Two people circling each other is the most fundamental form of fighting. We begin there.
Walking is one of the most underrated bases, not just in the AMSB system but in combat sports as a whole. Before I started writing this, I thought about how the only time most of us ever actually train to walk is when we're babies. You teach yourself to stand, you teach yourself to move, and after that human walking becomes pure instinct. For everyday life that's enough. For combat sports it isn't.
You can look back at videos from the 1900s all the way up until now. So yes, you can also cut the ring off to someone circling left and right, but we begin with the most fundamental form of walking, which is the most fundamental form of fighting, which is two people circling each other.
It doesn't matter what your stance is. Whether you're orthodox or southpaw, you can walk left or walk right. At a fundamental level, when you walk left or right, you shouldn't be crossing your feet, at least not intentionally. Even people who have spent real time training this base, including those who have trained it with overload, hold to that standard. You can also walk away orthodox or southpaw, you can walk backwards left or right depending on stance, and you can run away orthodox or southpaw if the moment calls for it. All of it is stance dependent.
Walking is the kind of rudiment or fundamental that we should be training every day as a systems check, especially for anyone competing, amateur or professional. We all walk during competition, and we all walk in training. It doesn't matter if you're a boxer, a kickboxer, a Muay Thai fighter, or an MMA fighter. You cannot look through any film and not find an athlete in the walking base at some point. It especially happens when people get tired.
The walking base is movement, but it is a specific kind of movement. You've heard people in the corner say "move your feet." Walking is one way to move your feet, except it isn't a broad term. It's a specific movement. Inside the walking base you can be offensive or defensive. You can use feints. You can be tactical and control the clock. You can use your controls, your frames, your posts. You can change your heights, change your disposition, and change your pace of play. You can walk fast or walk slow. You can change the ranges you're walking at. You can walk inside a 50/50, or you can walk outside the 50/50.
Think about Stephen Curry. He dribbles every game and he shoots every game, and if you watch him before games he's drilling the dribble and drilling the shot. Now think about the military. Search for the CIWS, the close-in weapon system the Navy pronounces "sea-whiz." You'll watch them run through a long list of system checks before they ever fire. We should treat our walking base the same way, because it is your default base. It's where you end up when you're fatigued, when you're overloaded, when you're coming off a round or losing a round. If you can't defend yourself, be offensive, feint, control the clock, work different ranges, and manage your pace of play while you're tired and still hold your integrity and your consciousness, then you're in a world of trouble.
We hear all the time about how certain athletes are special, and a lot of the time it's true. But one thing we don't do well is build a system and a language where everybody can be trained to do everything. We've all watched special, more athletic people fall short simply because their fundamentals weren't there. Walking is something you want to master, because mastering it puts you in a position to win against anybody.
That's the vocabulary. The drilling lives in the layering. From orthodox you can change direction, walking left to right and back, and the same from southpaw. You can change stance while you move. You can change direction and stance at the same time, stacking those layers on top of each other. The goal is to put it all together, so in freestyle or sparring, if you've drilled it and truly striven for mastery, it's all there. We build it through layer cake drills. We are aware that no one actually trains this, or trains it like this.
That's why this tool shows the fundamental way to walk alongside case studies of walking in live competition. In some videos you'll see the athlete cross their feet. Of course you will. It's a fight, and they probably don't train this. But for us at AMSB, they are still in the walking base. These aren't meant to be perfect examples; they're athletes doing a whole variety of walking. The goal is to read what they're doing with their feet, and to spot the drills you've been training. We've also included unconscious mistakes in range, where someone genuinely wasn't ready to fight and got knocked out for it. Nothing is ever perfect. The goal is to stay conscious of our own imperfections so we can correct them.