Muay Thai, the national sport of Thailand, is widely considered one of the world’s most effective Martial Arts. It’s also known as the “Art of Eight Limbs”, because practitioners use their hands, elbows, knees, and feet to strike. Muay Thai also has some grappling in it, the clinch, where fighters close the distance and try to control their opponent while throwing strikes and doing throws and footsweeps.
The Muay Thai that is taught here at our academy has influence from Kickboxing as well, with a stance more similar to that used in Boxing, which is what is typically used by MMA fighters as well, as this gives the fighter the ability to better defend against takedowns. Some people also call this style Dutch Kickboxing, which was made famous by the legendary Dutch fighters in the organizations K1 and later Glory, such as Peter Aerts, Ernesto Hoost, Semmy Schilt, Remy Bonjaski, Alistair Overeem, Rico Verhoeven, and many others.
In our Muay Thai program, students learn how to fight on their feet using strikes, which also makes it the perfect complement to our BJJ program where most of the training takes place on the ground using grappling techniques. You’ll learn how to throw punches, kicks, elbows and knees, how to block strikes and how to use correct footwork and how to control the distance between you and your opponent.
Rather than being a Cardio Kickboxing class where the focus is on burning calories and not necessarily the technique, in our Muay Thai program, students will learn proper Muay Thai technique. During the class, students work on the heavy bags, thai pads and focus mitts, and as they get more experienced, they will start doing more advanced techniques and combinations. Advanced students will have the opportunity to do sparring as well, but you can also choose to just work out with the bags and mitts.
In all the sparring we do here at our academy, the objective is for the students to learn and improve their skills, and for them to enjoy the training, without hurting each other. The same way that we have a big focus on injury prevention in our BJJ program, that is also a priority in our Muay Thai program.
Our philosophy is that everyone should be able to do the classes, if two students who have more experience want to train with a little more contact, they will have the option to do so, as long as it’s controlled and technical so that neither of them gets hurt. But anyone can do the class, including students that don’t have any prior Martial Arts experience and do not wish to do sparring.
You don’t have to be in great physical shape prior to joining our Muay Thai classes, we’ll help you with that! Our instructors will adjust the training for each individual student to make sure that they get the best results out of their training.
We offer Fundamentals classes, Intermediate classes, and classes for all levels. The main difference between the Fundamentals and Intermediate class is the length and the intensity of the class, and the fact that students get the opportunity to spar in the Intermediate class. Beginners are welcome to join the Intermediate class, and more advanced students can benefit from doing the Fundamentals class as well.