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The longer you workout, using the same machines or doing the same bodyweight exercises, the closer you come to getting into a workout rut. At one time or another, everyone has felt that, whether it’s a workout rut, a work rut or even a relationship rut where every minute is so predictable that it’s almost boring. You can solve those problems in a number of ways. For a relationship rut, people often take up a new activity together. At work, they may request a new job within the company or look for ways to change things and make them more efficient. How do you deal with a workout rut? It’s easy, find a new way to get exercise.

Why not consider kickboxing?

There’s so much to learn when you first start kickboxing that your mind will be so busy the time will fly quickly. That combination of moving in new ways and learning new skills will certainly hold your interest and make exercise fun again. That’s what staying in shape is all about, having the energy to enjoy everything life has to offer. It’s perfect for couples that want something new to do together or for the average man or woman that just wants a change.

Muay Boran/Muay Thai is the martial arts of Thailand.

Muay Thai offers even more opportunities to learn. Unlike kickboxing that offers 4-point striking system, Muay Thai has an 8-point striking system. The kicks are different, the footwork is too. Just like kickboxing, there’s a lot to learn. There’s also a wide variety of styles and methods for Muay Thai. You have to learn not only all the moves, but also how to anticipate your opponent’s moves, which makes the time fly. Once you start Muay Thai, not only will you look forward to classes, you’ll look forward to getting into better shape to execute what you’ve learned.

Using MMA to get fit is perfect if you want the skills but don’t want to fight.

Maybe you like the idea of learning self-defense and getting fit enough to grapple, but don’t like the idea of actually fighting. Taking classes that get you fit enough to fight can be a good way to break the workout rut you’ve experienced. It’s great for people of all ages and can burn calories like mad. You’ll build confidence while you learn this new activity. It’s a great change from moving from one machine to another that often happens in the gym.

• Getting fit is all about having the energy to enjoy life more. If you dread your workouts and forcing yourself to go, it isn’t fulfilling that mission. Enjoying every minute means enjoying your workout, too.
• MMA, kickboxing and Muay Thai builds lean muscle mass. You won’t bulk up like bodybuilders, but build sinewy muscle tissue that gives the sculpted, but muscular appearance.
• Other activities that can help reduce the doldrums of exercise include hiking, bicycling and swimming. Anything that gets you moving, leaves you breathing hard and builds strength provides a good workout alternative.
• If you have specific problems, like fat deposits that simply won’t disappear or poor hand-eye coordination, focusing on alternatives like Muay Thai can help build those, as well as increase speed, stamina and strength.

For more information, contact us today at Garcia Muay Thai

How does running or any other cardio workout help you build your endurance? First let’s define endurance. It’s more than just cardio, it’s about the body’s stamina and ability to “endure” long workouts and activities that are physically tasking. It’s about the body being able to take a pounding, from the legs and joints to the heart and keep going strong. It should be an important part of training that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Muay Thai professional fighters run every day to build endurance.

There are many reasons these professionals take up running, but one important one is to build stronger bones, particularly shinbones. It’s important for anyone practicing Muay Thai, since it’s an important protection for blocking kicks and a powerful tool to deliver painful ones. If your shinbones are strong, you can deliver stronger kicks with a lower risk of breaking the bone or having a bone fracture. That makes running excellent conditioning for Muay Thai.

You get a good cardio workout when you run.

Running not only gets your heart pumping, but it also boosts your overall endurance. Your heart needs exercise to be stronger, just like any other muscle in your body. Running increases the heart rate and works it like leg exercises work leg muscles. Modifying your pace, like using high intensity interval training—HIIT—can increase the benefit of running. It creates afterburn to torch even more calories. It’s just modifying your run to volley between short bursts of high intensity and recovery paces.

Running boosts endurance by increasing your mental strength.

Not only do you burn off stress when you run, you build mental strength. That’s important not only for Muay Thai, but in every aspect of your life. Running improves your mood, primarily from the happy hormones it increases and pushing your body past that point of giving up to reach that point can help you push past other things in life that block success or achieving your goals. You’ll learn to endure more and push past it.

• You’ll improve your knees by thickening the cartilage, which boosts their endurance. Studies show people who walk double their chance of osteoarthritis compared to runners, because the impact builds the strength of muscles that protect the joints.
• Running increases lung volume. It strengthens the respiratory muscles like the diaphragm, which allows to improved lung volume. That lets you take deeper breaths and increased oxygen each breath.
• Running helps your muscles perform better doing other tasks. It’s called post-activation potentiation—PAP. Studies show running increases PAP, which increases the amount of time you can perform endurance exercises.
• Running changes the body by increasing the network of capillaries, boosting mitochondria production and helping you lose weight and build muscle tissue. All those things build endurance.

For more information, contact us today at Garcia Muay Thai

If you’re like most people, when you finally decide to lose weight, you want to do it in a few weeks. If you only have a few pounds to lose, that’s possible, but for most people, it’s the weight they gained over years of poor lifestyle habits. In order to maximize your potential to take weight off and prevent it from returning, your weight loss goal need to be realistic. While it’s possible to lose several pounds in a few days, that weight loss is normally water weight and not permanent. Permanent weight loss is all about changing your eating habits and getting more active.

Start by identifying your ideal weight.

If you’re six feet tall and weigh 140-pounds, you don’t need to lose weight no matter what your gender. A quick way to do that is by using a BMI chart. For the 6-foot person weighing 140, their BMI is 19, close to underweight. However, if you’re the same height and weigh 191, your BMI is 25, which is overweight. Once you find what your ideal weight for your height, age, gender and build is, identify how much weight you need to lose.

Set weekly goals by dividing the number of pounds by two.

Losing one to two pounds a week is a healthy goal. It gives your body a chance to adjust and allows you to create healthier habits, which include exercise and diet. While it might seem weight loss will be more initially, since you weigh more and just moving burns more calories, if you’re working out, you’re also building muscle tissue. Muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does, so you’ll be boosting your metabolism. It is not only healthier, but more realistic.

Note your ultimate timeline based on the number of pounds you want to lose each week.

If your goal is to lose 20-pounds and you focus on two pounds a week, your timeline will be 10 weeks, let’s say that date is May 30th. Write down your goal. In the above scenario, it would read, “I will lose 20-pounds by May 30th by exercising for a half hour every day and eating a healthy 1500 calorie diet.” You can then check your progress every week to make sure you’re staying on track.

• If you’re not happy with your body shape, but you don’t need to lose weight, opt for exercise. Muay Thai and MMA are excellent ways to get your body in shape with a sleek muscular appearance.
• Take your measurements before you start your workout program and take a picture in a revealing gym outfit. Every month do the same thing at the same time of day. This helps you record your progress, besides using weight loss and can be extremely motivating.
• Setting goals is not only a good way to achieve weight loss by focusing and tracking on what you want to achieve, it’s good practice for achieving other things important in your life.
• Realistic goals are the true road maps to success. They not only help you focus and formulate a plan to achieve your goal, when they’re realistic and achievable, they keep you motivated and prevent discouragement.

For more information, contact us today at Garcia Muay Thai

There’s a lot of misinformation about Muay Thai. I frequently get questions about whether Muay Thai is a religion or contains religious movements and ceremonies from people who are considering coming to Garcia Muay Thai and MMA Gym in Glen Cove, NY. The answer is simple, “NO.” While Muay Thai is steeped in culture and spirituality, which includes promoting respect for opponents and self, it’s not based on religion, but rather self-defense and using the parts of the body as weapons of war.

It was the survival of the fittest.

While ancient history records wars waged with swords, daggers, hammers, axe, mace and staff, the Tai —Siamese—tribes were fierce with good fighting skills as they migrated to Thailand. They used their bodies as weapons based on training in the military and that passed from father to son. It was an effective fighting style, with those surviving, teaching the others the movements that allowed that survival. Much like evolution of man, this fighting style evolved based on what worked in the battle field.

There are many cultural connections and spirituality in the sport, but not religion.

Since Thai was constantly under attack, learning these self-defense methods were part of the culture. It became mandatory that young men in the military trained in the art of Muay Thai, which allowed them to refine their skills even further. They used these techniques against the armies of the Cambodians, Burmese and others in the area. However, not all their time was spent in war and in times of peace, it became sport and fun in the villages. There were competitions and matches. In times of peace, older survivors of battles would teach the young men the art of Muay Thai and so it grew as a cultural even over 500 years, changing and building on skills with each decade.

The spirituality of Muay Thai is not the same as religion.

Yes, there are cultural significance to many parts of the sport. For instance, the mongkorn—headpiece, prajioud—armband—and shorts have a spiritual significance and in traditional matches, are blessed to give luck and protection. The Wai Kru, for instance, roughly translates to bow teacher. It’s showing respect to the trainer, rather than to an entity. The Ram means dance and Muay translates as boxing. The Wai Kru Ram Muay is not really a dance, but more of a warm-up, showing off the fighter’s style, while showing respect to not only coaches, but also opponents.

• Other traditions performed before a fight have a cultural basis that may have occurred for practical reasons. Kneeling down, bowing three times and grabbing dust off the steps and sprinkling it on the head may have been a sneaky way of assessing the texture of the ground, damp, hard, slipper, etc.
• Some traditions of Muay Thai include climbing over the ropes, rather than through them and walking counter-clockwise around the ring. Many of these traditions are similar to superstitions, like athletes wear the same socks all season after a big win.
• While Muay Thai isn’t a religion, it does teach respect for self and others. It also teaches self-discipline and goal setting. It helps people of all ages cope with the stresses of the world and remain composed.
• At Garcia Muay Thai and MMA Gym we focus on more than just traditional Muay Thai. We focus on MMA, self-defense and Muay Thai kickboxing to help you become your fittest.

For more information, contact us today at Garcia Muay Thai Gym

While Muay Thai is not only my specialty in Long Island, NY, it’s also my favorite types of martial arts that’s classed as a kickboxing style. I often get a lot of questions about the different styles of kickboxing and how American kickboxing is different than Muay Thai or other styles like Burmese kickboxing that allows headbutts and any part of the body to strike the opponent on any part of his body. Cambodian kickboxing emphasizes the use of elbows and Muay Thai uses knees, elbows, feet and hands. American Kickboxing is different in that it doesn’t allow kicking below the waist. .

American kickboxing developed later than many of the kickboxing sports.

While karate and other martial arts became popular in America, Western boxing was also supreme. American kickboxing is a marriage of the two sports. It has elements of both karate and boxing. The development of the sport started in the 1970s, when all types of kickboxing became popular. Because many Americans had only experience with Karate, they weren’t used to expending the energy for the kickboxing rounds. A ten round fight was a pure struggle.

Boxing trainers helped.

Those involved in Karate seldom used gloves, but that soon made those people turn to training programs created for Western boxers. Changes in the number of rounds for sparring, using full contact sparring and taking punches to the upper body and head was all part of the training. That training improved them in the ring and helped develop the modern version that grew into American kickboxing. It spread to international circuits and became its own sport.

A few rules set it apart from other martial arts.

Hitting above the waist is part of American kickboxing. It can be done with either punches or kicks. There’s no use of knees or elbows in this sport. Few matches allow shins to be used either. Grappling and clinch fighting isn’t allowed. The use of sweeps is legal, but that also depends on the bout and referee. The bouts normally last 2-3 minutes. There are as few as three and as many as twelve with a minute rest between the rounds.

• Some people think that the reason that American kickboxing only allows kicking above the waist is that promoters wanted a flashier sport with high kicks to draw the public.
• Like other types of kickboxing, agility, energy level and reflexes are king. Planning your next move wisely to defend yourself or attack your opponent is important.
• The first World Championship of American Kickboxing was in 1974. The Professional Karate Association held it.
• It’s acceptance also boosted other forms of the sport. It was part of the reason that Mixed Martial Arts was developed.