Muay Thai Basics: Introductory Thai Boxing Techniques
Author: Christoph Delp
Blue Snake Books
211 Pages
Cover price 26.95 Canadian.


I happened to pick this up at a Chapters store in Moncton, NB while passing through. My wife rolled her eyes as I got back into the car toting yet another Thaiboxing book, especially another marked basics. Oh well I am a sucker.

This book follows the all too common progression of martial arts books. Part 1 is background and tradition, Part 2 is basic skills and so on. You won't find too much new in these sections if you have other Muay Thai books but the author does have some interesting presentation.

The quality of the book is A-1. Pictures are all clear, in sync with the text and relevant to the flow of the work. In so many book yoiu get a picture of a person in mid move that really could be a shot of any technique. Not so in this book, good quality photos throughout.

Parts 3,4 and 5 are the meat of this book. Again it is an introductory text so nothing too exciting. If you are a beginner though the techniques found in these pages will lend you an understanding of the moves you should be working on first and gives you a taste of more advance items like the spinning heel kick and jumping round kick. Something I really liked about these sections are the big bright yellow boxes at the end of each weapon section. These boxes have a good amount of wisdom on common mistakes made during the preceeding attack types. It is worth the chapter just to read those.

Part 3, Chapter 7 is a nice find, a chapter in a Thaiboxing book on the plamb clinch. Many books leave this valuable set of techniques out all together, so if it is important to you, you may want to pick up this book for these 10 pages of explanation. It covers the basic stance, offbalancing and a series of knee strikes. More than enough for a beginning clincher.

Most of the rest of the book covers some simple combinations to use to train the basics covered. Again nothing too fancy but the point is to kick thousands of times to get the technique right not to learn some fancy thing you can't really do. The book goes over different combinations on pads and against a person, lots of variety should keep the boredom away.

One highlight right at the end is a small section on historical training. I always like these bits. It helps remind me that I get to do this sport for fun. Some people, historically and presently put themsleves through hell for what I would consider little recompense but to them is a treasure and a way to keep their families alive. Practice, have fun but remember the roots of the art and if you are new to it, this book would be helpful to you overall. Though I think the Legacy book is slightly better.