Bringing you Phuket nightlife, bar, events and restaurant culture...
Are you playing out tonight?

Muay Thai, the 8 limbed art of fighting, immortalized by Jean-Cleade Van Dam and more recently Tony Ja starting with his epic movie debut Ong Bak has long been respected and admired across the world wide martial arts community as one of the toughest and watchable forms of fighting sports. But long before this international interest, Muay Thai has and remains one of the nations favorite spectator sports, drawing crowds willing to part with their cash to bet on the fights.

Traditionally, fighters would come into the sport at an early age, usually as a form of earning an honest income and be ‘adopted’ by a gym, living, sleeping and eating Muay Thai. In return the fighters would remain loyal to a gym fighting and earning money for them by winning (and sometimes loosing) fights in the popular stadiums. Fighters would be expected to fight (if possible) at least once a week, and to constantly keep in peak condition by training twice a day for 6 days a week. Due to the huge wear on the body, fight careers would usually end before the age of 30, but then continued employment would be possible as a trainer.

In recent years, interest across the world has exploded, and Phuket has seen a similar explosion in the number of Muay Thai gyms setup primarily to cater for visiting westerners. Wanting to learn the style for a variety of reasons from personal fitness to fighting in the ring, Westerners have started flocking to Phuket to both train, and enjoy the many tourist attractions that the Island has to offer.

From small traditional sized gyms with one or two rings and only a few fighters and trainers to huge mega camps with over 10 rings and hundreds of students, there is a huge variety of facilities on offer.

Choosing the best camp for you can be a daunting process, but here are some tips to remember:

• Check the student to teacher ratios

• Find online recommendations for camps before paying

• Great fighters don’t always make the great teachers
(again, check on recommendations)

• Check the location of the camp – do you want to be near the beach or next t o a main road?

• Check what extras you can get for your cash

• Some gyms offer training such as MMA or Muay Borran (ancient Muay Thai) would this interest you?

• Here is a guide to some of the camps on Phuket Island with a list of their prices. Remember, check their website and the details of the prices e.g. private of shared room? Air conditioned or fan

• Check what extras you can get for your cash

• All of these things can make a difference and could mean the difference between a great training experience, or a sweaty painful nightmare!

• Add New
• RSS

Comments (3)

• |2009-12-14 10:39:30 philip  - as sport, great, real fights in Patong sucks
  

  Its too bad, that muay thai, a very fascination sport it self, gets really bad faces from these "real fights" which is held in boxing stadiums. All tourists should avoid these events. Even the marketing of those events drives people crazy, cant believe why they are aloud to jam traffic with horrible cars around Patong. I would like to have around or maybe two with that guy who is yelling TONIGHT TONIGHT from speakers..

• |2009-12-14 10:53:21 livinghere
  

  thats one of the most annoying things in hkt right after tuktuks, jetskis and tailor shop monkeys.
  
  Still truth that mt is great sport, i have it couple times in week and it really keeps me fit. If had enough time would easily take one of these camps.

• |2010-07-04 03:26:26 LoganPATTI20  - reply
  

  Different people in all countries get the business loans from different creditors, just because it's comfortable and fast.

Have your say!

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify Gravatar enabled

Title:

Message:

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."