How to improve in Muay Thai?
Improving your Muay Thai skills requires dedication, consistent practice, proper guidance, and a holistic approach to training. Here are some tips to help you enhance your Muay Thai skills.
- Find a Suitable Gym: Enroll in a reputable Muay Thai gym or training camp with experienced coaches who can provide personalized guidance and correct your form. Visit several gyms and attend trial sessions to get a good feel of what is suitable for you before committing to a gym. There are some gyms that focus on volume work, cheerleading and fitness in general. Others that go deeper into the sport, encourage you to continually execute the techniques with perfect form and send competitors on a regular basis. The latter is the kind of gym you should look for in order to improve and enjoy the intricacies of the sport. It can be tedious to do repetitive drills at first but nothing rewarding ever comes easy.
. - Train Regularly: Consistency is key. In fact, once you are certain of the gym you want to commit to, sign for a longer package. You will have that pressure to push yourself and make your way down to training. No one ever regrets getting a good workout. Train regularly to build muscle memory and improve your technique. Aim for at least 3-4 training sessions per week.
. - Focus on Basics: Master the fundamental techniques before advancing to complex moves. Proper technique is the foundation of effective Muay Thai. There are reasons why in certain gyms, beginners are made to clock 6 months to a year of training before they are even allowed to join the intermediate, advanced or sparring classes. If complexity increases, the chances of executing moves with the wrong technique increases. There is no point trying to sprint when you cannot even walk. Think about it this way, finding joy in repetition makes for a conscientious mind. Meditation does not require fireworks, it is the same ritual repeated over and over again. That, is discipline.
. - Shadow Boxing: Practice your techniques, footwork, and combinations in front of a mirror or in an open space. Having a mirror lets you visually observe your form. However, sometimes it is even more important to do away with the mirror and just feel every movement you execute. 90% of your shadow boxing should be slow and precise. Focus on your breathwork as well and eventually all these movements will become second nature to you. When you start on your sparring journey, your brain will only require you to think of the dynamics of the sparring situation over the effort needed to execute your moves.
. - Bag Work: Heavy bag work is essential to refining your technique and working on your power since you can really dig much deeper into the bags compared to pads or sparring.
. - Sparring: At Rebel, we usually allow members of various levels to spar unless your foundation is too far off. We want our students to apply what they have learnt into a sparring situation. However, for beginners we usually clock repetitive sparring drills or restricted sparring only. Restricted sparring is when we only allow kicks and shin blocks for example so as not to add too much complexity. It is really important to look out for a gym that flow spars meaning to go at only 50% intensity. Slow and controlled sparring is important and if you can catch your partner even at that speed, that means you have outpointed him/her. A lot of injuries occur if members spar too hard and the inability to train afterwards become detrimental to their Muay Thai journey.
. - Cardiovascular Training: Muay Thai requires stamina. Nothing beats heading to the gym and clocking your bag and padwork. However, if you want to dive into other training methods, we recommend clocking interval runs of 8 x 400 metres compared to a slow 5km run. The former is more applicable to the intensity of what the sport entails. Skipping is also another effective way as working the calves helps directly with footwork.
. - Clinch Work: Clinch makes up on average about 80% of a Muay Thai fight. This is unless both you and the opponent actively want to stay on the outside and trade. Otherwise, if you want to be good at sparring, you need to work on your clinch game. Thai gyms usually do up to half an hour worth of clinching in the ring. It can be exhausting especially if your muscles are not conditioned to wrestle and grind through the lactic acid build up. However, the more you practise, the better you become.
. - Watch Fights: If you are unsure of what is deemed useful or not, seek your peers’ or coaches’ opinion about fights. We don’t always need to watch only professionals fights, you can even look at amateurs. There is always something to learn.
Remember that improvement in Muay Thai is a continuous process. The more effort and dedication you invest, the more you’ll see your skills develop over time.
– Coach Mel @melwillrebel
