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Muay Thai Techniques, Animated: A Free Visual Reference

Every technique below is a looping silhouette of somebody actually throwing it — the punches, the kicks, the knees, the elbows and the defenses — each with the Thai name where there is one, the number it gets called by, and the single cue that makes it work.

It is free. No signup, no email, nothing held back. Bookmark it, link it, or screenshot it for the person in your gym who still doesn’t know what 3 means.

How To Read The Figures

Each figure is six frames on a loop, a second and a bit end to end — long enough to carry the tempo, because a technique is a piece of timing as much as it is a shape.

But every one is cut around a single frame in particular: the fourth of the six, the extension. That is the frame where the shape is legible — elbow at its arc, shin turned over, knee at the top. Hit Frozen in the toolbar below and every figure on the page stops there at once, which turns the page from a set of loops into a set of poses. Do both passes. The loop tells you the rhythm; the freeze tells you where everything actually goes.

And any figure opens. Click one for a larger view with a transport under it: step a frame at a time with the buttons or the arrow keys, or pick one straight off the filmstrip. Worth doing on anything whose order you are unsure of — at six frames in a little over a second, no pose is on screen for two-tenths of a second.

The figures were filmed and then keyed down to silhouette, not generated. That distinction does more work than it sounds like: image models produce plausible-and-wrong Muay Thai — a flat rear foot on a cross, a round kick landing on the instep, a “check” that is really a knee — and if it is wrong in the picture you will learn it wrong. The longer story of where these came from is here.

Last thing before the toolbar: everything was shot orthodox, left foot forward. If you fight southpaw, flip the whole page.

The Numbers, First

Most of the punches carry a number as well as a name, and the number is what a coach or a timer app will actually shout at you mid-round. There is no point owning a good hook if “three” doesn’t make you throw one.

Call	Name	Which hand
1	Jab	Straight, lead hand
2	Cross	Straight, rear hand
3	Left Hook	Hook, lead hand
4	Right Hook	Hook, rear hand
5	Left Uppercut	Uppercut, lead hand
6	Right Uppercut	Uppercut, rear hand

Add “to the body” to any of them and it is the same punch downstairs: 1 to the body is the jab into the ribs. Kicks, knees and elbows carry no numbers — those get called by name.

Punches

The six numbered punches, the overhand, the double jab, and the work downstairs.

Kicks

Notice how many of these are the same kick aimed somewhere else — the round kick, the head kick and the low kick are one mechanic at three heights.

Knees

The difference between the two sides is most of what there is to say about knees.

Elbows

All of these only exist at close range — if you can jab it, you cannot elbow it.

Defense

The half of the sport that separates people who spar from people who hit bags. Several come as mirrored pairs, because a slip toward the lead side and a slip toward the rear side set up completely different counters.

How To Actually Use This

Reading a reference is not training, so here is the honest version of what this page is for.

Freeze it and copy the extension frame in a mirror, one technique at a time, until your shape matches the figure’s. Then let it loop and match the tempo. Then — and this is the part that matters — close the page, because the last thing you want mid-round is to be looking at a screen. The whole point of learning the vocabulary is that somebody can say “1 2 3, right low kick” and your body goes and does it while your eyes stay where they belong.

Which is exactly why these figures exist. They live inside Shot Caller Nak Muay, an app that calls Muay Thai combinations out loud while you work the bag or shadow box — the figures are there to hand you the words before the voice starts using them.

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