How do you develop that muay thai fighter body?
The lean, muscular body that moves with flexibillity, power and poise.
I believe a lot more people are interested in developing a muay thai fighter body rather than the bulky and heavily muscular bodybuilder body.
The best news is that the muay thai fighter body is probably a lot easier to develop and doesn’t require a whole lot of supplements, copious amounts of foods or illegal performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) that are required to become hugely muscular.
But rather than just looking good, the muay thai fighter body should also be able to perform and stay injury free and healthy.
This article will help you develop that muay thai fighter body in the most efficient way possible so that it is accessible to those of us who are not professional fighters and don’t have the time to be able to train twice a day 6 days a week.
There are three main areas required in order to develop the muay thai fighters body, especially for a normal person who didn’t start training twice a day 6 days a week from a young age like most pro fighters in Thailand have.
These are detailed further in this post but they are:
- Resistance training to develop muscle
- Maintaining a caloric deficit to reduce body fat
- Rest, Recovery and Rehab to stay healthy and injury free so you can keep training consistently to reach your goal
there is no magic formula and you can do this from home without the need for a gym membership or personal trainer (though these can help for some people).
How Do the Top Muay Thai fighters Develop their Body?
Most of the top level muay thai fighters (those fighting in the big stadiums in Bangkok) begin their muay thai training very young.
Most also come form relatively poor backgrounds and are sent to muay thai camps by their parents so that the camps can train and feed them and also educate them.
At the same time there is also the opportunity for these young fighters to make money while fighting at an early age.
Being so young and coming from fairly poor background these kids are already pretty lean as they don’t have the money to access a surplus of foods like kids in many developed countries and so to start with they probably are already very lean.
Then by getting into the routine of training twice per day Monday through to Saturday their bodies develop the muscular tone, endurance and strength required to become a top level fighter.
Training so much also burns a lot of calories and so these young fighters develop into young men while remaining very lean and with good muscle tone.
Those who have the genetics become ‘bulky’ (think Yodsanklai or Buakaw type physiques) and develop powerful fighting strategies.
Safe to say the way pro fighter develop and maintain their muay thai physiques is through starting out very lean and training a lot to maintain low body fat percentage.
These fighters often try to stay as light as possible so that they can be stronger in their weight class and so also are conscious of their diet especially closer to fights and also end up cutting weight – but not as drastically as in other combat sports.
They mostly stay within range of their fight weight throughout their careers.
As they get older (15-20 years and older) they naturally become heavier as they grow and move up in weight classes while remaining lean and muscular.
Can I develop the Muay Thai Fighter Body?
If you are in your later years, say past 35-40 and without a lot of training then developing the muay thai fighter body can definitely still be achieved.
With hard work and even more importantly good planning this can be achieved for sure.
Good planning is required as trying to train twice a day while also working a job, studying and having family commitments can be quite tough and most likely you will quit.
But having a strategic plan with good nutrition you can get there with great efficiency and without the need to train like a pro fighter twice per day and without the need to starve yourself as if you are cutting weight for a fight.
Advantages A normal Person Has Over Pro fighters in developing their physique
In the more developed countries, resistance training, nutrition, rest, recovery, mobility and the science behind these areas is far more advanced in your typical Thai fighter gym.
The philosophy behind pro fighters in Thailand is MORE is BETTER.
But for a normal person often times LESS is BETTER.
We don’t have the luxury to focus solely on training without the stresses of work, family and social commitments.
Also we are not able to sleep and recover in between training sessions as fighters do in Thailand.
We have to do it all while maintaining our work, life and social commitments balance.
So efficiency is KEY.
LESS can be BETTER.
And we must WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER.
We also have the advantage of being able to rest more between training so we can fully recover. Often times pro fighters are forced to push through even when already over trained and this can lead to lasting injuries.
So, How to Get the Muay Thai Fighter Body?
There are three important factors that if followed quite simply will get you there over time.
Provided you are consistent with your efforts for many weeks or months depending on where you are starting from.
But regardless if you are Male or Female, severely overweight and out of shape, too skinny or skinny fat, the methods are the same and only require minimum tweaking to suit your current levels of fitness.
As always please seek out professional medical advice to determine if you are in good health to begin a physical exercise and diet program.
But if you are in good health then here is how to do it:
1. Resistance Train to Build Muscle
I don’t mean you need to get bulky, lift humongous amounts of weight or to spend 6 days per week in the gym. But lifting weights or bodyweight training as forms of resistance training are still a requirement.
The muay thai fighter body is one with good muscle tone and a decent level of muscle for your height/gender.
You can develop good muscle tone by simply reducing body fat around your muscles.
In fact a lot of Hollywood celebrity transformations in which they end up looking “bigger” in their AFTER picture is a result of losing body fat and increasing muscle tone.
But adding even slight amounts of muscle through resistance training will help you get there faster and make you look even better.
As you will also have to maintain a slight calorie deficit in order to lose body fat we you need not be concerned that you will add too much muscle.
Also you just need enough resistance training to maintain your current level of muscle (under the fat) and even add a little but more muscle so the final finished product of your body will look even better.
Full body workouts 2-3 times a week is a great way to start and be sure to hit all the major muscle groups even if you are just using bodyweight movements.
These include:
- squats – for your legs
- chest pressing movements – pushups or bench
- pulldowns/pullups – for your back
- dips/Triceps exercises – for your triceps
- biceps curls or chin ups – for your arms
- shoulder/presses/pike pushups – for your shoulders
- hamstring curls/Med ball curls/Stiff leg deadlifts – for the back of your legs
- calf raises
2. Restrict Calories to Maintain a Caloric Deficit
Dont think you need to strve yourself because you dont.
But you do need to burn more calories than you eat.
For example if your calorie maintenance level (the amount you can eat to maintain weight) is 200 calories per day and you are eating 1800-1900 calories per day consistently for many weeks you will drop weight.
Try tracking your calories using an app like MyFitnessPal and while not an exact science this will help a lot especially if you have never tracked your calories before.
It will give you a good indication of what calories are in the foods you eat and help you stay under your calorie maintenance level so you can lose weight and drop fat.
3. Rest, Recover and Rehab
This probably the most important factor that is ignored by many people especially when starting out.
If you attempt to go too intense you can get injured or hurt which will set you back even further as you have to stay off exercise in order to heal up.
Not being used to exercising and training you need to pay even more attention to your rest and recovery. And remember that gains are made when you rest and recover from the exercise and training session.
A useful tip is to not go all out, balls to the wall each session. That bit of energy you save from not blowing yourself out while training will be used to help you rest and recover and come back healthy and ready to go for the next session.
How to Develop the Muay Thai fighter Body – Wrap Up
So in this post we have discussed how a normal person who isn’t a pro fighter is still able to develop that muay thai fighter body in the most efficient way possible.
Current top pro fighters begin their training at a young age when they are already naturally very lean. training twice a day 6 days per week, they are able to increase muscle tone, add some size and strength all while remaining quite lean.
We don’t have that luxury as normal people who work and maintain family life and social lives as well.
But we can be efficient with our training to develop that fighters body by:
- Strategically using resistance training to increase muscle tone and build some muscle
- Reducing calories a little below maintenance levels consistently over weeks and months to reduce body fat to also increase muscle tone
- Paying close attention to rest, recovery and rehab so we can keep training consistently and avoid burn out or injury which forces us to quit or stop training for long periods of time.
