Can Muay Thai Training Help Reduce Belly Fat

When it comes to fitness, people have various goals. Some want to build muscle, while others want to lose weight. Some want to have more energy, while others want to reduce stress and anxiety. Many people have a combination of goals.

However, one particular aspect that often comes up is the topic of belly fat. This is where fat likes to accumulate on most people. It’s resilient, and it’s often a problem area that’s difficult to manage. This area can lead to self-esteem issues, but it can also be a health concern, as belly fat is often an indicator of health risks related to insulin and cholesterol.

So what to do? First, let’s get a better understanding of how fat works in our bodies.

Is Spot Reduction a Myth?

The first thing to address is the idea of locality. It’s easy to think, “Hey, I want to get rid of this belly fat, so I should do more sit-ups and crunches, right?”

This isn’t likely to be effective and trying to get rid of belly fat alone may only lead to disappointment. Although having a strong core is important to overall health and mobility, targeting exercises to particular areas of the body isn’t likely to have better fat-burning results. Most scientific evidence has determined that spot reduction is ineffective and that fat loss tends to occur throughout the entire body.

So how do we reduce that nagging belly fat?

A Calorie Deficit Is Key

Most people understand that burning more calories than we consume is the key to reducing belly fat, but there is more to it than that. How does it work?

First, understand that diet is just as important as (if not more so than) exercise when it comes to fat loss. As they say, you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Once you understand this, you’ll be able to plan both your dietary and exercise strategies to work in unison to achieve your goal of fat loss, including belly fat.

The first thing to do is determine what your target should be for daily caloric intake. There are many tools out there to help you, such as the calorie calculator by Mayo Clinic or apps such as MyFitnessPal. However, please consult your doctor regarding both your diet and your exercise goals to be certain what’s right for you.

Once you’ve determined your target daily calories, you may also wish to address the macronutrient ratio. This is the ratio of nutrients between fat, carbohydrates, and protein. There are many different strategies, but one example looks something like this: 30% fat, 40% carbs, and 30% protein. Once again, to be certain what’s right for you, it’s best to consult a health professional, such as a doctor or registered dietitian.

The Calorie-Burning Benefits of Muay Thai

Once you’ve figured out your dietary goals, it’s important to focus on your exercise goals so your hard work in the kitchen will yield the results you want: reduced belly fat.

There are many different strategies here too, including some combination of cardio training, interval training, and resistance training. The beautiful thing about training in Muay Thai is it falls under each of these categories.

Being a ring sport, Muay Thai has a strong emphasis on cardio conditioning. This means that as a martial art, Muay Thai has a higher intensity, and it can easily have you burn 750 or more calories per hour.

Muay Thai training also has a variance in intensity that operates much like interval training. It has you pushing yourself to your limit and then scaling back to a steady state. This switching back and forth between moderate intensity and high intensity tends to burn fat at a higher rate than steady-state cardio training alone.

Finally, Muay Thai training is essentially resistance training using your body weight. Kicking, punching, kneeing, elbowing, etc., is a good workout already, but you can rest assured that your instructor will also throw other things at you such as burpees, crunches, push-ups, squats, etc., to keep your heart rate up while also helping you build muscle.

All of this is an effective formula for burning calories and, in turn, burning fat.

Burning Fat Both on and off the Training Mat

The three crucial elements of fat loss are diet, exercise, and recovery. So remember to eat right, exercise hard, and get enough rest and sleep between your training sessions. (And, as always, stay hydrated!)

Putting this all together will give you everything you need to achieve your goal of reducing belly fat.