Examples: Conditioning by kicking banana trees as opposed to heavy bags Hitting water repetitively to prevent eyes from closing from oncoming attacks Setting up hanging objects to work on reflexes/hand-eye coordination Anyone have anything else that you feel is a little more natural/traditional and could be used in training Muay Thai? I love using Thai pads, heavy bags, sparring, etc., but I also love some old school methods as well.
Or you could add a world of paing and take on Iron palm traininghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Palm. Please speak to a qualified instructor prior to attempting. WingChunMelb.
Yeah...and then there's the traditional age of 25 for thai fighters to retire...though that's probably more to do with them having 500+ fights by then!
kicking a bannana tree was a good excersise! it has a soft trunk and wouldnt have caused much damage to the shin. running in water/sand with and without boots on. hitting tyers, also jumping in a pool/river, climbing out and repeating over and over was a good endurance/strength training workout.(they also did this to train their fighting cockerals, push it in a river, it would climb out and theyd push it in again ) i also imagine that sand bags would have been used for strength training
As tons of the boys that move into the fight game come from rural areas - many of them from the Isaan plateau... they're no stranger to physical labor. So hoeing pineapple fields is all in a days work as is unloading 100lb bags of rice as the scales where it's sold to the middle man. i can remember when I was living there seeing guys do this damn near all day... in the hot sun while wearing a pendalton and a ski mask... ahahhahaha... afraid of getting black in the sun! I couldn't hang for even 1 hour.... let alone the all day shift.
Kicking the leaves on a tree was a exercise one of my teachers had me do in Thailand,plus running through foliage and moving my head,also a old ecercise was hitting several hanging limes or lemons as the Thai folk call them lol
using water as natural resistance is a popular one in that part of asia. e.g. shadow boxing in a river.
There is another traditional method of training: - go into the woods, - hold on a tree branch with your right hand, - spin your body, and - drop your left upper arm to break that tree branch.
works for hangovers for sure but you have to be carefull of swimming in some of those rivers in Thailand Shadow boxing or punching and kneeing under water(not your head!) is great resistance training
Just staryed reading a book on 'Traditional Burmese Boxing', which if anyone has ever seen Myanmar Lethwei, it's very similar to MT but with minimal rules and gear. The book talks about how Burmese boxers practice clinching on the trunk of a tree that represents a mans neck to condition their inner arms, punching cocounuts hanging from ropes until it broke, punching mud and opening/closing fists to increase gripping strength, and apparently they did a lot of resistance training in water (as mentioned in other posts). Just thought I'd share that. Those guys can take and deliver punches all day so it's nice to get in inside look at what makes them so conditioned.
It was good enough for Muhammad Ali, if memory serves I used to do tai chi while up to my neck in water to ensure my balance was good and I wasn't moving too fast (if I moved to fast the resistance in the water would push me off balance, and the movement of the water means constant small adjustments and the core is just about always engaged to some degree )
