Beginner Muay Thai tips

So, you want to start training Muay Thai? Maybe you’re wondering how to go about starting, or maybe you’ve even tried a couple of classes and want to know how to get the most out of them. Starting anything new, such as a new hobby or job, can often be confusing and nerve-wracking. You might be nervous about what will be expected of you, nervous about looking silly if you do something wrong, or even (understandably) nervous about the prospect of getting punched in the face!

Just remember, the only way to stop feeling like this, is to suck it up and give it a go. Chances are, you’ll find that you had nothing to worry about.

One thing I hear, again and again, is people saying something like, “oh, I’d love to do what you do, but you have to be proper fit for it, don’t you?” Or perhaps, “I’ll be back in the gym as soon as I get fit again.”

Both of these statements are putting the cart before the horse. You do NOT have to be super fit to start Muay Thai. Yes, you do have to be very fit to compete, but do you know how you get fit? By starting training!
Of course, there are things you can do outside the gym that will help prepare you for training Muay Thai and help you improve quicker. I’ll discuss a few of these briefly later.

Why train muay thai?

Everybody has their own reason for training Muay Thai. Not everyone wants to compete and most of the people who train Muay Thai will never step in the ring. And that’s perfectly fine. Muay Thai can have an incredibly positive effect on your life, whether you want to lose weight, get fit, or just have some fun whilst learning a new skill and making new friends.

Muay Thai training provides an excellent all-round workout:

• Aerobic and anaerobic cardiovascular fitness
• Strength and athletic power
• Muscular endurance
• Mobility and flexibility
• Produces a robust and injury-resistant body
• Great for fat loss due to the intense calorie burn

In addition, the never-ending skill development that comes with Muay Thai provides a fantastic stimulus and motivation to train that is completely lacking in the average gym-goers workout, spending hours slogging on a treadmill and mindlessly lifting on weight machines.

Finally, Muay Thai is a fantastic community. I have built some great friendships in my own gym and met countless people from other gyms. Traveling to Thailand led to me meeting fantastic people from around the world and really expanding my perception of life.

Finding the right gym for you

This is an important question. Muay Thai has seen an explosion in global popularity in the last decade or so, and there are now gyms popping up everywhere. Of course, with this comes a variety of gyms in both the style and quality of training on offer. Finding a gym that suits you is paramount. Being stuck in the wrong gym, with the wrong instructor or the wrong types of students, can be a shitty situation that stalls your progress and can even put you off training altogether.

So how do you find the right gym?

That’s a difficult question. It largely depends on what gyms are available near you, and also what type of gym you are looking for. Do you want to fight? Do you have dreams of one day becoming a champion? In that case, you really want a fight-focused gym, with an experienced trainer and a number of other fighters to learn from.

On the other hand, maybe you just want to lose a bit of weight or get fit. In this case, a grimy sweatbox filled with ripped up animals training to fight might not be the atmosphere you are looking for.

Have a look online, read some reviews of the gyms in your area, speak to people who train there and get a sense of what that gym is like. In the end, though, the only real way to know if it’s the right fit is to try a few lessons.

Shor Chana gym, Preston, UK

Myself, I was very lucky to stumble on the right gym straight away almost by accident. When I decided to give Muay Thai a try, I looked online and found there was a gym right around the corner from where I was living. So I decided to give that place a try first. After just one lesson at the Shor Chana School of Martial Arts, I was hooked. About five years later and I’m still at the same gym, the place is like a second home to me and I’ve never even considered any other gyms.

Your first few classes

So, you’ve taken the plunge. You’ve found a gym, tried a few classes and, so far, so good. Now, you want to make sure you are getting the most out of your time there and learning as much as possible.

#1- Listen- keep your eyes and mind open. Listen to your instructor and the senior students. If someone offers you help and advice, appreciate it and try to put it into practice. Every fighter and experienced student knows what it was like to be a beginner, and many will be happy to help if you show the willingness to listen.

#2- Relax- any time I find myself teaching someone new, this is something I’m almost guaranteed to say to them. “Relax!” One of the main reasons Muay Thai is such a beautiful sport to watch is that the top fighters know how to be relaxed and fluid, up until the moment they strike. When you are hitting the pads/bags, it’s easy to tense up and try to put everything into every shot you throw. All you do with this is waste energy and limit how much power you can actually produce. In sparring, being too tense will slow your reactions and create a ‘tell’ that is easy to read. Breathe, relax, then explode!

#3- Have fun- remember, you’re here because you want to be, because you enjoy this. Yes, Muay Thai is hard. Anyone who has undergone fight training will be able to tell you that committing to that grind is no small task. Training hard six days a week, often twice a day, whilst cutting weight, can make you start to hate training. But all that becomes worth it when you step in the ring. As a beginner, you don’t have to worry about all that. Remember to smile and laugh, have fun with what you are doing. As the Thai’s say, “sabai, sabai” (“relax, take it easy”). Whenever I watch people sparring, one thing I always look at is the expression on their face. Do they look serious, even angry? Or are they smiling, laughing, enjoying themselves and maybe giving it a shout of “oeei” when they land a nice clean body-kick? This feeds into #2 above, if you are having fun you will naturally relax more.

 

Outside of the gym

Hopefully, by now, you’ll agree that the number one thing to do if you want to learn Muay Thai is to get yourself down to a gym and get training. Without that, how can you possibly learn Muay Thai?

However, there are a number of things you can do outside of the gym to help you progress. If you do get to the point of competing, what you do outside the gym is almost as important as what you do inside of it, maybe even more so (after all, if you spend two hours a day in the gym, that still leaves 22 hours a day that can affect your preparation). Getting in the miles on your roadwork, doing strength and conditioning, eating properly, and also the things you don’t do in this time, such as drinking alcohol, smoking and eating bad foods.

As a beginner, though, you don’t need to worry too much about all this. There’s no point making huge, dramatic changes to your lifestyle all in one go. You don’t have to “live like a fighter” from day one. Whilst I always had competing in my mind as an end goal, I knew when I started that I was a long way off that goal. Early on, I just trained 2-3 times a week and lifted a few weights. I didn’t change my diet or start getting up at the crack of dawn to go running. I would still have a few beers and a takeaway at the weekend. Gradually, these things changed. Making these changes as a gradual process rather than a sudden overhaul helped to make them a permanent lifestyle change for me.

So, what can you do to help yourself progress quicker? I’ll look at two main areas. Training (outside of what you do in the Muay Thai gym) and diet.

Training

There are a number of things you can do to help build your fitness. However, bear in mind that these are all supplementary. The main thing is spending time doing Muay Thai and developing your skills.

Traditionally, Muay Thai fighters run, a lot. When I’m in fight preparation, I aim for a minimum of 20-25 miles a week. Obviously, you don’t want to start out with that kind of volume but running is excellent for improving your stamina. You will see a big difference when you are hitting pads if you are running regularly. It doesn’t have to be great big runs, you’re not training for a marathon, 2-3 miles at a time is a perfect start. Most of my runs last around 3-5 miles.

Strength and conditioning is also important. Muay Thai is a fantastic all-round workout, yet there are elements of your physical fitness that can be improved greatly by training in other areas. The long-standing myth is that lifting weights is no good for a martial artist/fighter, based upon the fear that big muscles make you slow and clumsy. But lifting weights doesn’t have to be just about building big muscles.

If you train like a bodybuilder, with high volumes of isolation work looking to develop hypertrophy (muscle growth), that won’t be particularly helpful. But lifting weights in ways that are targeted to your goals can be massively beneficial.

Of course, you could write a whole article about lifting weights for combat sports, or even a whole series of articles…oh look, I’ve already done that, check out Part 1 here

Diet

Diet is key to any athletic pursuit. Whatever your sport, whatever your goal, whatever your level, you are trying to get the best out of your body. And you can only get out of your body, what you put in it.

Imagine your body is a car. It might be a highly-tuned sports car, with a powerful engine and state of the art technology, but, if you fill the tank with crude oil, it won’t run very well.

Of course, as I have mentioned previously, you don’t need (or want) to make massive, dramatic lifestyle changes overnight. When I hear people say, “I’m going on a diet”, what I hear is that they are going to suddenly make a dramatic drop in calorie intake, severely restrict what kinds of foods they allow themselves to eat, and perhaps even follow whatever the new fad diet is (low carb, paleo, juice-plus, whatever). They will have a set goal in mind, for example being at a certain weight in 8 weeks time. They are miserable for the entire time because suddenly they can’t eat any of the foods they love, they’re always hungry and craving “bad” foods. Then, they hit their goal (or often just give up on it). Suddenly, it’s time to treat themselves and they gorge on all the foods they’ve been missing out on. Before they know it, the weight has come back on (with interest), and the whole vicious circle starts again.

Eating healthy is great. I’d much rather have a nice steak or some fresh chicken, some sweet potatoes and fresh veg, then a greasy pizza or Chinese takeaway. That doesn’t mean I don’t treat myself, of course, anyone who knows me will be aware of how much I love donuts!

It’s all about sustainability. Can you see yourself eating that way for a month? Six months? A year? How about the rest of your life? If the answer is no, you need to re-assess your eating plan.

Nutrition for fighters is a big topic and there are plenty of articles online going into greater depth, and I’m sure I’ll write one at some point.

As I mentioned, though, when I started I didn’t make massive changes to my diet. They came slowly, over time. A diet of processed foods and microwave meals slowly changed to one of fresh meat and vegetables. Making small, consistent changes will produce far better results than a sudden, dramatic overhaul.

One simple rule you can go by, when deciding if something is ‘good’ to eat, looking at this food can you tell which animal or plant it came from? If yes, go ahead and eat it. If no, maybe look for something else.

We are all individuals, with our own tastes and preferences, and our own bodies that maybe react differently to different foods. See what works for you, what feels best.

As a basic guide, here’s a rundown of what a normal day’s food intake might look for me:

• Breakfast- porridge with honey and sliced banana OR scrambled eggs with spinach
• Mid-morning snack- a handful of nuts
• Dinner- chicken breast/salmon fillet, with sweet potato/brown rice/couscous/wholewheat pasta and vegetables
• Afternoon snack- a piece of fruit
• Pre-training snack- another piece of fruit
• Post-training snack- chicken and salad in a wholemeal wrap/pitta

You may notice that there are only two main meals and several snacks. This works for me, fitting around my work/training schedule and meaning I always have something to eat to look forward to within the next few hours. ‘Cos I really love food.

Summary

There’s quite a bit to take in above, so here’s a quick summary of the key points:

• The only way to get better at Muay Thai, is to train Muay Thai
• Identify your motivation and goals for training Muay Thai, and then find a gym that fits these motivations and goals
• When training, make sure to listen, relax, and have fun!
• Whilst the key thing is to get yourself into the gym and train, you can do things outside of the gym that will help you progress
• Small, gradual lifestyle changes are much more effective than a drastic overhaul and much more likely to be sustainable long-term