Total Sports Simcoe County Edition, Winter 2016 Winter 2016 Issue | Page 14

Discovering Muay Thai:
The Art of 8 Limbs
By Dakota Gregory
In early 2015, after several months of walking home
late at night after work and encountering numerous
confrontations from midnight stragglers and shady
characters, confrontations that easily could have turned
into a scrap, I found myself tired of constantly having
to be on high alert when making my way home. While
walking home, periodically glancing over my shoulder,
I would think to myself, what techniques would be the
best to defend myself with? If my adversary steps right,
which way should I step? If my opponent launches a
haymaker my way, what is the most effective counter?
The search for a gym that would fit my needs and
personality began including jiu jitsu places, boxing gyms,
and karate dojos. A new gym in town, Legacy Fight Club,
had just opened in August 2014 and muay thai classes
were being offered. Muay thai, known as the art of 8
limbs, immediately resonated with me as I saw it as the
purest and most applicable style of stand up combat.
Different than other martial arts, muay thai utilizes
punches, elbows, knees, kicks, and in close grappling
techniques known as the clinch. The owner, Bao Luu,
who was in his late twenty’s, had a brief description of
himself and what he aspired for Legacy Fight Club to
represent and accomplish on their site.
The subsequent Monday, I arrived at Legacy for my first
class. The energy encompassed by all of the members
fascinated me. Most surprisingly, the gym was not
packed full of roughians with black eyes. Of course,
there was a group of fighters with black eyes, however,
there were also kids as young as 11 and women \›