How to fit your Muay Thai training around full-time work

You want to improve your Muay Thai game, but you also have the responsibility of a full-time job, family, friends, home repairs, and a million other things that you are attempting to juggle. Squeezing in 2-5 training sessions per week can get tough with the pressures of modern life, but as always there are those who make it happen.

Here are some tips to help you crush each day, ensuring that you get to the gym as often as possible to hit your Muay Thai goals this year.

Set targets

Without a set target of training sessions to complete, your motivation will often be aimless and lax with no goal to aspire to. By setting targets for the number of training sessions or days that you can commit to training each week, you are creating a solidified goal and meaningful focus. Have you ever heard of needing new habits needing to become a part of your lifestyle? Training simply becomes a part of your schedule.

Remember to be realistic when setting your target goals. If you’re struggling to commit to one session a week now, then committing yourself to five per week is unrealistic. Take into account the time you have available, the obstacles you may face, and the days where it is easy to fit in training. Once you find that your set target is becoming easily follow, try to up your game and squeeze in another session.

Consider Multiple Gyms

Convenience is one of the biggest factors that comes into play when living a busy life. Let us attempt to eliminate each excuse before it begins to impede our progress. You may have a great gym near your home, but if you have to stay late at work, then you may not be seeing much of that gym during the weekdays. Let’s eliminate excuse number one, “I planned on it, but something popped up”.

By having a gym near your workplace, you can head there before work starts and even miss the morning traffic. You can also squeeze in a lunchtime session on days where time is tight. By having multiple gyms available, you make sure that there’s always a gym that suits your schedule, creating opportunities to improve whether you are at home or at work. If it is too expensive to have two gym memberships, then consider using a pay as you go system, or moving one membership to off-peak times if it is feasible to do so.

Plan Out Your Month

There are going to be work events that will hamper your training schedule. There may be days when you are traveling to meet clients or have to stay late to finish a project which may mean that you miss training. However, by staying in control over the schedule and events that you are aware of in advance will give you a peace of mind when attempting to maintain your training targets.

Using a calendar on your device or (better yet) a physical planner, can help you to map out your training, take into account rest days, as well as any work or personal commitments that may cause you to neglect your training. If your work typically follows a pattern, such as the last few days of the month being particularly busy, you can map out your schedule for the obstacles in advance.

There will always be last-minute events that will hamper your schedule, but being as organized as possible will put you in a better position to handle such eventualities.

Throw in Some Home Workouts

You don’t need elaborate equipment or a large amount of space for Muay Thai training – in fact, you can see as some of the best Thai fighters came from rudimentary training conditions & equipment. If you are pushed for time or are unable to get to the gym, then a quick workout at home will be better than no workout at all.

Consider putting up a punchbag in your garage, going for a run around your local park, conducting bodyweight training, skipping and/or shadow boxing to stay fit and build your technique on the days that you simply can’t make it.

(You can find a ton of videos online containing Heavy Bag Workouts focusing on technique such as this one.)

Try to Compensate for Missed Sessions

When you are under pressure at work, it is inevitable that you may lose a session or two of training. However, if you miss one, don’t write the week off completely as a failure for your training. Try to squeeze in another training session wherever possible. This could be getting up an hour earlier and completing a session before work, heading out on your lunch break or doing an extra session during the weekend or on your day off.

About the Author:

Darren Mitchell is a Muay Thai enthusiast and writer for the BestMuayThai blog. Darren has trained Muay Thai for 15 years at gyms all over the world alongside world-renowned fighters and coaches.