Muay Thai Heavy Bag / Thai Pad Combos
I play around with creating combos ALOT. I’ve got 10 weeks of them plus another 25 or so “bonus” combos ready to go in Push Ups and Pizza. Here are two combos Muay Thai combos you can do at home with or without any gear. If you’re shadow boxing the kick is going to be more of a spin through (or it can be replaced with a knee for space’ sake.) If you’ve got a bag or a willing partner at home to hold pads the kick is much easier to throw as you won’t move as much.
But I don’t know stances and stuff… Go grab my e-book on the subject (and you’ll get even more combos – Cardio Muay Thai)
Muay Thai Combo 1
Left teep, right kick, left punch, right punch, left hook. If you’re on a heavy bag the idea here is the teep pushes the bag away then as it swings back towards you you kick the thing. Momentum is on your side to throw that left punch, then the right punch. Your body once again is set up to throw a much more powerful left hook.
Everything is about tension and relaxation. We’re not doing anything crazy here as it’s a left right pattern letting the body wind and unwind accordingly. The tension / relaxation pattern gets more complicated when you try to keep things on the same side.
If you have a pad holder the teep is going to push them back so you follow them to land the kick. You would follow them again to land that first punch.
If you’re shadow boxing this movement feel free to sub the kick with a knee. When shadow boxing a kick you’ll either land opposite foot forward at a 90 degree angle, you’ll be facing the opposite direction with a 180 degree spin, or you’ll spin all the way through the movement and be back roughly where you started. The spin will need the most room so please move around your furniture first if you’re in your living room.
Muay Thai Combo 2
Full disclosure – I designed combo 1 for a heavy bag and combo 2 for holding pads. So keep that in mind.
Left punch, left punch, right punch, left hook, right knee. Following that left right pattern again of tension and relaxation we’re pretty much just twisting the body for power. This also helps give an oblique workout. The hook moves you in closer to your opponent (or pad holder) making the knee the appropriate up close weapon. If you wanted to distance your opponent you could always throw in a teep here to push them back and change up the range.
Tempo
The tempo is up to you, as is the timing per round. I typically go 3 minutes on 1 minute off but that’s just me. A traditional fight would be 3 minutes on 2 minutes off. 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds (from last week) might be fun as well as you’d do combo 1, then combo 2, then rest. Being that I have zero clue what you’re current conditioning is like and what your goals are I can’t specifically tell you what you should set the clock to.
Tempo wise you can break these combos up where you rapid fire each move, or throw in a pause after a move or two (or three.) Part of true actual Muay Thai is breaking up rhythm. If your rhythm is predictable then your opponent can guess your rhythm and counter. Or they can simply break your rhythm and throw you off your game. The more variety you toss into your training the better off you’ll be in real life.
Let me know what you think of the combo, if you wanted to turn this into a 4 round series then simply reverse the order on the even rounds (ie right teep, left kick, right punch, left punch, right hook) for a cardio Muay Thai experience or see what feels good (right teep, left kick, right punch, left hook, right punch) and adjust accordingly.
These combos are all just starting points for you to play around and build your own. Fitness is supposed to be fun, so flow with it!
