Combo Maker is a simple web app that generates intuitive striking combinations for Muay Thai training.

In Muay Thai classes we drill combinations of strikes, and often the combos follow a basic pattern, demonstrated in the Dutch drill: The core (hips and shoulders, at least) rotates alternatingly left and right on each strike. For example, in an orthodox stance, a jab (left hand strike, body turns to the right) is followed by a cross (right hand strike, body turns to the left), but could just as easily could be followed by a rear kick instead (right leg kick, body turns to the left). By mixing up the particular strikes while keeping to that left-right pattern, we train ourselves to be flexible in what strikes we throw while always looking to throw an opposite-side strike for better power and balance.

I thought it would be fun to encode this system in an app, so I listed the moves I wanted to include and filled out a boolean mapping to show which moves are “allowed” to follow which. A combo generator function picks a move randomly, and adds it to the combination if it’s allowed to follow the previous move, and so on. The script can generate combinations of any length.

The web app is hosted on GitHub pages, at https://patrickfarley.github.io/combo-maker/