Chatchai Sasakul - Perfecting Hands (106 min)

Chatchai Sasakul is former WBC world boxing champion  (1997) and Best Coach in Thailand (2007). He began as a Petchyindee Muay Thai fighter but made his mark on the world in boxing. He understands connections between boxing and Muay Thai.

I’ve heard it said that you can never be too good at the fundamentals. In the years that I’ve been full-time in the world of Muay Thai, my eyes have changed a lot, so that what I see as “good” or beautiful Muay isn’t the same as what I considered good before. Stuff I used to really like watching is now virtually unwatchable to me; this is also difficult in that it makes my critique of my own abilities ever-finer, so the mistakes are smaller and smaller but ever more numerous as I reach toward these beautiful techniques and efficient forms. The beauty I do see in fighters now, the minute details of movement and form and balance; it’s more beautiful than I could have imagined. It excites me more than anything I ever thought was wondrous before. So, there are positives to snobbery as well.

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One thing I’ve come to realize about some of the best fighters is that they aren’t actually doing anything very fancy. They’re doing the same moves that an amatuer is doing, they’re just doing it really, really well. Saenchai’s trickiness is similar to the flair that a stage magician might have, it’s a distraction so that you don’t see the card tucked between thumb and forefinger. The magic is in the performance, it’s in the execution of the moves, not in the breakdown of them. There are world champion boxers who throw little more than a jab - looking at you here, Klitschko. This doesn’t make someone a “hack.” On the contrary, being prolific and profoundly smooth in the basics is absolutely stunning. That’s what I see when I watch Chatchai Sasakul move across the floor, even just a few steps, while he’s demonstrating a jab-cross-hook combination. In boxing, there aren’t a whole lot of strikes in the arsenal. So great fighters are just really, really good at maybe three strikes. Tyson, in my book, is really just incredible at one: that left hook. But it’s incredible. And his movement around that strike, how he gets to it, is what inspires poetic sports writing or comparisons to graceful animals or whatever else. If I were to boil it down to what drives me so crazy about Chatchai’s movements, why I could watch him for hours and never tire of it, is balance. His balance is unreal.

So this is all to say that it’s perhaps a bit of a risk to present a nearly 2 hour, long-form video of a man teaching me what amounts to left, right, hook and some really awesome footwork. It’s really just that. How can you watch 2 hours of that? Well, in my audio commentary I’ve attempted to bring you along in the process of adjusting the disbalance, lack of power, discoordination and other aspects that must be smoothed away before the boat is ready to sail. For me, my actual experience of these two hours with Chatchai, the differences were profound. I finally understood his concept of weight transfer on punches, that footwork allows the punches rather than the other way around. I could feel the difference in my body, in all the movements from top to bottom… and then I’d feel another adjustment and it was even better. Like getting your eyes checked and suddenly the right lens goes in and everything snaps into focus; then they flip the little lens and what you thought was clear already becomes more crisp. That’s what these tiny adjustments feel like. And then you lose them and you have to feel your way back. Chatchai emphasized that a lot, reiterating to me over and again that when you train, you are training to feel the correct movements. There are times when I’m throwing just a jab and cross, very simple, and Chatchai will stand directly behind me or directly in front of me, crouching and changing angles like he’s looking down a pool cue or the scope on a rifle, checking alignment. Can you imagine what eyes like that see when they watch fights? Chatchai is not only a former world boxing champion, he’s also won Coach of the Year in all of Thailand. 

In the first hour Chatchai walks me through weight transfer on the punches, which is balance and footwork. Chatchai’s jab is something quite unique for me: he rotates his front foot on the ball, twisting the heel out like a left hook. The result is that the jab comes straight out with the hip and shoulder twisting in perfect alignment to each other, with your weight staying or even shifting to the back foot. If you look at the final position from a distance - the way Chatchai backs up to check the angles - the back foot, knee, hip and shoulder are perfectly aligned and the front side has also lined up like the final position of a left hook, but with the front arm out straight for the jab. It sounds a bit odd, but when you actually do it you can feel the balance in your body. Chatchai imitates the far more common jab, where people are pivoting at the same time that they’re punching, and you can see how off-balance and lacking in power it is. And everyone does it.

Off of that jab, with your weight on the back leg, you then shift your weight onto the front foot while pivoting on the ball of the back foot and driving the hip and shoulder to bring the right cross over. Again, the front side is all in a line from foot, knee, hip and shoulder. Then for the hook you step out and a bit forward with the back foot, shifting all your weight over and across as the hook follows in line with the knee, hip and shoulder. It’s so balanced, effortlessly powerful. When I felt this in the first hour it was like a Eureka! moment, actually feeling my weight shifting onto the opposite side from the punch, rather than the way I’d been doing it, which is exactly the opposite: if I’m jabbing the weight comes onto the front foot, cross is front foot, hook is front foot. As a way to keep my balance I’ve been kind of leaning to the left. It’s very slight - Chatchai sees it when he looks down the “barrel of the gun” when he stands back a bit and squats to see the angles - but when he makes me correct it, just using his fingers to pull my shoulders more center, I feel a huge difference. Like a chiropractor’s adjustments or something.

First hour:

1. Bringing the front leg out and twisting the heel to the side on the jab
2. Keeping weight on the opposite foot from the punch
3. Angling the hook somewhat downward to get around the guard
4. Keeping the cross and uppercut closer to the body, sticking elbows to ribs
5. Footwork as connected to weight transfer
6. Speed on the punches coming from slowing down, accuracy
7. “Head movement” and how to train it
8. The importance of “feeling” your training

In the second hour I just wanted to focus only on a jab and cross, really having spent some time working on those weight transfers. I’d somehow lost that jab of Chatchai’s, my foot wasn’t coming out and pivoting because I was still leaning my weight forward. So he helps me adjust that again and focuses more on keeping weight centered down the middle and using footwork to carry the power of the punches. He also works on smoother transitions between punches so that you’re not throwing everything individually, but flowing between them.

Second hour:

1. Really keeping weight on the back foot for the jab
2. Tapping the back foot on the cross in order to flow into the step-out for a hook
3. The smooth transition between each punch so that strikes flow together
4. Using the twist of the shoulders for real power, speed and fluidity
5. Footwork, when to punch and when to pivot

this video is published in very high HD 50p1080i, turn up the quality on the playback if you have the connection speed