I just had a sparring session with a friend yesterday who did muay thai for three years and I was having a hell of a time trying to defend myself against his roundhouse kick.

Here's what I tried against it. At first, I tried a gang sao against it but found that it was killer on my arms and that whenever he kicked full force, my structure would collapse. Then I tried going in to kick his body while he was throwing his kick. It would work sometimes, but whenever I was a little to slow with my kick, I would usually catch his kick on my shin, which hurts like hell. After that, I just tried backing out and waiting for the kick to go past first. Then I would just go in and attack when his back was turned. This seemed to be the safiest thing to do.

My question to all of you is, how do you guys handle these muay thai kicks? What do you find works really well where you don't have to take any of the force of the attack on any part of your body?