MAKING THE BEST OUT OF OPEN MAT & SOLO SESSIONS

By Emily Moore

KHRU DAVE GOMEZ OF WOLFPACK BOXING CLUB, MIAMI, FL. (CREDIT: MAGNIFICENT MOORE PHOTOGRAPHY)

Have you ever shown up at the gym only to find out that you’re the only one there?

Maybe your coach had an emergency and needed to step away, or your training partner bailed on you. You still want to get a good workout in but do you know how to structure your own training when no one is there to guide you?

If you’ve always had a coach there to tell you what to do and how to flow from one drill or exercise to the next, approaching an open mat or solo training session can be a little confusing. You can enter the training session with good intentions and strong motivation, but without some forethought and planning you might end up halfheartedly hitting the heavy bag for two and a half rounds before deciding to go home.

Training on your own is great; fighting, after all, is something that you ultimately have to do...

AVOID THESE 3 MOST COMMON HEAVY BAG MISTAKES

By Sean Fagan

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“It’s not daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” – Bruce Lee

Making a mistake means you’ve wasted a portion of your time, or worse still, you’ve set yourself back so far that you must now spend even more time correcting and making up for your mistakes.

We want to minimize tail chasing during your heavy bag training sessions by developing a NOT to-do list, because what you don’t do determines what you can do. Time to save time. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Note: For each mistake listed, there will be a correction that comes with it. If you’re impatient simply read the corrections and the bold. 

Mistake #1: Just going through the motions.

All the below...

HOW TO TRAIN ALONE IN A NON-SOLO SPORT

By Angela Chang

Although you’ll be in the ring by yourself when you fight, training Muay Thai is anything but a solo sport. This is why we have teams of fighters training together at top-tier Muay Thai gyms, whether it be Diamond Muay Thai on Koh Phangan, Thailand, or King Tiger Muay Thai in San Diego, or a room with some beat-up mats in the middle of nowhere. In this solo sport, co-operative training matters.

As crucial as it is to train with others and a quality instructor, there are many benefits to training solo – and everyone should every now and then. It allows you to focus on yourself, rather than a partner or instructor. In these quiet, retrospective sessions, you can fine-tune the techniques you’ve learned from class and sparring to be better prepared for the real thing.

Here are a slew of tips on how to squeeze the most out of your solo Muay Thai sessions.

WHEN TRAINING SOLO… Slow...