Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
My name is Tadej, I'm 17 years old, and I'm doing a 3-month full-time internship at Fight2Win as part of my e-commerce studies. Of course, I also train in martial arts myself. I started with boxing for a while, then switched to Muay Thai, and I also started practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu alongside Muay Thai.
The Thai boxing training sessions
I train Muay Thai twice a week at Sportcentrum Eagle Gym.
A typical training session at Eagle Gym looks like this: When you arrive, you can change in the changing rooms, put on your groin protector and wrap your handwraps.
Warming up
Warm-up: Before you start your workout, you should of course warm up. Start by getting your body moving, jumping lightly, and alternating shadow boxing with push-ups, squats, and abdominal exercises like planks, sit-ups, and mountain climbers. It's important to loosen up all your joints, such as your neck, shoulders, and hips, by rotating them. Finally, stretch your shoulders and legs.
Sometimes we'll grab a punching bag and do 25 low kicks, 25 power kicks, and 25 teeps per leg – that'll really warm you up.
Combinations
Once we're warmed up, we put on our shin guards and gloves and start with combinations. We start the first round with a jab, right straight, left hook, low kick to get some punches and kicks in, and then really start on the combinations.
We usually do about half an hour of different combinations, such as jab, cross, hook, stepping out during the hook, low kick, stepping out again with a low kick. My favorite combination is jab, cross, switch, power kick, jab, cross, switch, hook, power kick. We do the combinations in rounds of 2 or 3 minutes.
Spruce and extras
Then the trainer calls for mouthguards; I personally use the Shock Doctor double braces mouthguard because I have braces on both my upper and lower teeth. Once everyone has their mouthguard in, we start sparring, rounds of 2 minutes with a half-minute rest. Sparring often lasts 20-30 minutes, after which we do a short cool-down. The cool-down consists of rotating joints and short stretches.
In addition to my training at Eagle Gym, I also do some small exercises that complement the Muay Thai training. I try to practice with a reflex ball for 10 minutes, 5 times a week. This is good for my hand-eye coordination and
Meanwhile, I practice moving and avoiding punches by switching stances and applying slips, slipping, and rolling techniques.
To improve my agility and develop explosive calves, I make sure to jump rope at least twice a week, usually 3 rounds between 2 and 3 minutes long.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
I train BJJ 3 times a week at BJJ Rotterdam.
Danny, the head instructor, learned his Jiu-Jitsu from Grandmaster Rickson Gracie, and he tries to pass on Rickson's vision to as many people as possible. So that they can learn and experience the power of Jiu-Jitsu. That power lies primarily in problem-solving thinking, something that greatly appeals to me in Jiu-Jitsu.
Before we start training, we lay out the mats, then we put on our Gi or rashguard for No-Gi on Thursday.
A gi is the traditional uniform for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), consisting of a heavy cotton jacket, reinforced pants with a drawstring, and a belt indicating your rank – white, blue, purple, brown, or black. Traditionally, a gi is white, but nowadays many different colors are used in BJJ.
Afterwards, we warm up with jumping jacks, heel kicks, high knees, joint rotations, and lunges to warm up the knees and hips. If it fits with the day's training, we warm up walking on shoulders and doing ebi's or other important movements.
Once warmed up, an hour of technical training follows, during which we switch positions every period:
Mount: This position involves being on top of your opponent who is lying on their back, with control over their upper body.
Back mount: You are behind your opponent with your legs around his waist and control over his upper body.
Side control: In this position, you lie on top of your opponent, across their chest, with your weight on them for control.
Guard: You are lying on your back with your legs wrapped around your opponent to defend or attack.
Within these positions, there are variations, such as half guard, open guard, north-south position in side control, and many more.
All positions are covered in detail in turn: first the trainer explains what we are going to do and then he illustrates how to do it.
With a training partner, you will then perform these positions yourself, and the trainer will walk around to help. Every now and then, he will give some extra details to the whole class, which you can then apply.
After the hour of technique training, we can test each other during sparring, with 6-minute rounds and a 30-second break between rounds to switch partners.
When sparring, you and your sparring partner can choose which position to start in, often a position that one of the two still struggles with or would like to work on.
After sparring, we do a short cool-down, with movements such as standing rock climber, again rotating the joints and paying attention to breathing.
Gym
Before I started training Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I went to the gym five times a week. At the gym, I mainly did exercises to build muscle. Examples include bench press, hamstring curl, barbell row, leg press, and various other exercises for my arms and shoulders.
In the two years I focused solely on the gym, I gained about 17kg. This was necessary. The downside, however, is that you end up with short and stiff muscles if you only train in the gym and don't do mobility exercises and/or stretching.
Now I approach my gym workouts differently: I still train with weights twice a week. I still focus on strength, but with BJJ and Muay Thai in the back of my mind.
Now I do more exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, medicine ball slams, and cable rows. Although it's not popular in the martial arts world, I only do 2 sets per exercise unless it's specifically for muscle endurance.
For me, 2 sets are enough to make progress without overstraining my whole body. Of course, I make sure that at the end of my set I'm either at failure or can't do any more.
