Muay Thai – Where I Started

 

Here I am, 25 years old, and had never stepped inside a gym in my entire life.

Apart from that one time, when I stumbled into one at my high school P.E class. I went to bench press the bar by itself and decided that it was all too much hard work and left the gym for what I thought would be forever.

Cut to mid-2015, I’d just come out of a relationship and I was in the mood to go and do something new and exciting to fill in my newfound free time. Why not Muay Thai? I thought to myself.

It was about time I learnt some self-defense and it seemed like a pretty good way to work out. I definitely wasn’t wrong.

In case you haven’t heard about Muay Thai, it’s what is also reffered to as Thai Kickboxing, or “Is that what I saw in Thailand that time I went?”. Muay Thai is the combat sport of choice in Thailand, originally called Muay Boran, which was used for hand to hand combat in warfare. This later progressed on to become a sport which we now know today as Muay Thai, the art of eight limbs.

Muay Thai involves both striking and clinching, where unlike western boxing, clinching isn’t separated in Muay Thai and is where you seek to make use of devastating knees to the body and head, and elbow strikes to the face of your opponent.

Check out these knockouts to get a good idea of what Muay Thai involves. I’ll go into this further in videos early next year.

I called up the nearest gym to my work and booked in a free trial, just to get a taste of what it was like and to see if it was something I could really commit to doing.

Slightly nervous, I wander in and get into an old pair of shorts and a t-shirt and get my hands wrapped up. I get told to go and warm up with the skipping rope before we start the class, and after about 10 minutes, it was go time.

Muay Thai uses the full body range for movement, with everything coming down to your core. If your core isn’t strong, you won’t be either. So calisthenics were big, and as I soon found out, so was cardio. The fitness class lasts for one hour and is a mix of punches, kicks, and knees. With liberal doses of press-ups, sit-ups, leg raises, planks and the such.

About half way through the class, my legs were on fire and my heart pounding harder than the poor thing ever had before. I was determined not to give up though, and the yelling from the Thai instructor pushed me that much more to finish the class.

Kick after kick, punch after punch, and press up after bloody press up. I slogged my way through the class. The only respite I had was when you had to hold the arm length pads for your partner to kick.

After what seemed like hundreds of kicks, the instructor finally told us we were done and it was time to go home.

Finally, it was over. Buggered if I was ever going to do that again.

The next day, my calves had seized and I could hardly walk. So I did what any self respecting person would do and went back on my previous promise. I went to another class later that evening.

This carried on for months, starting off as a complete noob with horrible technique and slowly progressing to where I am today with the help of both trainers and partners, where nearly one and a half years on and I’m looking to step into the ring in early 2017 for the very first time.

I’ll be going through more of my Muay Thai journey with you all as time goes on, but to provide a quick overview of how I have found it so far, it’s been one of the most rewarding things I have done for myself to date. I have made amazing friends and pushed myself harder than I ever had before, all whilst learning a completely new skill.

Definitely worth giving it a go if you’re needing something new to do with your time and want to learn self-defense and get fit as at the same time.

Comments

comments