Among the many popular striking martial arts these days, Muay Thai is one of the popular choices. With effective kicks, jabs, knees, and elbow strikes, as well as a killer body conditioning that comes with practicing Muay Thai is why we are here to tell you why you should consider adding this art of 8 limbs into your list of striking arts.
- Cardiovascular Conditioning
Among many martial arts, practicing and training Muay Thai places a lot more cardiovascular conditioning compared to other arts. Being both aerobic and anaerobic, Muay Thai requires and places huge stress on your cardiopulmonary systems. With continued practice and endurance, your body will slowly grow and adapt to the demands of the sport.
- Lower Body Strength
Muay Thai focuses a lot on kicking and footwork. Movements that is distinctive to muay thai include the roundhouse kick, upward knee, and side swing with the shin. This strengthens the musculature of the lower body, along with footwork drills incorporated in the sport you will notice huge leaps of improvement in muscle endurance, force production, and overall agility.
- Core Strength
By core, we do not mean your abdomen, contrary to the popular term used in HIIT workouts and all. Your core here is referring to every single muscle located on your trunk. The rotational nature of all of the movements in the art, as well as getting punched in the body, and striking, applying defensive movements, and clinching will all help strengthen that fundamental core.
- Hip Mobility
Over time, the continuous kicking and kneeing movements in practicing Muay Thai promotes increased hip mobility. Having healthy hips alone can save you from certain pain and a plethora of terrible medical conditions later in life. Just remember also do form rolling, stretching, and massage to the hips will do wonders for you pre and post training.
As a martial artist, it is useful to have a diverse range of attacks, and in defense, there are also techniques used in Muay Thai which maximize the opportunity for counter attacks and provide a means of escaping an opponent’s efforts to land successfully. So, below are the most useful aspects of Muay Thai for a mixed martial artist to employ:
- Roundhouse Kick
- Low Kicks/ Swings with Shin
- Horizontal Elbow (Sok Tad)
- Striking from a clinch position
- Switch Kick
