I am about to start Muay Thai. what is a basic beginners class like?

Question

i signed up for a 6 week beginners course starting sunday

i took teakwondo for 6 years and i have a background in boxing. i am wondering if i will be kicking pads and people or just ghost fighting ( punching and kicking the air)

Answer 1

it shouldnt be to hard if you have done tae kwon do and boxing before. but you will learn a couple of new techniques.(not to many, there are a few ex mauy thai instructors who i train with you can learn every technique in 2 lessons) so there arnt many techniques but you just keep training them and you get really good.

Answer 2

nothing is hard except for the burnouts the last 15 minutes of class

Answer 3

Really depends on the size of the class. As far as pads or shadows go it depends entirely on the instructor.

There tends to be 2 extremes in ways to teach that ive seen. One favours the traditional karate, (dare i say it) TKD approach. Lots of kicks towards nothing, improving flexibilty and agility, getting you ready for letting your foot touch something.

Punching under this stream of thought is the same idea, trying to perfect your stance so that a punch can be thrown with strength and being able to defend at the same time.

Also a component is blocking against your imagination, as you've done tkd and boxing your probably better off in this respect in that you have a good idea as to where blows come from. (if a class doesnt teach this then id get out sometime rapid)

way 2

Kicking and blocking are taught at the same time, so you kick your partners shin, he kicks back you block with your shin.

Punches much the same way, taken in turns, taken on the forearms in front of your face.

Blocking is integral to this way of learning but is often elaborated on.

In my experience way 1 is for fitness and 2 for actual fighting. Most methods are between the 2 leaning more heavily towards way 2.

ie pads are used but you'll spend time abusing someone.

The right nuts will tell you to go home and hit your shins off any nice hard thing you can find.

Considering your background id say you should be fine, boxing will probably be of more use as the stance is more similar, + TKD kicks dont mix well with elbows. If you find the beginners are the absolute beginners try get moved up to the intermediate class.

Might be a bit late now, but try find a smaller class that has all the levels in together. This means that you'll often be paired with somebody who'll point out the little things you might forget, rather than the 2 of ye wondering if your doing anything right at all.

Answer 4

What does a typical Muay Thai workout involve? Obviously the program differs from gym to gym but this is how my gyms workouts go (and this goes for beginners too):

Before class we always start off with some basic stretching to loosen up. It’s important to stretch all parts of the body because if you forget an area you will be sure to be sore the day after. When the class begins we start a super intense warm-up. The warm-up differs class to class but usually consists of the following:

    * 5 minutes of skipping

    * 2 Minutes of Jumping Jacks

    * 2 Minutes of mountain climbers

    * 5 minutes of skipping

    * 50 pushups

    * 50 curlups front

    * 25 curlups left side

    * 25 curlups right side

    * 5 minutes of skipping

    * 2 minutes of squat jumps

    * 2 minutes of lunges

Each warm-up also has a couple random things like leg lifts or Chinese pushups in between.

After this we usually do a few partner warm-ups activities like wheel barrel pushups where one person holds the feet of the other person above the ground while they do pushups, partner sit-ups where we hold a Thai pad over our heads and pass it back and forth while doing sit-ups, or Leg thrown downs where one person raises his fully stretched legs up while this partner throws them to the ground.

After the physical training part of the warm-up is over we usually do a 3 minute warm-up on the Thai pads where one partner calls out certain attacks such as "Jab Cross Uppercut" and the other performs the moves against the pads.

When this is done we proceed into the learning part of the class where we gather in the center to be instructed on the particular technique of focus for the class. The instructor will demonstrate the technique and discuss why it is effective, when it should be used, and how to properly perform the technique. We practice this technique usually by itself first, then we put it into a combo to learn how it would work in a real fighting situation. We usually repeat this process for a couple of techniques and then its time for the burnout.

The burnout finishes off the class with an intense cardio combat workout. A typical burnout consists of performing as many of a certain few attacks as possible in a certain time limit. One method of burnout is called elevators where you begin by doing something like 1 kick with the right leg, then 1 kick with the left leg, and then elevating it to 2 kicks each for each leg for the next turn then 3 and so on. We go as fast as we can to elevate to the highest number possible in the time limit while still trying to perform proper technique.

Lastly we cool down and relax with some stretches, as we try to catch our breath from the intense burnout.

Hope this helps