that if Dieselnoi, another great knee fighter, who has a more vertical shin. Neither is "wrong":

Dieselnoi above, Langsuan below.

If you are not familiar with Langsuan, take a look at my Playlist of his fights HERE.

Importantly:   

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

KRU FUND: additionally, 5% of all Patreon pledges go into my Kru Fund, and is 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

If you enjoyed this post, you may like to watch these Muay Thai Library sessions featuring other legendary Muay Khao fighters of the Golden Age:

#41  Samson Isaan - The Art of Dern Fighting (64 min) watch it here

#30 Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn 2 - Muay Khao Craft  (42 min) watch it here

#3 Dieselnoi  Chor Thanasukarn  - The King of Knees (54 min) - watch it here 

#8 Sangtiennoi Sor Rungroj - Advanced Clinch (52 min) watch it here