Fighter Styles Playbook

Mat Manual companion guide to "Femur, Khao, Tae: Three Ways to Be a Nak Muay." Print it. The article names the shapes Thai gyms sort fighters by. This book finds yours honestly, builds it with per-style drill menus, patches the fear each style carries, and sets the matchups as round plans you can spar to. The closing block sends you into the other chairs for six weeks, because the fastest way to beat a style is to have trained inside it.

Name: ______________________________ Gym: ______________________________ Coach: ______________________________ Stance: ☐ Orthodox ☐ Southpaw Current read of your style (Part 5): ______________________________

BEFORE ANYTHING: SCOPE AND SAFETY ☐ Sparring in this book runs at the contact level your coach sets for the drill in front of you. Style work is not a licence to raise it. Either partner lowers the level with one word, and the word is obeyed before the next exchange. ☐ Matchup rounds (Parts 14 to 18) are learning rounds with assigned jobs, not auditions. A student who turns an assigned-job round into a proving round sits out the next one. The jobs are the training. ☐ Head contact follows your gym's standing rules for class sparring at all times, in every prescription in this book, whatever the style being trained. Elbow work in sparring is pad and drill work unless your coach states otherwise for named, experienced pairs. ☐ Sharp joint pain, a head knock, or dizziness ends sparring for the day for the student involved, full stop, and is reported to the coach before the student leaves. Style blocks resume after clearance, not after enthusiasm. ☐ The style names in this book describe tendencies, not ranks and not worth. No student is excused basics, defence, or conditioning by a label, and no label in this book is final before a season of logged sparring (Part 4). ☐ The stop word ends any round instantly, from any student, for any reason.

Part 1: The Style Card

Fill this card in pencil. It will change, and the changes are the record.

The pencil rule. A style named in ink in month one becomes a cage by month six. Every entry on this card is dated, and Part 27's review re-reads the card against a fresh audit each cycle. Fighters change as skills land. The card's job is to notice.