Muay Thai Training Chiang Mai Thailand

One of my dreams is to train hard as a Muay Thai boxer. I’ve seen them fighting 6 years ago on a trip to Thailand. In Krabi I met Matthew from England in my hostel. He was laying on his bed often and I asked him why he didn’t went out often. He told me he did the Muay Thai Boxing training. Twice a day of Muay Thai training and that costs loads of energie.

San Tai Muay Thai boxing school in Chiang Mai Thailand

Matthew told me that he trained in several gyms in Thailand and that he preffer the San Tai Muay Thai gym in Chiang Mai. On this visum I hadn’t enough time to go but I was pretty sure I was coming back to Thailand. This week I did the Muay Thai boxing lessons.

Contact with the San Tai Muay Thai boxing school

I arrived in Chiang Mai and spend there one night. The next morning I sended a email to the San Tai Muay Thai school. I got an email back in one hour and could start the same afternoon. Whoops! Am I ready? Maybe, maybe not. 😀

Video of the Muay Thai Training

Muay Thai training Chiang Mai

The San Tai arranged my pickup from the hostel and I checked in at my appartment. (10 min walk to the gym) Every day the training starts at 6.00 am and 16.00 pm. My first training was the afternoon training. I bought my own orange (Holland ofcourse!) hand wraps. Gloves you can borrow but for hygienic reasons everubody has his own hand wraps.

The start of the Muay Thai training

The diehards will run before the training as a warming-up. It was warm so I did some skippy and bounce on the tires outside the gym. Than the lesson starts, the normal warming-up is togheter some warm up excercise and stretching. After warm up there is time for shadow boxing in front of the mirror. Looks boring but so good for practice your Muay Thai technic! After that everybody gets 5 rounds of 5 minutes of sparring with one of the trainers. The hardest part of the training, you can give everything you got! After that the kickbags shows up and do some knees and kicking. When there is enough time they will prove a clinching session in the ring.

End of the Muay Thai training

All the Muay Thai trainings will end with a session in the ring. Everybody gets on the floor in a big cirlce. One starts with an excercise like abs, pushups or crunches and everybody does that exercise 10 or 20 times. (depends how big the group is) After that everybody made up an excercise the first one starts with a stretching position. Everybody does that as well and create the next one.

During the week of Muay Thai training

I started at thursday afternoon with the Muay Thai training. I started quite hard, you want to show you’re not a pussy right? My advice to you, build it up. Thats better so you can focus in the beginning on the Muay Thai technic and when you got that give the punches, elbows, knees and kicks the power. On sunday there is no training. Thank GOD for that. I needed some rest.

Take your rest and eat good

I think when you train Muay Thai this hard it is very important to eat, drink and rest good. There are sevaral restaurants in town. They are cheap. You can get a meal or 35 baht. ($1) The 7/11 is on a 10 minutes walk they provide the supermarkt things you need. (I bought water, nuts and softdrinks there) On the way to the gym is a my favorite restaurant. They serve realy good food, almost all the fighters go there in the evening. The samosa banana with chocolate is $%^&* amazing. In the morning my breakfast were bananas & nuts. In between the morning and afternoon Muay Thai training I took a shower, went to the restaurant for food and slept or wrote an article for my blog. I can recommend the big fruit shake in town for 30 baht ($0.75).

Location of the San Thai Muay Thai Gym in Chiang Mai

Real Muay Thai Boxing in Chiang Mai Bazaar stadium

On the friday evening at 20.30 we went with a big group to the Kalare night bazaar boxing stadium. This night one of the trainers (King) was fighting that evening. We saw in total eight fights incl. three women fights, two foreigner against Thai fights. When you never have been to a Muay Thai fight, go there with the gym! Than you realy know why they train that hard.

The saturday night market

The saturday is the best day. I love food. The nightmarket in town is nice! They offer a lot of local food. You can try a lot of small portions. My favorite food on the market was the sushi. They have several stands with sushi and they sell a piece of sushi for 5 or 10 baht! ($0.13 – $0.25)

Massage after Muay Thai training

Yes Muay Thai is hard training and a nice thing to do in between your training is a Thai massage. The best place in town is to go to the temple. It is cheap as well! 100 baht ($3) for 1 hour! You can find the massage building next to the Wat Rong Tham Samakkhi.

Muay Thai boxing

Muay Thai is a combat sport of Thailand that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques. This physical and mental discipline which includes combat on shins is known as “the art of eight limbs” because it is characterized by the combined use of fists, elbows, knees, shins, being associated with a good physical preparation that makes a full-contact fighter very efficient. Muay Thai became widespread internationally in the twentieth century, when practitioners defeated notable practitioners of other martial arts. A professional league is governed by the World Muay Thai Council.