How To Wrap Hands For Muay Thai Boxing

I found this great video on a method of wrapping your hands for Muay Thai. This is a different method than I use, but still very effective. I tend to wrap a more Western Boxing method. If I find a video, I will post it online shortly.

How Should An Aspiring Fighter Train?

I found this great article on www.thaiboxing.com. It is a very good article for aspiring fighters, to learn how to prepare and train properly. The article was written by kedricumaa. For more information and great articles like this one visit www.thaiboxing.com.

How Should An Aspiring Fighter Train?

So you’ve decided your going to take it to the next level and your going to step into the ring. How should you start to train for it? There is no single and simple answer because, when it comes to determining how your going to train, you need to adjust what’s called the acute variables:

Repetitions
Sets
Tempo
Rest
Volume
Intensity
Duration
Frequency
Exercise Selection

Changing any variable completely changes the outcome of your training. So how should you arrange your variables to get the most out of training? It’s called the S.A.I.D. Principle and it stands for Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands. That’s trainer talk for saying that you will do in the fight what you did in training. (So if you don’t plan on doing a lot of barbell bicep curls in your fight, don’t do a lot of them in your training.) The more your training looks like your fight, the more prepared you will be for your fight.

Conversely, if your goal is to learn a new skill and all you are doing is sparring, then you’re going to get better at sparring (notice I didn’t say fighting), you won’t be learning that new skill. To learn a new skill your training should look like skill training and not fight training. If you’re trying to lose weight to get into the next weight-class down, then your training should look like weight-loss training, and not fight or skill training.

This brings me to my next point. Obviously you need to keep your weight down, learn new skills, and be conditioned to fight; and the S.A.I.D. Principle says you need to train differently for each of these outcomes by changing the acute variables. Getting pretty complicated, huh? (That’s why you hire someone like me.) And the scary part is, there’s more. We’ve only discussed the micro-variables and not the macro-variables. The farther you are from your fight the more you should focus on skill development and weight management, and the closer that fight gets the more you should abandon skill development and weight management, and focus on fight training.

To illustrate the above point, let’s say you have a fight on March 1st, and it is currently January 1st. That’s three months of quality training that you’re going to get–or three months of spinning your wheels if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Your first month should be nothing but skill development and weight management training. During the second month your training should be mostly skill development and weight management with fight training becoming more and more dominant. In your third month the skill and weight management training should be reducing and the fight training should be taking over until about two weeks before your fight where the only thing your doing is fight training (you should already be down to about 5 pounds over fight weight by now and just need to sweat out water to make weight; this is a healthy way so that you are strong in your fight).

So how do we change the variables according to the S.A.I.D. Principle to do all of this?

That’s a 1,200 page instruction manual, and far too complicated to even attempt to teach you here. If you are so inclined to learn it, I suggest taking the N.A.S.M. Certfied Personal Trainer Course, and then taking the N.A.S.M. Performance Enhancement Specialist Course. It will take one to two years. That’s how much info you’ll need.

Instead, I’m going to try and condense it down to this example, which is only one way (actually it’s how I used to do it; and if you don’t know me, check out my highlight under the Thaiboxing.com Forum Thread: Made in the TBA-USA–let me just say I was known for my conditioning, and as you’ll see I had a very high skill level, and 2% body fat):

You should be training six days a week on a split schedule. Sunday will be your only day of complete rest. Wednesday and Saturday you will only have one workout a day, the rest of the week you’ll be training twice a day.

Monday
Skill Development in the afternoon, about three hours of training. Low-Intensity Weight Management at night (Some people prefer to do this in the early a.m. with roadwork, although I am opposed to early a.m. training, S.A.I.D. Principle, remember? Have you ever fought at 5:30am?)

Tuesday
Same as Monday except the Weight Management training at night should be High-Intensity

Wednesday
Skill Development Training only

Thursday
Same as Tuesday

Friday
Same as Monday

Saturday
Weight Management training at night only, should be Very-High Intensity

Sunday
Complete day of rest

As the training progresses (second month more or less), start switching Monday and Fridays from Skill Development to Fight Traning. As the fight get’s closer and closer all Skill Training should become Fight Training. Also, all Weight Management Training should increase in intensity as the fight gets closer and closer so that it becomes Fight Conditioning Training.

And it’s just as complicated as that.

MMA Striking Workout Routine

MMA Striking Workout Routine

I was searching for a MMA Workout Routine online and was pretty much coming up blank. Instead of wasting more time sifting through Google, I decided to head down to the gym, and work one of my regular routines, and then coming back and write about it to share with the rest of you. Hopefully someone else searching for the same thing will find this post, instead of coming up empty like I did.

This is a standard MMA Striking Workout that I use as part of my training. This workout can be done individually or in a small group. The focus of this workout is striking. Required equipment for this workout is some form of punching bag, or a partner with striking pads. You can finish out each set with 5-10 pushups for an added core/shoulder focus.

3 rounds of skipping rope or jumping jacks. 2-3 mins with 30 sec rest

Skipping rope is one of the best exercises you can do to condition your cardio. In the absences of a jump rope, or an area in which to skip rope, jumping jacks are a good alternative. Aside from your cardio, your calf muscles and hip flexors get a good workout. When you begin start with 1 or 2 minute rounds, and work your way up to eventually 4-5 minute rounds.

3 rounds of shadow boxing. 2-3 minutes with 30 sec rest.

Shadow boxing is a great way to warm up the muscles for the rest of your body. It’s an excellent exercise to do right before you stretch out, because it is low impact. I usually do 3 rounds, with the first round being Boxing ONLY, the second round is Muay Thai ONLY (no punches), and the third round is combination of Boxing and Muay Thai. It’s a good idea to stretch after your shadow boxing session.

1-3 rounds of upper body strikes. 2-3 minutes with 30 sec rest.

I find that if you separate your strikes during your rounds you end up with a more balanced and focused workout. For example, I may do 1 round of just jab-cross, followed by 1 round of hook punches, followed by 1 round of elbows. If you don’t do it this way, you end up focusing too much on one technique (usually punches) and not enough on another such as knees, elbows, etc.

50-100 knees and kicks per side

I usually do the upper body strikes on a timer, but lower body strikes to quantity. The reason for this is in a 2 or 3 minute time frame, you can get a couple hundred strikes in. In comparison, you may only get about 20-30 or so kicks during that same time. So for lower body I do a quantity per side. It ensures that I spend just as much time training my mind and muscles on those techniques.

Core Training Cool Down – Situps and Pushups

Since my striking workout usually follows more of a Muay Thai feel, I stick to the old school traditional Muay Thai focused core exercises. This consists of 200-300 situps, and 100-200 pushups. Nothing really that fancy about them. Sometimes it’s the simplest exercises that are the most effective. For the situps, I do 30 straight situps, then 10 oblique situps per side. So basically that’s a set of 50, and I repeat them until my goal is reached.

This workout should take anywhere between 40 minutes to 1 hour, and will burn anywhere from 600-1000 calories. I am going to try to post up some more of my workouts on my site so that others can benefit from them. I have a Grappling focused one and a Ground and Pound focused one that I usually go through. I also have a cool medicine ball routine as well.

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5 Reasons To Add Seminars To Your MMA Training

As a Martial Artist I am a big advocate of Seminar training. There are many reasons that attending seminars and workshops will help you quickly develop your training as a Martial Artist. You would be amazed how many instructors discourage you from attending seminars, while others will only encourage you to attend ones at your school or from your discipline. Seminar training can be beneficial to strengthen your training within your discipline as well as add new elements to your game. Here are the reasons I feel that Seminars are essential for an aspiring Mixed Martial Artist.

Community College of MMA Training
Whether or not you have ever been to community college, you will most likely understand the concept of it. Community College is a way for you to test the waters and try different classes to figure out what you like the most. It’s a smorgesh board of different curriculum options if you will. Martial Arts Seminars are the same way. In particularily, if you train in one style, you may not have the opportunity to train in different arts and see if there is something about that style that you like or could add to your development. For example, if you train at a Karate school, you may not do much boxing, or if you train at a Muay Thai school, you may do much grappling. Training in seminars will give you the opportunity to test the waters with different styles without having to make a major commitment.

Learn New Skills
Many times the instructors who are hosting the seminar are certified under the person giving the seminar. For example, if your instructor runs a Combat Submission Wrestling school, then he or she is certified under Erik Paulson. Assuming the seminar is given by Erik Paulson, he will usually use that as an opportunity to pass along more new techniques or curriculum to your instructor and his/her student body, as well as refine current techniques and skills being practiced. If you are taking the seminar at the school that train at, you will be learning the same tricks, tips and techniques as everyone else. However, if you are going outside of your school, most likely you will be bringing new techniques back to your current school or training location. You can use this as an opportunity to pass along your newfound knowledge, or surprise your friends with the techniques during sparring sessions, which is what I like to do.

Barometer
Judging how you are advancing in your training is sometimes difficult. Many times when you join up at a school, you can never really judge how good you are getting. The reason is that everyone at your school is usually continuing to advance at the same time you are. As new people come in, you recognize you are better at certain skills than they are, but you usually dismiss it at “well, they are a noobie”. Going to seminars is a good way to evaluate your skill. You can evaluate how quickly you are able to pick up new techniques and skills. Also, many times not everyone attending the seminar is from the place where you train. Because of that you see how you compare to other from different places. Seminars are one of the best ways to evaluate your skills aside from competition.

Social Networking
No I am not talking about Twitter or Facebook or Myspace or whatever other Social Networking craze takes place in the future. I am talking about real life social networking. Going to seminars is a great way to contact and meet like minded people from all over the world. I have met and made friends in places like Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Delaware, Austrailia, England and more. It’s great because as I travel, I find that I usually have a place to train at. This is even more of a reason why I suggest you don’t just look for seminars in your area, but that you expand yourself and travel to different areas for your seminar training. I have taken seminars in Connetticut, Georgia, Las Vegas and of course Thailand. Get out of your bubble and meet some new people. You will tank me later.

Rejuvenation
Many times with my training I start to hit a rut. It’s usually around that time where I decide to head out for a seminar. After a seminar or some other training excursion I usually feel completely rejuvenated and refocused on my training. Sometimes it’s as simple as having someone point out the basics and fundementals again. Other times, it’s the feeling of learning something new which inspires you to be refocused. Either way, without fail whenever I come back from a seminar or camp training I always feel reinspired about my training. If you are starting to feel that your training is becoming dull and boring, you don’t need to look for another place to train, just search out a seminar and trust me you will come back refreshed and full of life.

I hope this article inspires you to attend a seminar to further your training. Please feel free to visit my Seminars page to find out if there are any upcoming Seminars in your area.

Class Description: Muay Thai Kickboxing – Beginners Class

I am creating a series of articles which are essentially class descriptions of specific martial arts courses. These descriptions can be used for anyone looking to add a martial arts program to their gym, or add additional classes to their existing martial arts school. These are also excellent for someone who is planning to open a martial arts school and is in need of this type of information to add to a business plan or proposal. My original plan is to write up the categories below although this is subject to change or expansion. Here are the categories:

Muay Thai Kickboxing Beginners
Muay Thai Kickboxing Intermediate
Muay Thai Kickboxing Advanced
MMA
Grappling Beginners
Grappling Intermediate
MMA Conditioning
Boxing
Sparring Class

Muay Thai Kickboxing – Beginners

Prerequisite: No Previous Experience Necessary

Equipment Requirement: Students must purchase Focus Mitts and Bag/Boxing Gloves within 1 month of starting class.

Course Time: 1 Hour

Course Frequency: 2 to 5 times per week

Course Description: In Beginners Muay Thai Kickboxing, students will cover the basics of the striking art of Muay Thai. Students will learn the proper stance and footwork of Muay Thai. Students will also learn proper form and technique of the basic punches, kicks, knee and elbow strikes used in Muay Thai. Basic defensive and coutner techniques will also be taught as part of the curriculum. Each class will begin with warmups which include a variety of stance, footwork, punches, kicks, knees, elbows, and counter techniques. The core conditioning and curriculum of the class will consist of various drills with a partner or at times with a punching bag. The intention of the drill is to apply a combination of the basic techniques in a flow or simulated encounter. As part of the Beginners Muay Thai Kickboxing class, some of the basic positions and technique of the Muay Thai Clinch work will be covered. Classes will end with a conditioning drill to allow the students to build stamina and conditioning necessary for advancement.

Evaluation: Students with a minimum of 1 month training in the Beginners class will be evaluated for advancement to the Intermediate class. Students must demonstrate the mastery of the basic techniques as determined by the instructor. Students must also demonstrate the basic pad holding techniques for the drills performed in this class. Students must also demonstrate the necessary conditioning level required for the intermediate class. Additionally, there is an equipment requirement for the Intermediate class.

Curriculum:

Stance – Basic Fighters Stance

Footwork – Step and Slide: Advance, Retreat, Left and Right

Punches – Jab, Cross, Hook, Uppercut

Kicks – Right Round Kick, Left Switch Kick

Knees – Right Straight Knee, Left Straight Knee

Elbows – Right Horizontal Elbow, Left Horizontal Elbow

Punch Counters – Parry, Cover

Kick Counter – Shin Block, Evade, Ride

Clinch Postions – 50/50 Tie Up, Dominant Position

Combination Drills – Boxing 4 Count

Stay tuned for more of these articles. I may include video tutorials of some of these positions, drills, etc. at some point, which will also be in this section.

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