Did traditional Muay Thai do any weight training before the introduction of Western equipment?

[7BallZ]

Inspired from a question I saw online.

Self Defense: Why do many traditional martial artists look down on weightlifting as easy and useless? Why is weightlifting so much more accepted in Western martial arts and fighting styles (especially sports like MMA and wrestling).

So I tried researching about weights in traditional MT but came shorthanded. All of my coaches only practise the westernized version of Muay Thai and sadly even the Thai immigrants seem to have buy the notion that Muay Thai (not just that but Thai martial arts period) never used weight training. That weightlifting is a modern addition to traditional Thai martial arts and the old school way to train was using a hybrid of calisthenics, bodyweight exercises, and manual labour.

All of the books on MT I have state the same thing and I tried to seek information in martial arts forums and websites devoted to MT but sadly they repeat the same cliche of "TMAs only do aerobics and manual labor". Were the old masters of Thailand already using barbells and dumbells long before MMA exploded in popularity? If they didn't use western weights, what exotic objects were part of classical Thai martial arts?

 

[Tigre]

I don't know so much about the training history of Thailand or Siam as it was known as originally. Muay Thai has evolved from the battlefield arts known as Muay Chaiya/Muay Boran. In regards to weight training in Muay Thai, its entirely up to yourself if you want to train with weights in your spare time to compliment your Muay Thai training. I've been doing Muay Thai for years but have never bothered with weights. I've personally found that a lot of the conditioning that is involved in Muay Thai training does build some muscle as well as improving fitness. A lot of the exercises like squats, pushups and sit-ups where you are using the body's natural weight do help in building some strength. But if you want to train with weights as well to gain some extra muscle then that is up to you. I believe in the old days a lot of the Siamese warriors would have trained in more natural exercises using rather than using heavy weights.

 

[7BallZ]

I don't know so much about the training history of Thailand or Siam as it was known as originally. Muay Thai has evolved from the battlefield arts known as Muay Chaiya/Muay Boran. In regards to weight training in Muay Thai, its entirely up to yourself if you want to train with weights in your spare time to compliment your Muay Thai training. I've been doing Muay Thai for years but have never bothered with weights. I've personally found that a lot of the conditioning that is involved in Muay Thai training does build some muscle as well as improving fitness. A lot of the exercises like squats, pushups and sit-ups where you are using the body's natural weight do help in building some strength. But if you want to train with weights as well to gain some extra muscle then that is up to you. I believe in the old days a lot of the Siamese warriors would have trained in more natural exercises using rather than using heavy weights.

But old Chinese soldiers from the 1200 BC were already using stonelocks to train. Traditional Japanese arts used heavy farm tools for aerobic exercises and Indian martial artists used clubs and heavy maces to condition themselves. Even Koreans emphasize carrying objects such as stones and buckets of water for training in pre-TKD arts. Hell medieval Chinese even had objects shaped exactly as barbells!

So I find it difficult that old school MT and styles preceding did not have any form of weight training.

 

[Flying Crane]

My suspicion is that within any tradition of martial practice, somebody somewhere along the way did some weight training and other conditioning methods, some of which may have been built into the martial training methods.

Perhaps not everyone. But someone would have.

 

[kuniggety]

MT, as we know it today, is less than a hundred years old. Boran, what it mostly descended from, was actually more of a family of martial arts. There was a handful of different styles practiced in the different regions of Siam which started to come together ~1860s. In the beginning of the 20th century, British boxing and judo were taught in university in Krung Thep. In the 1920s, the King at the time was a fan of ring sports and pushed for a codified set of rules and built the first stadium (what is now Lumphini stadium) in the 1920s. Thus, Muay Thai was born. It's really the original big MMA program as they combined elements from the local flavors of boran around Siam along with the British boxing type rules and influences from judo.

I bring up the brief history of MT because it would be hard to believe that none of the original styles that it evolved from didn't evolve any type of weight training. They used these martial arts when they went to war. In its "golden age", ie when the boran arts started coming together in the 1860s, it was also used as a form of exercise which certainly would've been combined with weight training.