Muay Thai is more than a physical endeavor. The people who develop quickly, recover from setbacks with hardly a stumble and, eventually, rise to become the best in the sport, have more tools on their belt than the discipline and dedication that bring them to training week in, week out, all year round.

While you certainly cannot succeed in this sport if you don’t turn up to training and commit to the physical work, you will often find that your development slows, or even stalls, if you don’t develop the mental skills necessary to unlock your full potential. So, if you have hit a dreaded plateau in training, or if you are finding that your teammates are pulling off new techniques in sparring whilst you’re unable to piece them together, slowly on pads, then it is time to invest in some mental training.

There is an overwhelming number of mental skills resources available to aspiring athletes online and it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff if you are just starting your mental training journey. So, in the next few paragraphs, we are going to introduce you to 3 tried and tested mental habits that many of the most successful athletes in the world have been using to consistently perform to the highest caliber for decades. If you dedicate yourself to developing these habits with the same persistence and consistency that you bring to your physical training, it is almost guaranteed that you’ll lift your entire Muay Thai game in no time at all.

1) Compartmentalization

The most successful fighters on the planet have a razor-sharp focus when it comes to their training. From the outside, it can seem like fighting is all that they think about, and training to fight, is the only thing on their agenda each day but this isn’t true. Professional fighters face the same stressors and setbacks as the rest of us, the only difference is that they use a skill known as compartmentalization to ensure that they are completely focused on their passion when they are training.

Compartmentalization is a skill that comes to some people as naturally as the clinch comes to Petchboonchu, while for others it feels as evasive as Samart dancing circles around them in the ring. In Muay Thai training, compartmentalization is the act of staying in the present moment in the gym by taking everything that isn’t relevant to your Muay Thai experience and leaving it at home.

It is common for life stress to impact us at times. Money stress, work deadlines, and family obligations; all happen to everyone but if you take something like an upcoming work deadline into the gym and obsess over it whilst you’re sparring, you will split your attention and, chances are, you won’t perform very well.

As we’ve mentioned, this relatively straightforward skill is something that many people struggle with so if you’re not one of those special few who can simply flick irrelevant life stress to the back of their mind as they walk through the gym doors, we have a simple technique, known as “The Safe” that you can practice in order to help your compartmentalization efforts stick.

As you park your car outside of the gym, take a minute to close your eyes and breathe. Any life stress plaguing you will almost certainly crowd to the front of your mind as you do this but don’t fight these thoughts as they arise.

Instead, imagine yourself collecting this stress into the palm of your hand and then placing it into a safe. Go through the motions of imagining yourself unlocking the safe, putting the items inside, and locking it again so that they can’t escape cluttering your mind during training.

Then, before leaving the car, set an intention for when you will confront these issues because it is likely that they are plaguing your thoughts for a good reason.

2) Positive Talk

Words are powerful. They give meaning to the world we live in. The words we use to describe ourselves create strict definitions about who and what we are and can create walls that can either block our path to self-fulfillment or act as a barrier, protecting us from fear and doubt. They are a kind of magic that you shouldn’t use lightly.

You may notice that many of the athletes who perform at the highest level in Muay Thai have a very particular way of speaking about their fights, their successes, and defeats. When they win, they recognize their achievement and celebrate it, and more importantly, if they face adversity or setbacks they never fall into self-deprecating talk.

This is a skill to develop in your training if you want to be the best athlete possible. Though it may be difficult, it is important to always find a positive twist on your hardships and vocalize it both to yourself and those around you. This doesn’t mean lying to yourself about where you are at on your journey as given enough time, simply denying the truth can cause more problems than negative self-talk.

Here are some common training situations requiring positive self-talk and examples of how it can be put into practice:

• You are developing your Muay Mat skills and every time you step forward to punch in sparring, you get your lead leg kicked out from under you.

In this situation you could say:

“I’m so dedicated to improving my hands in sparring that I sometimes forget that I need to maintain other areas of my Muay Thai game, like defense.”

• You are drilling a new sweep in training and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t topple your training partner onto the mat.

In this situation you could say:

“I’m trying my best to perfect this sweep. I’m doing everything I can but I’m getting tunnel vision which is causing me to overlook important steps.”

• You’ve had a dreadful sparring session where you’ve lost every round, not landed a single shot, and generally just felt like a punching bag.

In this situation you could say:

“Today wasn’t my day. I’m glad I turned up and stuck out the session because bad days like this happen and this session has helped me develop persistence and resilience which are both vital for Muay Thai.”

As you can see. Positive self-talk isn’t about lying to yourself. It’s about accepting what happened whilst also recognizing your good intentions. If you are able to do both at once, you’ll often find that the cause of your setback and its remedy quickly reveal themselves.

3) Visualization

Visualization is an excellent tool that you can use outside of your scheduled training to ensure you wire your newly learned skills to perfection. In fact, many studies have proven that visualizing the successful completion of physical skills can be almost as effective for learning as actually doing them.

Visualization is more than just daydreaming. It’s mindful, methodological, and focused.

To successfully visualize Muay Thai, find a comfortable place to sit where you won’t be disturbed and close your eyes.

Imagine a scenario from training that you want to work on. For example, if you are training for a competition and have been struggling with leaning back to avoid a high kick, this can be a good place to start.

Imagine yourself standing in the middle of the ring during the fight you have been training so hard for. Let yourself feel everything that you would experience in a live situation from the roar of the crowd to your trainer’s voice in the corner. Then, once it feels like you’re really in the middle of a fight, imagine your opponent’s movements and possible counter measures. Keep repeating the scenarios in your head and when you are comfortable that you’ve got everything wired in, increase the speed of your visualization until you are doing it faster than humanly possible.

Schedule time to do this consistently around your physical training and you’ll find the rate at which you pick up and perfect new techniques will increase dramatically.

Keep Practicing

In any martial art, it’s important to stay humble and keep practicing, only by being humble will you be open to learning more and bringing your game to another level.

Developing healthy mental habits can often be more difficult than the grueling acts of physical training Muay Thai athletes submit themselves to in the gym each week. While you will hit pads with a partner and train under the supervision of a coach, training your mental skills is often a solitary pursuit and as such, it is a lot easier to cut sessions short or skip them altogether.

While it may be difficult, you need to remember that rewiring your brain is slow and, often, uncomfortable work. You will need to dedicate yourself to practicing these skills, not just for a short while, but for the rest of your athletic career if you want to take your Muay Thai training as far as you possibly can.

So, schedule in times to practice these mental habits and do the work!

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