Fighters in traditional boxing are allowed to use the fists only. Muay Thai boxing technique, however, enables the fighters to use their elbows, hands, feet and knees to deliver some powerful blows to the opponents.

Hit pads are important training tools with Muay Thai training, but unfortunately some people don’t use the pads effectively. A visit to the gym will see people casually punching away at the hit pads and this way is not going to improve any aspect of your game.
These hit pads are great for working on endurance, especially when your trainer includes minutes set aside for cardio training so as to build stamina. The pads are an integral part of Muay Thai training for improving your techniques – to develop power with kicks and punches against a real target and to tighten your strikes.

Proper training techniques are important as they prevent injuries too. With a good trainer, you can punch and kick through the middle of the pads and not the top or bottom. So in other words you are learning accuracy.

Let’s look at other benefits to hit pads with Muay Thai training :

• Building muscular strength – this is the ability of the body to exert force. Muscle fibres undergo adaptations when they are subjected to weight or resistance training. These adaptations allow the muscles to respond much more efficiently to messages coming from the central nervous system. With hitting pads, you are gaining total body strength. It makes sense because all that kicking, punching and jumping requires- and builds strength.
• Healthy heart – doing cardio with fitness pads provides the heart and lungs with a challenge as they endure a tough workout. Both the lungs and the heart have to make physiologic changes to cope with high physical activities such as Muay Thai.
• Improves hand-eye co-ordination – people with good hand-eye co-ordination have faster reflexes, With the hitting pads, you see the target and you aim to hit it while it is moving. With practice, your eye-hand co-ordination improves.
• Build Muscle Mass – hitting pads is excellent for improving body composition, so that you’re increasing muscle mass and decreasing fat mass. You are guarantee to see changes in your body as the fat melts away and you become more lean and mean looking.

When training to build up better endurance for Muay Thai, Thai coaches know the importance of looking at the development of a strong cardiovascular system. They know that this is achieved with a couple of very effective training methods, and among the other training methods, these are running and hitting pads.

Endurance

Endurance enables the boxer to perform repetitive movements and to have plenty of stamina to endure right to the end without any fatigue taking over, and if fatigue does come, the Muay Thai fighter is able to continue performing in a state of fatigue. Hitting pads is a strong cardio-respiratory system and it is important for events of long duration.