User:PaulrdUC/sandbox

 Article Evaluation 

Muay Thai

Content:

There is a folklore section that draws away from the other more important parts of the text. There is a term thip which might not be correct, when searching the term nothing comes up however the term "teep" shows results with exactly what is being explained at that point. There is a subcategory under defense against attacks, it would be easier to read if this subheading was maybe worded differently. As it is now, the heading confused me because it was talking about defensive things then gives a subheading called "kicks and punches". There is a heading labeled "Children" it would be beneficial to the reader to label that different maybe change it to "Children in Muay Thai".

Tone:

This article has a relatively neutral tone. There would be no argumentative segment about this topic. The article does a decent job of explaining all of the categories of muay thai. There is a huge difference in the amount talked about the history and the actual sport. There should be more about the sport of muay thai, the traditions, what is the act of wai, the respect involved, krus, and much more.

Sources:

Some of the sources are just from blogs or other non factual websites. There is a lacking of academic articles to back some of the facts and history in this article. There are a lot of facts that don't have the proper citation needed. The links to the various citations are functioning and allow people to access them.

Talk Page:

There are people combating the "art of eight limbs", however through experience there have been people close to me refer to Muay Thai as the art of eight limbs. This article is rated c. Apparently there are a few dead links that no longer pull anything up when clicked on.

Plan of Action
I will work to fix the dead links for some of the citations in the article Muay Thai. I will add a few things on the background of muay thai, the use of equipment, and conditioning. Most of the things that have been changed by looking at the talk page are fixing links that were dead. One contributor on the talk page made a claim that saying "The art of eight limbs" is nonsense. However, muay thai is commonly referred to as this. I will work on fixing all of the links and citations, while finding scholarly articles to back the claims that I will be making. I can fix the formatting of the article, some of the headings are odd, or not the same as the rest in the article. I will add pictures of thai pads and shin guards. I will reformat the conditioning portion to where it separates the different typed of conditioning into, combat conditioning ( shadow boxing, sparring, pad work, and bag work), cardio, and pain tolerance training.

Folklore
According to Thai folklore at the time of the fall of the ancient Siamese capital of Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1767, the invading Burmese troops rounded up thousands of Siamese and took them to Burma as prisoners. Among them were a large number of Thai boxers, who were taken to the city of Ava.

In 1774, in the Burmese city of Rangoon, the Burmese King Hsinbyushin (known in Thai as "King Mangra") decided to organize a seven-day, seven-night religious festival in honor of Buddha's relics. The festivities included many forms of entertainment, such as the costume plays called likay, comedies and farces, and sword-fighting matches. At one point, King Hsinbyushin wanted to see how Muay Boran would compare to the Lethwei (Burmese Boxing). Nai Khanomtom was selected to fight against the Burmese champion. The boxing ring was set up in front of the throne and Nai Khanomtom did a traditional Wai Kru pre-fight dance, to pay his respects to his teachers and ancestors, as well as the spectators, dancing around his opponent. This amazed and perplexed the Burmese people, who thought it was black magic. When the fight began, Nai Khanomtom charged out, using punches, kicks, elbows, and knees to pummel his opponent until he collapsed.

However the Burmese referee said the Burmese champion was too distracted by the dance, and declared the knockout invalid. The King then asked if Nai Khanomtom would fight nine other Burmese champions to prove himself. He agreed and fought them all, one after the other with no rest periods in between. His last opponent was a great kickboxing teacher from Rakhine. Nai Khanomtom mangled him by his kicks and no one else dared to challenge him.

King Mangra was so impressed that he allegedly remarked, "Every part of the Siamese is blessed with venom. Even with his bare hands, he can fell nine or ten opponents. But his Lord was incompetent and lost the country to the enemy. If he had been any good, there was no way the City of Ayutthaya would ever have fallen."

King Mangra granted Nai Khanomtom freedom along with either riches or two beautiful Burmese wives. Nai Khanomtom chose the wives as he said that money was easier to find. He then departed with his wives for Siam. Other variations of this story had him also winning the release of his fellow Thai prisoners. His feat is celebrated every March 17 as Boxer's Day or National Muay Boran Day in his honor and that of muay boran's.

Today, some have wrongly attributed the legend of Nai Khanomtom to King Naresuan, who spent his youth as a royal hostage in Burma while Ayutthaya was a Burmese vassal. However, Nai Khanomtom and King Naresuan lived almost two centuries apart.

Traditional Wear
The Mongkhon, or Mongkol (headband) and Pra Jiad (armbands) are often worn into the ring before the match begins. They originate back in times when Thailand was in a constant state of war, where young men would tear off pieces of a loved one's clothing (often their mother's sarong) and wear it to battle for good luck as well as to ward off harmful spirits. In modern times the Mongkol (lit. meaning holy spirit, luck, and protection) is worn as a tribute to the gym that the Muay Thai fighter is fighting out of. The Mongkol is traditionally presented by a trainer to the fighter once he feels that the fighter is ready to represent the gym's name in the ring. Often after the fighter has finished the Wai Kru, the trainer will take the Mongkol off of his head and place it on their corner of the ring for luck. They were also used for protection. Whether the fighter is a Buddhist or not, it is common for them to bring the Mongkol to a Buddhist monk who blesses it with good luck prior to stepping into the ring.

Conditioning
Like most contractors full contact fighting sports, muay Thai has a heavy focus on body conditioning. Muay Thai is specifically designed to promote the level of fitness and toughness required for ring competition. Training regimens include many staples of combat sport conditioning such as running, shadowboxing, rope jumping, body weight resistance exercises, medicine ball exercises, abdominal exercises, and in some cases weight training. Thai boxers rely heavily on kicks utilizing the shin bone. As such, practitioners of Muay Thai will repeatedly hit a dense heavy bag with their shins, conditioning it, hardening the bone through a process called cortical remodeling. Striking a sand filled bag will also have the same effect.

Training that is specific to a Thai fighter includes training with coaches on Thai Pads, focus mitts, heavy bag, and sparring. The daily training includes many rounds (3–5 minute periods broken up by a short rest, often 1–2 minutes) of these various methods of practice. Thai Pad training is a cornerstone of Muay Thai conditioning that involves practicing punches, kicks, knees, and elbow strikes with a trainer wearing thick pads covering the forearms and hands. These special pads (often referred to as Thai pads) are used to absorb the impact of the fighter’s strikes and allow the fighter to react to the attacks of the pad holder in a live situation. The trainer will often also wear a belly pad around the abdominal area so that the fighter can attack with straight kicks or knees to the body at any time during the round.

Focus mitts are specific to training a fighter’s hand speed, punch combinations, timing, punching power, defense, and counter-punching and may also be used to practice elbow strikes. Heavy bag training is a conditioning and power exercise that reinforces the techniques practiced on the pads. Sparring is a means to test technique, skills, range, strategy, and timing against a partner. Sparring is often a light to medium contact exercise because competitive fighters on a full schedule are not advised to risk injury by sparring hard. Specific tactics and strategies can be trained with sparring including in close fighting, clinching and kneeing only, cutting off the ring, or using reach and distance to keep an aggressive fighter away.

Injuries
Muay Thai is a combat sport that utilizes eight different parts of the body (fists, elbows, knees, and shins), with that being said injuries are quite common in all levels of Muay Thai. An injury is considered reportable if it requires the athlete to rest for more than one day. Many injuries in the sport of Muay Thai go unreported as the fighters may not notice the injuries at first, refusing to admit they need treatment, a heightened pain threshold, fear fear that their instructor will perceive the injury negatively, and confusion as to what is an injury. Similar to most sports, injury rates tend to be higher in beginners rather than amateurs and professionals. Soft tissue injuries are the most common form of injury in Muay Thai, contributing between 80-90% of all injuries. These injuries are caused by repeated trauma to soft parts of the body. During matches there is little to no padding and that leaves soft tissue vulnerable to strikes. The second most common injury among beginner and amateur Muay Thai fighters are sprains and strains. It appears that these injuries can be easily avoided or reduced. Many participants of a study admitted to inadequate warm up before the event of the injury. The third most common injury are fractures. Fractures are more commonly seen with amateur and professional fighters, because they are allowed full contact and beginners are allowed no contact. The most common sites for fractures are the nose, carpal bones, metacarpals, digits, and ribs. The distribution of injuries are significantly different between the three groups (beginner, amateur, and professional), this seems to be expected as a person progresses through the different levels the forces involved are a lot higher, less padding and protective equipment is used, and athletes are likely to train harder, resulting in more serious injuries in more experienced fighters.