You may have heard that there is a remake of KICKBOXER the movie… which is actually little to do with kickboxing – it’s more Muay Thai!!
30th September 2016 – Evening
1st October 2016 – Evening
We have been asked by the Odeon Cinema in Lincoln if we would do a Muay Thai Display in the foyer for the opening nights of the film!
We are thinking of doing a mixture of Pad Work, Sparring & Muay boran. We would allocate our students time slots to come along and take part. We are looking for males, females and children boxers of all levels of experience to take part in display. This is a fantastic opportunity to promote our club and our amazing martial art!!
Developed over hundreds of years, the ancient martial art of Muay Thai is known for its tremendous power, maximum efficiency, and raw simplicity. Often referred to as the “Art of Eight Limbs”, Muay Thai utilizes a beautiful symphony of kicks, punches, knees, and elbows with fluidity and grace.
Muay Thai is now one of the most well-known and practiced martial arts in the world. It has proven to be effective, which is why it is most common striking base in the vastly popular, fast growing sport of mixed martial arts.
We give you 10 reasons why Muay Thai is the perfect martial art:
1) It is widely recognized as the most effective striking art in the world.
Muay Thai is by far the most effective striking art in the world. Muay Thai has been tested in competition and real-life situations for hundreds of years, refining the art to be as fast, efficient, and powerful as it can be. On top of that, its consistent testing in combat between highly skilled practitioners has developed every aspect of the art to an extremely high level.
2) It is effective in all ranges of standup fighting.
Muay Thai is a martial art and combat sport unlike any other. The art incorporates the use of knees, elbows, shins and hands. This allows the practitioner to use all the weapons available to the human body in kicking range, punching range, and the clinch, making it effective in all ranges of standup fighting unlike most other striking based martial arts.
3) It is simple and easy to learn.
While there are hundreds of different techniques in Muay Thai, it is also a martial art known for it’s raw simplicity. That’s why Muay Thai is for everyone: men, women and children alike. In Thailand, it is actually more common for practitioners to start as young as five or six years old.
4) It is highly effective for self-defense.
Muay Thai is also one of the few martial arts in the world that has been undeniably battle-tested and street certified for real-life encounters. Although widely regarded as a striking based martial art, Muay Thai also contains throwing techniques, locks, using of an opponent’s own momentum, and even submissions. The conditioning of mind, body and spirit involved in Muay Thai also gives practitioners the confidence needed for real-life self defense situations.
5) It is both an aerobic and anaerobic workout.
Muay thai is specifically designed to promote the level of fitness and toughness required for ring competition even for recreational practitioners. With running, jumping rope and shadowboxing it provides an aerobic workout to prepare you for more intense workouts. Muay Thai also builds great anaerobic endurance with exercises like punching and kicking on the pads or bags, and clinching to work your body to its limits. This makes Muay Thai not just a perfect martial art, but also a very effective form of exercise. With continued training, Muay Thai will vastly improve your strength, dexterity, and cardiovascular performance.
6) It burns over 1,000 calories an hour.
Nothing spells perfect more than a martial art with the ability to help you burn 1,000 calories an hour. Muay Thai is the standard of a perfect total body workout. It is a fun and efficient way to burn fat and lose weight that also builds your core, flexibility and overall strength.
7) It toughens your mind, body, and spirit.
The art of Muay Thai toughens your mind, body, and spirit. As the late great Muay Thai Grandmaster Kru Yodtong Senanan once said, “Muay Thai is good for your confidence and inner strength.” On top of enhancing your physical conditioning, Muay Thai builds confidence and promotes discipline of the mind through the control of emotions and feelings.
8) It is one of the key foundations for the sport of MMA.
As the most effective striking martial art in the world, it is no wonder why Muay Thai has become one of the key foundations of the vastly popular, fast growing sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Some of MMA’s greatest fighters and champions use the art of Muay Thai as their main striking base.
9) It will unleash your human potential in all areas of life
One of the biggest misinterpretations of Muay Thai is that it is just a sport of violence. But like many martial arts, Muay thai also cultivates important values that are rooted in rich tradition. It has the power to humble, discipline, and also inspire, which is arguably the most important aspect of any martial art. Muay Thai instills in its practitioners many great qualities including courage, humility and warrior spirit. These qualities will no doubt help you unleash your greatest potential in all areas of life.
10) Beneficial and Enriching…
To sum it all up, Muay Thai is beneficial for just about anyone. But remember, it is also up to the practitioner to make learning this perfect martial art even more enjoyable and enriching.
Tubby tourists fight off flab at Thai boxing camps.
In a sweltering training camp on a tropical Thai island, sweaty tourists wearing oversized gloves and baggy shorts slam their fists, knees, elbows and feet into a row of heavy bags.
Welcome to the latest craze in extreme fitness — Muay Thai boxing.
With worries growing about bulging waistlines, many foreigners are flocking to Thailand to spend their holidays not on the beach, but in a humid gym to follow a punishing regime of training in Muay Thai and other martial arts.
Some are going to even more extreme lengths, quitting their jobs to spend weeks or months training in an effort to win their long battles with obesity or hone their skills in the hope of becoming professional fighters.
Jordan Henderson, 26, left behind his London lifestyle of long work days, parties and overeating after the doctors warned him that he faced looming heart problems due to his nearly 184-kg weight.
After a month at a training camp in Phuket off the Andaman Coast, he had shed about 20 kg.
“You’re in an environment where it’s hot all the time, surrounded by people doing fitness,” he said after an early morning workout. “It’s about taking yourself out of the box that you live in and just focusing on one thing, and that’s to train and lose weight.”
The first few days were far from easy.
“It was horrible — the heat and the training, the aches you get and the dramatic diet change,” Henderson said.
“I’ve gone from eating whatever I liked to grilled chicken, steamed vegetables and brown rice — hungry for weeks,” he added.
But despite the gruelling regime, he never considered packing his bags and leaving early.
The art of eight limbs
Thailand is home to a flourishing Muay Thai training industry that welcomes thousands of guests every year, thanks in part to the popularity of mixed martial arts, which combines striking and grappling techniques.
“Mixed martial arts is the fastest growing sport in the world and Muay Thai is an integral part of that,” said Will Elliot, director of Tiger Muay Thai, one of more than a dozen such training camps in Phuket.
“It’s definitely extreme to travel halfway across the world,” said Elliot, whose camp welcomes hundreds of guests each month paying up to about $100 per week for group training.
“But we’re in the tropics. It’s hot. We’re in Thailand, the birthplace of Muay Thai, so it’s about immersion,” he said.
Muay Thai, Thailand’s national sport, is known as “the art of eight limbs” because it combines punches and kicks with elbows and knee strikes.
Anyone thinking about signing up should be prepared for the challenge.
“It’s very physically intensive. At the end of a workout you’re going to be exhausted. So if you can maintain that twice a day in combination with a diet, your fitness is going to increase rapidly,” Elliot said.
It worked for James Mason, 29, a former used car salesman from Britain who weighed 200 kg when he arrived in Thailand a year and a half ago but has since shed more than 100 kg.
“The doctor told me that if I didn’t do something drastic to change my life, in five years’ time I would be dead,” he said.
“When I first got here I couldn’t walk 200 meters without my back hurting. I had to sit down and take a breath. I’d be dripping with sweat because of the heat and the humidity.”
Three months into his training in Thailand he caught a flesh-eating bacteria and required three operations, narrowly avoiding having his leg amputated.
But he recovered and returned to his regime, and recently completed a 900 km charity bike ride from Phuket to Bangkok.
Don’t forget to duck
At the Tiger camp, about 20 students from countries including Australia, Britain, Egypt and Russia sweated their way through a recent beginners’ class under the close watch of muscular former Thai professionals.
“One, two, duck, body punch,” shouted one of the instructors as the students, each at varying levels of fitness, practiced their moves.
After warm-up exercises involving jogging, stretching, star jumps and shadow boxing, the students paired up to spar, punching the air within a whisker of their opponents’ ears.
“You’re meant to duck!” one girl reminded her friend after a near miss.
The main goal of most of the trainees is not to become a boxing champion but to lose weight, said instructor Phirop Chuaikaitum, better known as Ajarn (Master) Dang.
“They run for a long time, stretching, punching in the air for a long time — that makes it easy to lose weight,” he said.
“But we don’t make it hard because they will get hurt. We do it slowly but non-stop for 2½ hours. They only have a 3-minute break.”
There is no slacking off, even for royalty.
“There was one guy who was a prince from Dubai,” Phirop said.
“He came for the beginner class. I hit him with a stick and he told me that he was from a royal family. Whether you’re a construction worker or member of a royal family, when you come for boxing training you are all equal.”
As the session neared an end, sweat dripped from the students’ foreheads and they grimaced with pain. The knock-out blow — 100 push-ups to finish — was inflicted on those who still had energy left.
“It does hurt. You’re sore everywhere. Sometimes it’s tough to walk,” Henderson said. “You’re dripping in sweat but once you get back, have a shower, a swim in the pool — you can’t buy that feeling.”
