Do Muay Thai fighters use knees and elbows while sparring?

When they spar do they just do kickboxing, and save the knees and elbows for the actual fights? Or do they knee and elbow each other even when they train and spar?|||Modern Muay Thai training is actually very similar to boxing, actually. However there are a couple of crucial differences;





1) Unlike western boxing, much like any other striking east asian style, I discovered the other day on youtube that, apparently, Muay Thai also uses %26quot;Kata.%26quot; In Muay thai apparently they combine forms drilling with boxing style training, my theory is that is the reason they are so deadly. In my experience drilling in forms over and over increases coordination and focus, you combine this with sparring and focus mitts and you do it 6 hours a day, and crap man you will be one deadly mofo in the ring.





2) The sparring sessions allow more, and like another poster said, most of the martial art%26#039;s weapons except the elbows. If you want to trip someone, you can do it. If you want to clinch and trip, you can do that too. Its not like in Karate where you%26#039;re sparring and the sensei yells %26quot;flipping your opponent like that is illegal! one point off!!!!%26quot; See, part of the reason Muay Thai fighters have had greater success is because during sparing they are allowed greater freedom, the use of more of their martial arts weapons, while in Karate, even the so called %26quot;realistic fighting%26quot; Kyokshin, they operate under restrictions. In Kyokshin, you are only allowed to strike all thickly muscled areas of the body. From my understanding of Kyokshin, if there is a lot of muscle in that part of the body, then its okay to strike there. Naturally that involves the chest, the thighs above the knee, and of course the abdominals so long as you don%26#039;t hit the liver. However you are restricted, pretty much only to those targets, and while constantly taking hits may toughen someone up mentally, what good does it do if you can%26#039;t use trips, locks or throws? Not all of Karate%26#039;s grappling moves are dangerous, some could be used in sparring but sadly, most Karateka are restricted to the striking aspect of the art, so naturally against Muay Thai fighters who are used to practicing with greater freedom, they get eaten alive.





The other posters are probably more knowledgeable; most of what I know comes from youtube (actually a more reliable information source than wikipedia but still......), and that %26quot;Muay Thai Unleashed%26quot; book if that is what its called, which I skimmed (not read) through. I only read if the martial art interests me. Unless Karate sparring is redesigned to allow more throws and locks, and many styles have got them, highly likely even cross trained Karateka will continue getting eaten alive at MMA and Muay Thai tourneys.





I honestly don%26#039;t care if a Karate guy knows BJJ; they are practicing one martial art or the other but in the end they are still developing bad habits in their stand up game. Also, it kind of irks me because Karate has so many trips and throws that could be used to set up arm bars, or Kimuras, or whatever other fancy crap BJJ has. BJJ and Karate, actually combine beautifully; Karate has strikes, trips, throws, and stand up locks, while BJJ has ground work, if you combined Karate%26#039;s stand up grappling with BJJ%26#039;s ground, it would be entirely possible to beat someone using entirely NOTHING BUT grappling. As a martial art, Karate has plenty of grappling movies that can be used to counter strikes of all sorts, and once you use them, you can use Karate%26#039;s counter strike grappling to set up BJJ moves.





However how many people out there think in those terms?|||No, we don%26#039;t use elbows when sparring. It%26#039;s easy to cut with elbows. We do use both clinch knee and outside knee but not hard. We don%26#039;t %26quot;do kickboxing.%26quot; Kickboxing is a sport where they wear pants and kick with foam shoes, and they don%26#039;t use leg kicks. We use leg kicks frequently.





Reading about something isn%26#039;t the same as doing it.





We don%26#039;t have any %26quot;kata.%26quot;





Generally, you don%26#039;t spar like you would be fighting, it%26#039;s much lighter. Otherwise you would constantly be injuring yourself and your training partners. And you don%26#039;t want to get injuries when preparing for a fight; that would hinder your performance.|||they leave out the elbows. but use light knees in sparring. actually guys like Duke Roufus says most thai fighters don%26#039;t do much hard sparring, just light sparring. save your body for the fight. they do the hard stuff on bags, and the thai pads.





even a light elbow can ruin your day.|||normally take out elbows but use knees with less power.|||Do kickboxing, no hard spar.|||Yes.|||dude look up muay thai sparring. they have elbow and knee pads now adays|||yes they do.








EDIT%26gt;yes i do agree with dmaud56,unfortunately most ppl including a lot of karateka dont know or understand the proper application of karate which includes grappling and some styles do have ground work that is at least equal to bjj.|||yes.