Guest post by Darren Mitchell
Maintaining a level of fitness whilst travelling can be difficult – there isn’t always access to a gym, you’re often on the move and it’s difficult to carry personal exercise equipment with you, such as kettlebells and pull up bars.
That being said, we can use Muay Thai training methods to stay fit whilst travelling.
Image by Taco Fleur from Pixabay
Muay Thai is a sport that requires many aspects of fitness. You need to have the stamina to last a full bout (5 x 3 minute rounds), the power to knock an opponent out with an upper or lower body strike, the flexibility to perform high kicks, the balance to maintain good posture on one leg and the musculature to withstand impact from your opponent.
Thanks to such a varied requirement of attributes, Muay Thai fitness training is multi-disciplined and doesn’t require anything in the way of equipment, meaning it is the pefect way to stay fit whilst travelling.
Muay Thai Fitness Training Methods
In this section I’ll run through a few different aspects of fitness, showing you how you can include them in your exercise regime in the same way that Muay Thai fighters do…
Stamina
Traditionally Nak Muay (Thai boxers) will train twice per day. The morning will usually consist of the longer run to build stamina, and this is usually done on an empty stomach (Nak Muay’s train so hard they prefer the extra sleep to the extra meal!). The approach is to run for 30-60 minutes at a moderate pace – enough to build stamina, but not fast enough to exhaust them for the later session.
The rest of the session will build into a mixture of skills and drills, with flexibility work.
Muay Thai Fitness Tip: Starting your day with a gentle run is a great way to burn calories and wake yourself up physically and mentally. You don’t want to run too hard though, because you don’t want the rest of your day being ruined by feeling exhausted!
Strength and Power
In Muay Thai the fighters want to be strong as fast, without being too bulky. They achieve that look by doing their resistance training with mostly body weight exercises and a lot of fast repetitions. They also perform exercises for all body parts, achieving an overall physique balance and not just ‘beach muscles’ (chest and biceps). This also helps to prevent injuries because it gives good muscle balance.
Do exercises such as push ups, lunges, squats, crunches, dips and pull ups 4-6 days per week, with anywhere from 3-6 sets of 10-15 reps.
Muay Thai Fitness Tip: Performing strength exercises with your body weight is both convenient (you don’t need equipment) and safe (you’re not lifting huge weight with poor technique so the injury risk is lower).
Flexibility
Being flexible is very important in Muay Thai, because so many of the strikes need a lot of movement and high legs. The secondary benefit of regular stretching is that it helps to prevent injuries so is a great preventative measure. Nak Muay’s will stretch every single day without fail, always after training. They always complete all-body stretches to ensure they stay supple.
Stretching needs no equipment at all, so can be done wherever you have the space and whenever you have the time. Thankfully, when travelling time is one of the things you have a lot of, because you’re rarely off to work!
Muay Thai Fitness Tip: Always stretch after exercise, never before. When the muscles have been trained they have more blood in them, they are warmer and more supple. If you stretch a ‘cold’ muscle it is more likely to injure.
Speed
The nature of Muay Thai is such that the fights are performed at a very high intensity – the fighters burn a lot of energy in a small window of time. With that in mind, they do a lot of very high intensity sprinting. It requires no equipment, just space and time. You simply sprint as fast as you can for 30-50 metres, walk back and repeat as many times as you can. The whole workout can be done in 15 minutes if the intensity is high enough.
If you have access to a short, steep hill or a beach, you can increase the intensity dramatically. Better still, if you have access to a sand dune you can make it tougher again!
Muay Thai Fitness Tip: The key to sprint work is to go fast and hard, not long. Focus on speed and power, not endurance. You’ll burn a LOT of calories sprinting and make your fitness fly!
Using Muay Thai Training Methods to Stay Fit Whilst Travelling: Conclusion
If you follow these tips, you’ll be easily be able to stay fit whilst travelling. You’ll be able to maintain your strength, improve your stamina and become more flexible with the Muay Thai approach to training.
About the Author: Darren Mitchell is a Muay Thai enthusiast and writer for the Best Muay Thai blog. He has trained for several years at gyms all over the world alongside some world-renowned fighters and coaches.
