Fighters Only

Issue 163

January 2018

A Muay Thai pad blast to hone your striking skills and cardio performance.

Expert: Carlton Lieu, Muay Thai Grand Prix super lightweight champion & coach

The best strikers get better by drilling techniques over and over again. Apply that principle to a striking circuit and you can hone your skills at the same time as you improve your endurance.

Though you’ll have to adapt your punches, kicks, knees and elbows compared to the way a pure Muay Thai artist throws them – a similar approach workout will still work. Focus on repetition of hard and fast strikes and you’ll be able to practice combinations and build up your gas tank at the same time.

CIRCUIT ESSENTIALS:

1/ MAKE YOUR COMBOS SIMPLE

As soon as you start putting five or six strikes together in combinations, your power is going to change and technique is going to go out the window. If you can nail four hits perfectly, it’s much better.

2/ A BALANCE OF POWER

Your power should increase throughout the combo. You shouldn’t be light, to medium to hard like: 25%, to 50%, to 100%. You should be hitting the pad hard on every strike and finishing with maximum power: 70%, to 80%, to 100%.

3/ FORM BEFORE FORCE

The most important thing is technique, but you’ll get to a point where you’ll get fatigued and maintaining perfect technique isn’t realistic all the time. When that happens, then you’ll need to rely on raw power to bang out all your reps.

THE POWER CIRCUIT

Make every round 3-5 minutes
Rest for one minute between rounds Push yourself by doing 20 push-ups between rounds
Make it more challenging by cutting your rest in half

Rounds 1 & 2: boxing

Do 20-30 reps of as many of these punching combos as you can per round

Jab, cross, uppercut
Jab, uppercut, uppercut Jab, jab, cross, uppercut Body jab, cross
Jab, body cross
Left hook, left body hook Left body hook, left hook Jab, jab, right hook Cross, uppercut, cross

Rounds 3 & 4: freestyle

Continuous rounds, mixing in all varieties of single shots and combinations. Your pad man should make this as close to a fight as possible, hitting you back with punches and kicks. Get them to call for killer sets of 10-50 kicks throughout the round too.

Rounds 5, 6 & 7: low kicks

Finish with three rounds of an overlooked weapon, low kicks, in combination with punches. They need to be hard and fast in MMA to make sure your leg isn’t grabbed for a takedown.