Can you really improve your overall strength and conditioning by doing an intense bodyweight workout routine?

I can remember when I started to train for my Muay Thai fight in Thailand back in 2010.  Before I stared I was 195lbs and training with weights, kettlebells, sandbags, etc. But when my Kru told me I was going to fight at 175lbs and that I had to stop using weights, I was a bit reluctant and scared at first but I had a task and goal set so it was time to adjust my training.

I sculpted my body using mostly weight prior to this and I felt that strictly using bodyweight exercises over the next 8 months was going to kill everything I had worked hard for… or so I thought!

I started implementing the best bodyweight exercises to create intense bodyweight workouts and circuits to help with endurance, explosiveness, cardio, strength and fat burn while keeping my...

MY PERSONAL STRENGTH & CONDITIONING ROUTINE FOR MUAY THAI TRAINING

By Sean Fagan

Strength and conditioning for Muay Thai can be a tricky bitch sometimes.

I don’t know about you, but I get overwhelmed with the amount of choices I have when it comes to strength and conditioning.

Should I use kettlebells? 

Or should I focus more on Olympic lifts? What about body weight circuits? 

Should I be doing interval sprints or are long distance runs better? 

Is Crossfit a good form of strength and conditioning?

What if I did plyometrics?

See what I mean? My brain hurts just thinking about the different forms of exercises and the various ways of structuring a proper strength and conditioning routine for Muay Thai.

Fortunately, there are guys like Don Heatrick who geek-out about this kind of stuff. All of Don’s posts on strength and conditioning for Muay Thai are top quality and always provide me with useful, practical information and exercises to...

WEIGHTLIFTING POWERS UP YOUR MUAY THAI GAME

By Nick Spiegler

Traditionally speaking, people that train Muay Thai (some fighters in particular) shy away from weight lifting. A very common mindset and training approach is that a few sets of calisthenics is sufficient for strength development.

In the modern age, however, some pushups and pull-ups are not going to cut it. Proper strength training done in a smart and focused way will only serve to improve overall fitness and your fight game. If you want to get serious about lifting for your Muay Thai game, then you need to accept the following six points as true.

#1: Lifting Won’t Make You Any Slower

Believe it or not, weight lifting will not make you bulky and slow if you do it properly. However, a high calorie diet and lifting like a bodybuilder can make you add unnecessary mass and cause you to be slower in your movements. So eat the calories necessary for training and lift specifically to...

COMMON MISTAKES IN MUAY THAI STRENGTH & CONDITIONING

By Sean Fagan

The combination of Muay Thai and strength and conditioning is now not only accepted, but actively sought by many competitive fighters and recreational Thai boxers alike.

This is great news. When I first started my website over five years ago, my emphasis was on why Thai boxers should be using strength and conditioning.

Now I enjoy explaining how you do this rather than justifying why – and that’s where things get exciting.

The enthusiasm the Muay Thai community now has for supplemental training has also led to some misconceptions. And in this article, I’ll highlight some of these so you can either steer-clear, or confirm you’re on the right track!

Making resistance sessions look like Thai boxing sessions

I get it. You love Muay Thai – I do too. But that doesn’t mean that allyour training sessions need to look like Muay Thai. In fact, you’ll run...

Body Weight Circuit to Build Full-Body Strength

Body weight training is the best measure of your pound-for-pound strength.

Georges St. Pierre, one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, uses Olympic weightlifting, track and field, and gymnastics to prepare for his fights.

St. Pierre and his legendary coach Firas Zihabi both believe that gymnasts are the strongest and best athletes in the world. And what weights do gymnasts use? Their bodies.

Today, Sean Fagan will show you a body weight workout designed to build full-body strength, just like a gymnast. And because you are only using your body weight, the difficulty of the exercises determines your pound-for-pound strength. The easier the exercise, the stronger you are, pound for pound. Now, let’s build that strength.

Supersets

Perform each exercise pair in back-to-back sets.

Set #1

• 5 x 5 one-arm push-ups (or wide grip)
• 10-second break
• 5 x 5 fast, half-ROM explosive push-ups

Set #2

• 5 x 5 assisted one-arm pull-ups
• ...

Muay Thai Workout For Explosive Power and Optimal Strength

If you’re like most nak muay, you have limited time to work on strength and conditioning for your muay thai. Fortunately, doing a kettlebell workout can yield amazing benefits for muay thai fighters in a relatively short amount of time. Not only that, but training with kettlebells will also dramatically improve your explosive power, muscular endurance, balance, coordination, overall strength and cardio.

Movements patterns done with kettlebell training can be very similar to the movements used in muay thai. Whether you’re punching, kicking, knees or clinching, all of those movements use the same biomechanics that you will use in the Kettlebell For Fighters Program.

Obviously as a fighter, you’re going to want to generate explosive strikes to dominate your next fight. The ballistic movements of kettlebells will help you develop that explosive strength and will give you more full-body power than most...