What are your Muay Thai/MMA training classes like?

I'd really like to know how different schools cover their training/classes. No need to mention the name. I have been to several either for a year or more contract or just checking it out.

School #1
Amateur and pro, one UFC guy (all fight often)
Cost: about $135 a month, less for fighters
Place was big, with a ring, bags, mms cage and other goodies.
Gear: Muay Thai shorts (any kind), shirt (any), gloves, shins, mouthguard, cup, headgear was not worn.
Classes go 2 hours. Two days a week was MT other two BJJ. First 30 minutes was running 3 miles outside. During winter it would be a 30 minute cardio and stretch.
Short water break
25 minutes clinching, no gloves. There would be literally pools of sweat everywhere, it was nasty.
Short water break
Second hour would start with some pad work (rarely) going over a new technique and sparring. Pretty much sparring for a full 45 minutes to an hour with active rest (pushups etc.) here and there. Techniques were not so much taught, per se, you kind of figured it out on your own.
At the end people would stay late and do more work if they had a fight (this was almost every class). Thursday's required somebody give a gift to the Kru or coach as was the tradition in Thailand. This was done ceremoniously (on knees, bowing etc.)
At the end of formal class people would line up and wai and hug everybody. I think Americans wai more than thais.

School #2
Amateur
Cost: not sure
Gear: School specific Thai shorts, any shirt, sparring was only done on the weekend. When a coach was talking everybody was in a modified wai position (gloves just under nose).
Lasted one hour.
5 minutes of cardio. The rest was drills. No sparring except saturday. No water break needed.
I went to one class and didn't go back.


School #3
Amateurs who fight often
Cost: about $135 a month
Gear: School supplied Thai shorts with school logo, school supplied shirt with logo (you paid for it), gloves, shins (also both with logo) but you could use your own, mouthguard, cup, headgear always worn.
Class met four times a week, one of them on the weekend.
Students were expected to stand in a modified wai position when coach was talking, if hands dropped somebody would come by and smack you.
An oath was read before each class
Cardio was done in between drills.
Class was two hours long. First hour beginner class with drills and fundamentals. Second was sparring and more advanced technique. Water break was whenever you could fit it in.
Coaches were very into watching everybody and correcting everything. Somewhat micromanaged but in ways welcoming considering school #1.
If somebody went too hard when they weren't told to they would be told to sit out.
At the end people would line up, wai and hug everybody. Wasn't much time after to do free sparring.

 

jesus christ...thats a lot of bowing and wai'ing. ive only studied under Thais here in LA and thats done once at the beginning of class and once at the end. i wonder if you have to seal the ring and wai kru every time you get in and spar.

are these classes taught by white dudes?

 

Is that even a question?

 

I go to a traditional Muay Thai taught gym taught by a Thai in Southern California. Basically the gym is open from morning to night with not set schedule of classes. Whenever you show up you are expected to do some cardio work. Most run around the block a few times and then come in and skip rope.

After that it really depends on what your level is. If you are a beginner you can expect a lot of shadow boxing and working on stance/footwork in front of a mirror. You will have a go at it on the heavy bags to work certain techniques, but you will hardly hit pads and almost never spar.

Once you got the fundamentals down, you can expect a lot of pad and ring work followed up by sparring.

A little bit of time is also dedicated to learning a wai kru

 

classes/gym is open 3 hours, 6 days a week

1st hour
20 mins of conditioning/cardio/calisthenics
30 mins of partnered padwork drills
10 mins of conditioning, end class with wai, no hugs

2nd hour
Sparring for the entire hour

3rd hour
people usually leave, but its open for an extra hour (which is when I do my leg conditioning on bag, get some bag work in, sometimes get in a short weightlifting routine, etc.)


P.S. side question, can I ask you guys how often the gym owners clean/mop the mats? I've only seen my gym owner vaccuum, never swiffer wetjet, even when ppl sweat buckets. and I just saw a nasty picture of mark hunt's toe infection, followed by his staph infection video lol

 

Yeah man, sigh... wai on the mat wai off, before sparring each partner wai, entering the ring wai three times while rubbing the top rope, go over the top rope seal the ring, wai to partner. No wai kru for sparring but we practiced it often at first gym.

First school was white guy owned, who trained in Thailand. Second school was more a BJJ school with MT thrown in and third is run by an Filipino-American guy.

 

Wow, I like that. I'm in the DC area, lots of schools but few taught by Thais. I would love to have it open and you just come in. All schools I know of have set schedules 7-9 on certain days etc.

 

I like this set up too. The first gym we cleaned the mats every night. It was usually the newbies who cleaned, most of the other guys were either working in the cage of ring after. I wasn't on the fight team at that school, so I got to clean too, even when I wasn't a noobie. We had this one thing called birthday beatdown, where the dudes would smack the shit out of the birthday boy's belly until it bled (no lie). For awhile everybody participated. The UFC guy gave me a a friggin slap so hard it broke the capillaries and I had a reddish imprint of his hand for a week on my stomach. They then changed it to only fight team guys would partake. Those not on the fight team would have to watch... while in the plank position. yeeeaaahh, let that sink in. I didn't mind the birthday slaps so much, but being made to plank whilst others had their festivities was when I started looking elsewhere. That and the MMA guys ruling the roost. I saw no point in fighting it or whining. They eventually dropped the program my daughter was in, so I left. I was friends with the owner too. it's a decent school, but just wasn't getting much out of it because I wasn't officially on the fight team. Part of that is my fault, I just couldn't dedicate the time they wanted and I am old (comparatively).

 

lol f*** the birthday beats sound brutal, harkens back to middle school days where if it was your birthday, you'd either have to hide in the bathroom or somewhere obscure like the library during recess and stay away from your locker, where you'd have a crowd of ppl waiting for you hahaha


so wait, newbies had to clean the gym, daily? is that normal procedure in a lot of gyms (bc it sounds great as a gym to me)? I'd like to suggest more sanitary levels to my teacher without coming off badly... should probably just buy him a swiffer wetjet as a present lol

 

No idea whether you've seen my posts before but my coach is Thai and interestingly we don't tend to do the wai khru at all. I guess it's just not super important to him.

My class is very fitness heavy. It lasts an hour and a half and we'll do things ranging from circuit training, to traditional sit ups, dips and basic exercises you'd expect to see, things like running around the gym floor on your elbows and feet kinda like a crocodile, walking on your hands across the gym while your parner holds your legs up in the air (I'm not an expert so I don't know the names for a lot of these exercises) using the tire etc.

There's plenty of pad work and drill work (punching each others gloves) as well as sparring in various degrees of intensity. This is of course where you learn the technical aspects of the game, our first round of sparring is boxing only (occasionally no head shots depending on how he's feeling) and then we go into full muay thai.

He's not huge on the clinch, but we do train it when we're sparring and he'll train us one on one in the session for the technical aspect of the clinch.

I don't imagine that it's too different from what most other gyms will do but I wouldn't.


I train in the UK so we don't really have any UFC guys (one of our former coaches is now in the UFC but aside from that we mainly have local guys), but we do have a fair few british champions under our belt, but unfortunately due to it being such a niche in the UK it can sometimes be quite hard to find good information.

Hope this helped with what ever you were looking to find out.

 

I'll say the name because I've mentioned it on the forums before, so it wouldn't be hard to figure out.

Coban's Muay Thai (NYC)
Amateur and pro
Cost: $154 per month (that is with LEO discount it covers all classes except BJJ, which is $40 extra per month, I think)

Pretty big for a school in Manhattan. Large mat area and a ring.

Gear: Muay thai shorts (any kind). Gloves. Everyone has to wear a shirt. Mouth piece, head gear, and shin guards required for sparring.

Classes: All classes are one hour long, but there are classes from 5:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and classes from 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 (?) p.m. on weekdays and Saturday. The tuition also includes a bunch of conditioning classes that run on the side of the mats while the main MT classes are going.

All classes start with stretching/jogging/push-ups/sit-ups/etc for about 10-15 minutes. After the stretching, Coban will show a drill and then you and your partner will alternate holding pads or executing the drill. After you each do one or two rounds, Coban will add something to the drill and you will basically repeat this process until the class is almost over. At the end, you basically do a shorter version of the warm-up. There are a lot of different classes (MT, boxing, clinching, etc.)

It's nice because, even if the class is full, Coban, Kongnapa, or one of the other coaches always seems to be watching you and will step in quickly to correct mistakes.

I've never heard anyone referred to as Kru or Ajarn and there is very little bowing. No bowing is forced or even requested, but a lot of people do it out of respect.

Also, if you're a complete beginner, there are fundamentals of MT classes. In that class, you go to the ring and work with a trainer...most of the time it's one-on-one or two-on-one. People generally seem to do that for a couple weeks before moving on to the other classes.

 

That's great to have a Thai coach. Sounds like a decent program you have there. The UFC guy was on TUF. Really nice guy, but he wasn't well known and ended up getting dropped after three straight losses. It's crazy to me, because this guy was so good, an incredible athlete and it came down to, I feel, close decisions... all of a sudden POOF you're gone.

 

That sounds like a pretty good set up too. So, when sparring you have to wear a shirt? That makes sense actually. My current gym you have to. But at the first school like I said you'd run for about 3 miles and then go straight into clinching. Lots of sweat, it was kind of nasty. You always had the one or two dudes with bad BO and it could be unbearable. I tend to sweat a lot, probably more than most. But I am pretty sure I don't have BO. There is something, however, worse than BO I have found and that is stank ass hand wraps and gloves. It's like dude, wash your friggin hand wraps. It's enough to knock a buzzard off a shit truck.

 

Yeah, when I first started there, two people reported staph, so they started making everyone clean themselves before the clinching classes and everyone had to start wearing shirts during those classes.

Earlier, someone mentioned how often they clean the mats. At Coban's, they seem to spot clean the mats between every class and totally clean them a couple times per night. It really is the cleanest gym I've ever been to (the bathrooms are ALWAYS super clean too).

 

lol, what?

 

My classes are simple. Just based on what I have witnessed in Thailand.

Run or skip 15 minutes or so. More if you have a fight coming up.
Shadow boxing 10 minutes or so.
3-5 rounds of pad work and or bag work
5 rounds technical sparring
20-30 minutes clinching

No need to Wai or anything.
Call me by my first name.
Train hard and don't be a douche.

I don't have many fighters, but the ones who do, rarely lose. My standards for fighters are pretty high.

 

That's a really good set up as well. Are you guys moving from the Redskins drive location?
Update: just watched some videos of the school. Looks really good. Former Navy guy myself.

 

Yeah we are moving to
14119 mariah court
chantilly va

About 5 miles away from the current location.

You can check out my YouTube channel to see what my classes are like and what type of training I have.

https://m.youtube.com/user/FairfaxMuayThai

 

Man if you guys hate sweat I'd hate to see how you react to competition training for any form of grappling. I get that it's kind of gross... But like... I'm sure you're sweating just as much as he is. In my experience, a shirt doesn't really stop people sweating either, just ensures that the sweat can stay around and get on me every time instead of being able to just wipe it off with a towel

 

Brazilian coach with japanese experience in boxing ---

We are poor in equipment but we get great results because instruction is the most important and in our town there are bigger fake Muay Thai schools that even tried to stole our coach but he prefers to be poor and clean , well to the point ...

We use mostly the combo system , I think you learn fast that way and you get use to be attacked hard with safety ...
We don