Just listen to your coach... mostly true, but not always.

[j123]

Dude you're right, I did get that. Also the "lateral movement don't work, leg kicks". But somehow once I combined slipping and moving, the coach just went "well no one will have any fun trying to hit you, quit it".



Two pretty much equal head coaches, which made confrontation difficult. I sometimes blame myself for not confronting him. I'm not sure if he learned from his mistakes, because he was new to coaching when I started out, but I promised myself I'd confront him if I hear similar complaints from new students.

That's ridiculous

Damn this sounds like some holocaust story.. I don't fux with weightcutting in general, but your coaches thoughts behind it is especially stupid. Just damn.

My coach is actually a small guy, so his exp. with cutting is limited. When competing at the time, the smallest class they had was lightweight and he was a regular bantam. Also in general from what I've noticed here in Ont., Muay Thai guys don't know about cutting (water manip) so they make weight by dieting down. I still remember our sister gym (they came with us to the torney as well) when cross-training with us in camp, were shaming Americans for "not knowing how to cut" because they were sending guys into 140-145lb div. who were 6'1-6'2 whereas the American fighters were 5'5-5'9. Come fight night they're athletic looking and have quite a bit of strength on them due to a muscular frame, and the taller guy looks like a skeleton, tired, low energy levels due to being on a caloric deficit for too long squeezing into a class that isn't theirs naturally.
I think the problem is they think people are actually the weight they weigh in as, and don't realize the system is a rigged game where you're only that weight for a few hours a year. My only guess is that its a traditional thing they were taught from coaches in or from Thailand or something. And just because you can squeeze into it, doesn't mean its good for you.
And lets not open the can of worms that is: strength training makes you slow, its non-function strength, slow down your metab., etc meanwhile every single other sport has their competitors strength train and carry good amount of muscle mass. "But MT/MMA is different from those sports"

:'( christ them coaches might not even know how to fight a taller opponent, spazzes.

I blame it on traditional MT, too much emphasis on staying solid like a tank, and not knowing how to deal with height. Of course we're taught early that in MT that the taller fighter controls 2/3 distances (kicking + clinching), with that on paper, they all look to be the taller competitors.

Man I was in tears, I swear I'd found a great team in so many ways but the details were killing me.

Nowadays I'm the top prospect and that same coach has now put some of my moves into the curriculum. I wasn't even mad, I was pretty damn proud, but talking about it now makes it all seem a bit weird.

As not not leaving, this is pretty normal as well. I trained for near 2 years before starting to compete, and overall the 2 years were good on me, its only when I started becoming a competitior that the issues started to come up.
But, the gym I'm at, the overall technique and balance is good. Although it may sound like alot of negatives from the posting in here, these are just a pet peeves brought up in relevant of the thread. Also, I like the environment and have a bit of friends there. Other gyms I feel are too 1 dimensional, they say MMA in name, but really its just a pure BJJ gym that hired a striking coach, and vice versa. They don't know how to blend the transition of MMA between the two. Then there are other more real MMA gyms around, but they're a shit can for gym wars, and more of places where rough blue collar guys who are pissed at their bosses go to vent and try to murder their teammates (Not an exaggeration, a few years ago, one guy was set to fight in an exhibition against my teammate, and a week before the event, he was headkick KOed by his coach and had to pull out).

Like your situation, I've "made my bones" so I'm free to do things more of how I want. Though I need to confirm this for next year when I compete again, I hope I don't run into that weight class bs ignorance again.

Now, personally, one of my big red flags is when an instructor parrots the notion that it's better to have no experience beforehand, so that there are fewer "training scars" to correct.

Oh man I remember this, this was big about a decade ago. I think it was: having TMA training ingrained bad habits, and its harder to remove the bad habits and retrain, compared to a clean slate.