Hi. I am an amateur Muay Thai fighter. Stances in muay thai can vary based on what school/method you are training under and whether it is traditional MT or Americanized MT, etc etc. I'm not sure how to describe the footwork except to say that fluid, conservative movement is emphasized more than specific stances/postures and whatnot. All the muay thai i've come across uses more or less western boxing punching techniques. I'd say that in general, traditional Thailand style MT guys aren't really all that great with boxing though. The greater emphasis is on kicking, kneeing and elbows. Punching is only one part of the equation. In America where boxing is popular and most competitions do not allow elbows, you will find more gyms that emphasize boxing more.

I don't think there's anything exceptionally dangerous about the sparring training in MT. In most gym you will rarely see anyone regularly going full blast with elbows and everything. You don't want to get injured so that you can't fight! In America the full contact sparring will usually be just hands or hands and kicks. Sometimes they'll do light play sparring with everything, just to get the timing. In fact in Thailand I don't even think they usually do any full contact sparring because they fight like twice a month so its not practical to sustain injuries in training. To train the clinch and knees you do the plum clinching drills. The real hard aspect of MT training is the conditioning, which is very tough. You gotta spend endless hours jumping rope, shadowboxing and hitting the bag. To really hone your technique you'll need to have a trainer that'll really drill you hard on the thai pads. If you don't have a trainer who knows how to hold pads, you're not gonna learn good MT technique. In most good MT gyms, if you want to train seriously you will probably be expected to fight at some point in time.