Organizing a fitness focused Kickboxing class for untrained students

**feedback** · Posted On: 3/26/2011 9:48pm

I've recently been given the responsibility of organizing and facilitating a fitness-based student club for students at my university. My first thought was that I would teach Muay Thai as a fitness activity. In other words, focusing heavily on drills (sparring is officially a no-no) as the medium for exercise. I've coached muay thai 1-on-1 for probably 5 years, but I've never done group classes. I'm a little unsure as to my methodology for organizing and controlling the class, not to mention teaching complete beginners and keeping them from being bored.

If anybody here has organized/taught Muay Thai to 8-16 people before, I'd appreciate any advice you could give about types of drills and general methodology. If you have any websites or books to recommend, I'd be happy to do some reading/watching as well.

Thanks.

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 3/26/2011 10:05pm

The search function fails me again, but we had an excellent thread about drills a while ago that you might find useful.

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 3/26/2011 10:09pm

Ah, here it is:

http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=95473

**feedback** · Posted On: 3/27/2011 3:25am

Thank you, I will check that out later.

**feedback** · Posted On: 3/27/2011 4:43am

Some good ideas there for the later classes once we get things going, but what about just starting off? General methodology and such.

**LThornton** · Posted On: 4/25/2011 3:06am

What do you have in the way of equipment to work with? Anything? What will the students have? Wraps, bag gloves?

**KiwiPhil889** · Posted On: 4/25/2011 4:28am

Its going to depend on your personality a bit.

Do you have the kind of personality to pull of the "sadistic but fun instructor screamin at the class to werk harder!!! and somehow making it seem like a good idea" ?? or the "joking but sweatin and encouraging while generally having fun and thereby making it fun for the class" type of personality. Those are the basic personality types that seem to be the most enjoyable in a class/instructor type senario. Maybe an aerobics instructor or similar would a be a good model?? and just adapt to fit in partner drills on pads??

***WhiteShark*** · Posted On: 4/25/2011 2:05pm

Circuit training makes the best use of limited equipment. Pad station, Bag Station, shadow boxing station, burpee/calisthenics station etc. make them rotate and rest on a around timer.

**Odacon** · Posted On: 4/25/2011 2:40pm

If you have enough pads for everyone then pyramids are a great cardio exercise, and you can pretty much build an entire circuit around them.

**dwkfym** · Posted On: 4/26/2011 2:23am

This is what we do in my club for beginners.

1. Run around the mat / circumfrence of the martial arts room. throw in jumping squats during runs, pushups. Then run sideways with guard up, then run knees to chest, then run foot to butt, then run backwards. Spend about 3-6 mins doing this.

2. Quick but good and comprehensive stretch
2.5 sometimes we do flexibility kicks
3. Immediately get into shadowboxing. Stress that you have to push push push yourself during shadowboxing. I usually do straight punches, all punches, just kicks, then kicks and punches. If your students are all new, then you will have to spend this time teaching technique. I recommend you start with footwork and jabs.. If some of them ar enew and others are not, then I quickly show the new guys something really basic, and tell them to do it all of the rounds.
4. After that, we either learn a new technique, go straight into sparring, or go into padwork.
5. If we did technique, we up the resistence level and make it look a little bit more like sparring. If we did padwork, we build up on the combinations and start adding more stuff.
6. After all that, we do pushups, sitsups, other ab excercises, monkey shitter jumping squats, bicycles, leg lifts, whatever comes to your mind. My personal fav is to do 20 pushups, then do abs, then do 20 wide pushups, do more abs, 10-15 narrow pushups, more abs (each ab excercise must cover sometihng ab it different), then end with 50 jumping squats. Sometimes I replace all that with a good tabata drill.
7. closing pep talk and putting away equipment.

Thats basically our general member practice schedule at my university. Good luck, I hope your university starts okaying sparring. At my school, we never really talked about it and now they don't seem to care much.