Muay Thai training can have a profound impact on your physical fitness. It is a highly explosive and dynamic striking art that requires and develops athletic ability. All athletes can benefit from Muay Thai training, given the massive improvements in overall athletic ability, reaction time, and coordination it provides. Muay Thai is widely considered to be the most effective stand-up fighting system in the world.
The physical benefits are immense and it teaches you self-discipline and the value of hard work. It’s never too early or too late to start Muay Thai!
Here's a breakdown of the key advantages and considerations:
Physical Fitness and Weight Loss
A Muay Thai training program is one of the best ways to lose weight. The sheer amount of physical activity involved helps to keep you in a caloric deficit, one of the most important aspects of weight loss. An hour of Muay Thai class can burn between 500 - 1000 calories, making it a highly efficient way of maximizing your time.
The training regimen can consist of exercises such as:
Read also: The Significance of the Mongkol
- Running
- Pad work
- Heavy bag work
- Sparring
- Shadowboxing
- Partner drills
Many Muay Thai gyms also incorporate calisthenics and plyometric exercises. Calisthenics exercises are essentially bodyweight exercises, like push-ups and squats. Plyometric exercises are bodyweight exercises with an explosive execution. For example, a plyometric variation of a push-up is the clapping push-up. An explosive push is needed to get your body high enough to clap and catch yourself before hitting the ground.
In addition, because of Muay Thai’s explosive striking, your metabolism will be elevated for about 6 hours after your class ends. This is a similar effect to high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and when combined with low-intensity training, such as shadowboxing or technical sparring, it’s hard not to lose excess weight!
Table: Calorie Expenditure in Different Activities
| Activity | Calories Burned (per hour) |
|---|---|
| Muay Thai Class | 500-1000 |
Cardiovascular Health
Muay Thai training is largely cardio-based. There is a mixture of low and high-intensity cardio in most training programs, which develops both your aerobic and anaerobic ability. Classes can include hundreds of kicks and punches thrown.
Read also: Authentic Muay Thai Training
High-intensity training is known for pushing your heart rate up and delivering strong fitness results in a short amount of time.
Mental Health and Cognitive Benefits
During the beginning weeks of training, your body will start releasing more endorphins, along with activating other hormones. These hormones will give you more energy, raise your metabolism, and improve your mental clarity. The longer you consistently train, the more your body will adapt.
Exercise is well known to help prevent and stave off dementia, as well as other cognitive impairments associated with aging. Adding the complexities of Muay Thai as a martial art only amplifies this effect.
Mental health issues have become more prevalent in the past few decades, and they often have multiple consequences on the lives of the afflicted. But many people who train consistently notice something else.
Read also: Choosing a Muay Thai Gear Bag
Balance and Bone Density
In addition, your sense of balance is greatly reinforced through your Muay Thai training. All of the repetition of kicking, while supporting your body weight with only one leg, takes your balance to a level beyond that of an average person.
The repetitions of different strikes, often on a heavy bag or pads, increase your bone density, lowering the risk of you breaking a bone even if you do fall. This is thanks to Wolff’s Law, which asserts that bones will adapt to the pressures they are placed under.
Immune System Boost and Posture Correction
Now more than ever, it is important to prioritize health and prevent yourself from catching anything. The current pandemic has highlighted the importance of maintaining your physical fitness. Many people who engage in regular Muay Thai training were able to stay healthy due to the robust immune system training promotes. Moderate exercise is linked to improved lung health and function, as well as decreasing overall inflammation within our body.
Our busy, sedentary lifestyles make it easy to stay out of shape, at the daily cost of our health. Many people in the modern world live a highly sedentary lifestyle. It’s common for people to sit all day, from 9 am until 5 pm. They also were sitting on the commute to work and back home. All of this sitting has led to an epidemic of back/neck pain, as well as carpal tunnel and tendonitis. Kyphotic posture is all too common and often leads to injury later in life from the accumulated damage.
Consistent Muay Thai training gives your body resistance to all this pulling that sitting causes. Think of your muscles as rubber bands. When you sit all day, some of those get pulled out of place, or too tight. Muay Thai, and physical activity in general, is like a reset button for those rubber bands. This lets you stop accumulating tension and pain day after day. Good posture comes with its share of perks like helping you make a better first impression when you meet new people.