Training the Knockout - Sugar Ray and Hippy Singmanee (Patreon)

(video above) I feel loose, but explosive. My weight shifts forward and back without hesitation, there are a few gaps in the fluidity of movement, the way an engine might get an air bubble and hiccup, but I feel good. My fists, knees, and shins are making nice popping sounds against the leather teardrop bag and my eyes keep glancing up at the ring, where I can steal instruction offered to other fighters and students while they're on pads. Kevin is sitting on the couch just a short distance from me. "Your Muay Thai looks totally different!" he says, not smiling but kind of positively aghast. "It feels different," I say, and drive my knee into the bottom of the bag.

Hippy Singmanee is one of the greatest fighters who ever was. He was tiny and explosive, expressing swagger with every whipping movement. He's standing behind me and he kind of saddles up to stand next to me on the bag and puts his hands up, like he's holding a large, invisible ball as he begins to talk to me. "Your technique is good, you fight well and you're strong," he tells me. "But not every strike should be strong, you have to pick the knockout." I step to the side so Hippy can approach the bag and he fires a beautiful, completely relaxed and improvised sequence of strikes into the leather before landing a killer knee, followed by an elbow to finish it off.  I see exactly what he means. None of the strikes leading up to the "KO strike," were pulled, muted, or insincere. They're all good strikes. But they were all leading to that last one; or two, really. Because the knee would buckle you, maybe even get you a count. But you'd probably recover after a count. The elbow, however, is the shot in the head to make sure the work is finished the first time. Hippy's point is that you have to train this, almost like it is music. He even reiterates it to me at the end of my training session as well, pantomiming how I knee the corner of the ring (Dieselnoi style, with total effort toward exhaustion) and he gives me a thumbs up, knowing what all that is for. He likes how I train. But he sees that my work is missing this element, this additional note. And I know he's right. You have to train it in order to be able to see it in a fight; to be able to fire the shot when you do see it.

Sci-Fi movies have a recurring character of a super-computer, or an android that is just an endless well of information resources. my husband Kevin is that. He is always learning, researching, gathering things that are of interest to him or that he thinks would be of interest to me. So, sometimes we'll be sitting somewhere, talking, and he'll ask me if I've ever seen some video, and usually I haven't so he just pulls it up out of his endless vaults of references - and it's always exactly what we're talking about. In this case, it was, "have you seen that clip of Sugar Ray on the speed bag?" 

I'll say this: when you see someone doing something that they've spent countless hours for years doing, you see all those hours, all at once, just in the expression of how they do that thing. That's Sugar Ray on the speed bag, in the video edit we did above. The speed is impressive. The hopping and and flow and ease with which he does it, it's all beautiful and awe inspiring. But it's this hook he throws at the very end, the way he cuts off the speed and flow and repetition of peddling that bag that makes one's jaw drop. That's the moment Kevin was showing me. That's the exact thing Hippy was calling for. It's a moment of release, a finality. 

This hook Sugar Ray throws, it thrills me every time. The way he knows that was the finisher, and kind of takes a moment to pace around but is still ready to put his hands up and finish it off again if necessary. My first teacher, Master K, would look at the bag after he'd smashed it like this. It's kind of like watching to see if it dares to get up again. A bag. But it's real, not only performance. It's real even against inanimate objects, because he's training the mental structures that go into being able to see the knockout, pull the trigger, feel it, and then know it. The process is so streamlined, the stages so fast, that it's seamless. Just like watching Hippy throw out a sequence of strikes that end in the finishing move, or Sugar Ray keeping rhythm on the speed bag until it's time to snap the drumsticks in half and hurl them into the crowd. It sends shivers down my arms, and I've watched this clip many times now.

This is a thing that has become more and more apparent to me in my path: we very often look at the wrong things. Lots of us like to look at these moments and imitate the sequence. Okay, so Hippy wants a jab, then a cross and a hook, bounce, then the knee. Memorize, repeat. But really, he could throw only the finishing elbow after walking around in some swagger-like circles and it would be the same thing. It's the energy; the expression. Sugar Ray could stand there in front of the bag having a chat and suddenly throw that hook and it's like fuck! What leads up to it is beautiful. What leads up to it is the setup, or the lead up, or the crescendo of the orchestra before hitting the apex of the piece. But the notes - like, which notes - don't matter. We've all heard the saying, "It's not what you said, it's how you said it." Totally. It's the tone that pissed you off, or made you swoon, or whatever.  It's how Hippy and Sugar Ray are throwing those finishing strikes. Sugar Ray isn't throwing "a hook." Fuck. Look at it. It's his hook, almost as if nobody else in the world could ever throw one quite like it. And yet, when I watch him, I think to myself  "I could do that." It's not a technique in the way we think of them. It's not a "where's his hip and the angle of his elbow and the bend of his wrist on impact," kind of technique. It's a technique the way Monet's brush stroke is a technique. It's a technique the way cracking a baseball out of the park is a technique. The reality of it, the meaningfulness of it, is the expression of the stroke, of the strike, of the swing. It's a release. An explosion or an eruption, an un-doing of all the things we think of as technique. The only tangible connection to technical performance, however, is that it has to be practiced. And that's the difference between a technique and a skill. One builds, one is an expression. Hippy is asking me to express myself. Sugar Ray is showing how it's done, to the best of any example I've ever seen.

Related Material

watch this fight of ultimate legends Karuhat vs Hippy at 108 lbs to see what Hippy was like in his heyday: watch here 

watch the full nearly an hour long edit of the day of Hippy's visit to Petchrungruang Gym with Dieselnoi, with my commentary: watch it here 

Watch Sugar Ray's baiting of the left hook, watch it here - how natural the explosion is from all that release training. 

In The Library

Study the Hippy Singmanee Sessions in the Muay Thai Library so far, as a patron. These are long form training sessions with my commentary, where legends and krus unfold their style and philosophy:

#5 Hippy Singmanee - Developing Power (69 min) - watch it here  

Bonus Session 4: Hippy Singmanee Ultra Violence | 30 min - watch it here 

Other Muay Thai Library Sessions that emphasize explosive power:

#29 Pornsanae Sitmonchai - The Power of Hooks & Low Kicks (74 min) watch it here 

#26 Sagat Petchyindee - Explosive Power (57 min) watch it here  

#38 Sagat Petchyindee (part 2) - Maximum Damage (61 min) watch it here  

#60 Sagat Petchindee Session 2 - All the Strikes Tuned and Dangerous (101 min) watch it here  

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

#6 Namkabuan Nongkipahuyut - Explosive Attack (28 min) watch it here 

Browse the entire Muay Thai Library Table of contents