Most women begin training in martial arts for the purpose of self defense and for an exciting way of keeping fit. The image that women don't fight and that fighting is unladylike is changing radically as more women are going into martial arts, and not only achieving personal goals, but also winning competitions and medals both nationally and internationally.
Perhaps one of the toughest martial arts to adopt is that of Muay Thai or Thai Boxing. Master A an instructor of the art has seen more and more girls coming to his gym lately, and for all of the above reasons. Alot of the girls have then stayed on doing Muay Thai simply because of the sheer fascination of what they are doing. Many women have also become Champions in their own right . Master A believes that you have to adopt a certain approach when teaching the art of Muay Thai to women via self defense. Master A comments, "I have found that many ladies that come to my gym start with the fitness programme, then when they see other girls like themselves doing the self defense class, they want to join in.
"So i devised a class built around combing keep fit exercises with self defense, which is like Boxercise, with a few adjustments to created a similar training plan. It took off brilliantly and, of course, the spin-off from this is that girls train very regularly.
Woman Muay Thai in Action
