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Muay Thai

I started practicing Thai boxing in 2003 at the Caledonian Muay Thai club in Glasgow under the supervision of the excellently motivated and skillful instructor, Guy Ramsay. I am running an amateur club at Kizu-gym in Kyoto (see below).

I really love the amateur Thai boxing training ethos. A punishing 30 minute warm up with plenty of skipping and physical conditioning followed by near on an hour of two minute drills and exercises with a partner leaves me feeling immensely physically satisfied. There is an emphasis on explosive fitness rather than endurance in training manifested in the repeated bursts of activity of typically around 2 minutes. This gives one the opportunity to exhaust oneself completely and spend the next two minutes recovering while you hold the pads for your partner. Training in this way encourages the recovery time to decrease and I have often found myself bursting with energy when I finish a training session -quite against the effort expended in training!

Since Thai boxing is a sport with a very long history, it's techniques are highly refined. That is not to say that they are intricate and complex. On the contrary there is a thoroughly practical and effective simplicity to Thai boxing techniques which pervades the mind-set of training. If you want to get better, train hard. Do it, do it sincerely, find out what works for you and refine it. It is a well worn metaphor that expert martial arts are a game of chess, but it is indeed so. Practice your punches and fast high kicks to perfection and find yourself de fenceless against a solid shin kick to the thigh... learn to intercept the low kicks with your knees and find yourself in the clinch with a belly full of knees... learn to stay close and stop the knees in the clinch and catch an elbow in the chin. The techniques are simple and effective, and consequently don't take years to learn. It's more a question of realizing and admitting what techniques are effective and appropriate and assimilating them... so why not learn Brazilian Jiujutsu instead? You have to draw the line somewhere right; it's not all about cabbage ears and physical domination; and we pray that we don't find ourselves facing an angry grappling Oddjob in a cul-de-sac!

This year I have been running an amateur Thai boxing club at Kizu gym, training on Mondays and Thursdays at 6.30-800pm, and Saturday 10am-12pm. The cost is 400 yen which goes some way to covering renting of the hall. Young and old, male and female all welcome.

Last Update 10th March 2006
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