What is Muay Thai and Why Is it So Powerful?
Muay Thai, known as the Art of Eight Limbs (hands, legs, elbows and knees), is widely known as the best striking martial art. Characterized by powerful legs kicks (as we’ve seen One Championship featherweight Champion Tang Kai send opponent Thanh Le off in a wheelchair via delivering a series of devastating roundhouse kicks to the thigh), and powerful knee and elbow strikes, Muay Thai can, with one blow, knock an opponent out cold.
With that in mind, Muay Thai training focuses on form, power, cardiovascular endurance, conditioning, technique and finally, a great deal of sparring for those who plan on fighting competitively. In our Beginners class, we focus on the first five magical elements.
Form
The basics – footwork, hand placement, rotation and the angle of limbs during a strike. All these are important to delivering the perfect kick or punch, with the maximum amount of impact, whilst keeping your balance to recover guard quickly. You’ll often hear the trainers shout “balance! balance!”. Without good balance, the practitioner essentially is unable to recover back to their fighting stance fast, becoming vulnerable to receiving an open strike from their opponent. You will still see Intermediate and Advance students joining the Beginners class as working on the basic form is never something one stops learning!
Power
Muay Thai is known for the devastating kicks and punches. There have been many examples of this power from videos show casing Muay Thai fighters demolishing banana trees and pork bones with their kicks. At our Beginners class, we will work on building this power through drills on the heavy bags and pad work. You will learn to deliver kicks and punches with speed and KO power. Doing a hundred kicks may sound like a daunting process, however over time it becomes an easy task as your body becomes more conditioned and powerful. As Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”. By the time you are ready to move to an intermediate class, you will be able to deliver powerful strikes that are guaranteed to impress.
Cardiovascular endurance
Before a fight, Muay Thai fighters typically go for an 8-10km run followed by a 30 min rope-skipping session. Muay Thai is famous for being the top few sports with the highest calorie burn in both training and competitions, hence the cardiovascular endurance of practitioner must be top notch in order to compete. Without good cardiovascular endurance, the muscles and the brain become deprived of oxygen, reaction time slows, and strikes start to get weaker, which is obviously not ideal in a competitive fight!
At our Beginners classes, we push your cardiovascular endurance with our fast and fun pad-work, heavy bag work and circuit training. In a short few weeks of regular training, you should be able to train harder for longer, thereby increasing your overall fitness, heart health and calorie burn
Conditioning
Why do fighters condition themselves with weights, muscle work such as sit ups and push-ups? A strong body is necessary to fight. The muscles protect the fighter’s organs against strikes from the opponent.
At our Beginners classes, we condition the body to get ready for the Intermediate level, where there will be sparring involved.
Technique
At our Beginners classes, we teach the technique that forms a strong base for when a practitioner moves to the Intermediate level to learn more complex techniques. The technique put together all the practitioner learns, which are the attacks, counters and defenses. By the time a practitioner moves on to an Intermediate class, he or she would have amassed an arsenal of techniques and combinations than can be put into practice during sparring.
Whether or not the practitioner chooses to move to an Intermediate level or chooses to remain at the Beginners classes as a fun, interesting way to get fit and strong, the goal of the Beginner classes is to train the practitioner into top fitness and form, with an arsenal of technique that can be used in in sparring, or even as self-defense. You will not regret joining our Beginners classes in your journey to becoming a fighter, or in your journey to get into the Best Shape of your Life!