How to Become a Professional Kick Boxer
Kick boxing, especially Muay Thai kick boxing, combines the skill and discipline of a traditional martial art with the high level of excitement and growing popularity associated with modern-day mixed martial arts. More people are finding this combat sport attractive as something they'd like to pursue on the amateur level, or even professionally.
- Difficulty:
- Challenging
Instructions
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Search out your local communities of combat sports and martial arts. In Thailand, young boys aspire to become professional fighters well before they even become teenagers. The sport of Muay Thai kick boxing can be misconstrued as one that is brutal and dangerous. But the modern martial art of Muay Thai is a highly regulated combat sport, similar to karate or judo. Most people who enjoy practicing Muay Thai as a sport take a few classes at their local gym and enjoy the health and self-discipline that comes about from practice. If you intend on taking on Muay Thai as a combat sport, you will have a decidedly different approach.
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Focus on the combat sport that interests you the most. In the United States, there may be only a handful of truly versed Muay Thai coaches who focus solely on the original art. Many coaches have capitalized on the recent emergence of mixed martial arts as a marketing opportunity to bring in new students to their schools, which become MMA classes instead of Muay Thai classes. The world of MMA has grown so much that the opportunities to become a professional in that sport are probably much better than specifically in Muay Thai kick boxing. There are gyms in the United States where highly trained coaches with qualified staff bring up young Americans to become skilled Muay Thai kick boxers who fight on local circuits. These sorts of gyms may be somewhat rarer than a typical boxing gym, but the quality ones groom fighters from beginning to end on the technical and traditional aspects of the sport to make them truly well-rounded.
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Embrace the culture of your chosen sport and travel to Thailand. The trip to Thailand that some fighters take brings about so much more in them that they probably never would have expected. To sleep on the floor in the heat with native Thais and other Muay Thai pilgrims gives many fighters an entirely new perspective on what it means to be truly committed to fighting as a living. The training is virtually unparalleled, and the financial resources that so many of the fierce Thai fighters go without in their training becomes a testament to the purity of the art form. Regardless of what is popular, many still appreciate the old world beauty and tradition that lies within Muay Thai. The violence resulting in the ring is merely a small dot in the hours spent in the gym and the puddles of sweat and blood lost in sharpening the skills to become a great fighter. The time spent at their home gym with their local Kru, to the spiritually expanding trip of sleeping, eating and bleeding with native Thai's is truly what keeps this sport alive and well in the hearts of so many combat sports enthusiasts across the world.
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