It’s almost an unspoken rule in any martial art that one should never practice alone. After all, what could you do on your own? Sparring with someone is the best way to practice as it’s the closest thing to a real fight. It allows you to test out your skills and improve upon it.
In Muay Thai, practicing with a partner is encouraged as it makes it easier to improve and practice timing, accuracy, distance, proper form, defense, and so on and so forth.
Unfortunately, you don’t always have the luxury of practicing with someone else. The gym may be empty, or you may have come in too early. Or, better yet, you just came into the gym to relieve some stress and realized that you can’t do much without a training partner.
While it’s true that sparring is one of the best ways to train, it’s not exactly the only way to do so.
There are plenty of ways to train in Muay Thai, even when you’re alone. Sure, you won’t be able to stimulate real combat as much, but it seems that as long as you know how to do it properly, there are some benefits to training Muay Thai alone in the gym.
- Shadow boxing. Shadow boxing is like sparring, so do it like you’re actually sparring or even fighting somebody. Don’t be too complacent and slack off. Make sure to put emphasis on small details such as head and body movement, footwork, defense, your stance, all the while going about 70% for 3 rounds of 3 minutes each.
- Jump rope. Seeing that you’re alone, you might as well take this time to use a jump rope and focus on your footwork. Do as you normally would in your training and make sure NOT to slack off.
- Heavy bag work.Take the time you’re alone in the gym to focus on your combinations while working on the heavy bag. Do this for a couple of minutes for a few rounds and you should be huffing and puffing. Though, be sure not overdo it by executing complicated combinations (which is quite tempting since nobody’s there to make fun of you). Remember, the basic ones are still the best and the more you practice with short, yet powerful combinations, the more they become a habit of yours. Sure, you may think that the heavy bag is quite boring and doesn’t offer much of a challenge. But, it will provide much needed resistance that should help you improve the force and timing of your strikes.
The heavy bag, the wide space available in the area and discipline are the keys to helping you make the most out of your alone time in the gym.
If you want, you can make up a routine of your own where you Jump Rope for a couple of rounds first, then do some heavy bag work for another few rounds and finally, finish off with Shadow Boxing. That should give you quite the work out, as long as you don’t slack off.
Then again, regardless of how you approach your alone time in the gym, the tips should help you make the most out of it so as to benefit your Muay Thai training.
