It is necessary not to let ourselves become weak. Your body doesn’t need long vacation. Keep working out and training it. Here below is how you can exercise inside your own place without any requirement of huge and expensive gym machines.

Skipping rope or jumping rope is the best way to go. You don’t need to get one of those weighted rope, since the purpose of jumping rope is to build muscular endurance, not muscle. It helps burn a lot of calories and at the same time improve your stamina, agility, coordination and balance. All of these, believe it or not, will get your body ready to hit the weights better, harder and longer.

Try skip pyramids which is the best way to burn fat. Keep doing it without timing. Start from 50 jumps, rest 30 seconds and continue with another pyramid by adding 25 jumps after every rest until you reach 200 then you can start reducing the jump down by decreasing 25 jumps after each rest until you’re back at 50.

Don’t worry if you step on the rope, just pick up where you left off. Enjoy your winter in a healthy way!

POONG HOK is also known as Front Elbow. This move is used for either attacking or defensing. Here, the left elbow is thrown by the boxer to his opponent’s left ear. At the same time, he raises his left knee to strike the opponent’s rib. To maintain the balance, the boxer also has his right arm raised at almost the same level as the striking arm, and twists his body to the right to lend force to the knee blow.

The respond the attack of this move is to throw your left arm forward and pull down the right arm to protect the rib area from being kicked.

And watch out! As both arms of you are raised to both strike and maintain balance, your abdominal area is left vulnerable. The opponent will take this opportunity and advantage to deliver a blow to the abdominal area.

Last but not least, if you prefer to strike with your right elbow, just reverse the descriptions to the other side of the body. That’s all.

The best weapon for Muay Thai Kick is your shin, not your foot. Remember this because you might see somewhere else like in movies that many times they use their feet to attack and that is very wrong. Your feet consist of many tiny bones that can be broken easily and kicking is a very hard contact. On the other hand, your shin is one big and strong bone. Think carefully which one you want to use for hitting the target? Which one will create more impact to your opponent?

Now you know what is the best weapon, then the move. The correct move to deliver a kick is to raise your leg up at the aforementioned angle with your foot point upward at about 45 degree angle which guarantee that your shin bone, not the muscle underneath it, will hit the target.

Practice the correct way of kicking. Prepare your shin by applying the Luminent oil or Nam Man Muay and use the leather padded shin guards. Practice the move repeatedly with the correct movement with a heavy bag or sparring partner with kick pads. Remember not to turn your feet down or horizontally to the ground.

And I found this website that talks about how to stretch! The site already explains everything you need know in advance before you get started in case you’re new with all stretching thing. The explanations include pictures of body positions and the other parts of body positions, anything that are essential for stretching your body the right way.

Stretching will help prevent injuries and allow you to reach your maximum potential. If you wanna know more about why you need to stretch, go to the site and click on “Why Stretch?” . By the way, the address for this website is www.howtostretch.com.

Once you’re ready to stretch, click on “Stretches”, a link to pages of how to stretch your hands, your legs, your hips, groin, back, and torso. There is also “Advanced Stretch” for those of you who have difficulty with doing regular stretching.

The website is really helpful and useful, especially for us who train martial arts regularly. Pass it on to your friends what you learn from the site and how it help improve your body and training.

As the right punch is thrown, the left hand remains close to the face to defend against any counter-attacks delivered directly to your face.

When defense, the opponent should jump back, support his body with the right leg and deliver a left kick to your chest or midsection as soon as there is an opening found. If you use your left arm to throw the punch, then the right leg should be used to kick the opponent with.

To have an effective sparring, all boxers must control themselves. This means you will have to watch out for your partner because it is training still, not a real fight. You want to be able to learn from sparring not defeating your friend.

If you know that your partner has less strength than you, or is lighter or slower or has less experience in fighting, control your power and use light contact, even better if you note which techniques or moves that are too dangerous to use to that partner.

More importantly, even if your partner has the same level of skills, you must control your temper and fight carefully. Control your power if you decide to spar in rounds to be able to stay until the last round. Don’t get wasted and over use your power at the first round by sparring too intensely when not necessary.

Learn and get the best from sparring sessions by watching other competitors and see what techniques you can use in real competition.

1. Falls from Ladders
For every 4 feet you’re going up, pull the ladder’s base 1 foot back from the wall. Falls will happen when you lean over a little too far. If your belt buckle strays past the side of the ladder, you’re overreaching.

2. Burns from Grills
Make sure to test your grill before using. A frozen rubber hose can crack and leak gas. To test the hose, pour soapy water where the hose connects to the grill, if bubbles rise in the air or you can smell gas, it’s time to buy a new hose.

3. Poisonings from Fireplaces
Use dry, seasoned wood because the fresh wood can coat the chimney with more creosote which is a flammable substance and burning household waste releases harmful chemicals. To prevent chimney fires, hire a professional to check your chimney every year and clean it if necessary.

4. Strains from Shoveling snow
Know yourself. You shouldn’t pick up more than 10-15 percent of your body weight. Point your foot toward where you want to throw the snow. A twist the throw away the snow can cause back strain. Get one of those bent handle shovel which help keeping your spine in a more neutral position.

5. Injuries from Nail Guns
Hold the gun perpendicular to the target so it won’t shoot to the side. Keep your hand at least 4 inches away from the point of impact since the longest nail a gun can fire is about 3 ? inches long. Use lightweight guns for the easier aiming.

6. Cuts from Power Saws
Test the blade sharpness by making a cut in a wood scrap. The slice should be clean, if not, re-sharpen or replace the blade. Dull blades don’t cut well and you may hit a knot or staple in the wood and the saw may jerk out or kick back which is very dangerous.

As the right fist is held in the act of being thrown, the opponent gets the wrong perception that he will be hit from your right. Impulsively, he will then sway his body to the right side in order to avoid the potential attack. As he does this, however, you must stop the action of your right arm and then throw the unexpected left punch to his right jaw, which is now unguarded.

This “unreal fists” method can also be used to target other parts of the body apart from the head area, such as the neck, the ribs, or the abdomen.

You see, Thai boxing is not only just kicking other people’s ass, but also using your brain a lot in order to defeat someone in a fair fight.

Inside-fighters

When inside fighters fight, it will always be the most exciting match. The viewers will be overwhelmed by their close range fighting with effective intensity and flurries of jabs and uppercuts. This type of fighters must have very good chin to be able to handle many jabs before he can get close to his opponent. Boxers that are inside-fighters are such as Mike Tyson, Rocky Marciano and Joe Frazier.

Outside-fighters

These boxers are opposite to inside-fighters. Instead of getting close and leaving small gap between him and his opponent, out-boxers will keep the distance but instead deliver fast and long range punches. These fighters are mostly well-known for their fast footwork, however, less powerful strength in punches. Great outside-boxers are great with their fighting strategy to win, not their knockout punches, except some boxers like Lennox Lewis and Felix Trinidad. The examples of out boxers are Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard.

Brawlers

Brawlers or Sluggers or hard hitters or one punchers are the boxers that try to win the fight with mostly raw power and very less strategy. They are known for their one punch knockout. Since there is almost no strategy, the fight will be unpredictable and exciting. However, these fighters depend on their shots with great power, they are likely to be slow to move around the ring. These fighters are such as Eric Esch, Sonny Liston, George Foreman and Rocky Marciano.

Burger
Regular Burger: Ground beef in burger patty is shot through with fat and the white bread buns have no fiber but fast digested into simple sugars.
Your Better Burger: Use extra-lean ground beef. It will taste much better if you don’t overcook it. Into the patty mixture, add some chopped up onions and some thawed chopped frozen spinach to add vitamins and create juice that once came from the fatty ground beef. Use whole-wheat buns for more fiber.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Regular Grilled Cheese Sandwich: It contains about 18 g of saturated fat from butter and oily cheese and more sugar without fiber from white bread.
Your Better Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Try whole-wheat bread with skim mozzarella in the middle and crisp it on a dash of olive oil on a hot skillet. My own sandwich will have a thick slice of tomato and a lean ham in between also to make it more nutritious.

Pizza
Regular Pizza: It gives you pure carbs and saturated fat.
Your Better Pizza: Go for a thin crust and half the amount of cheese. Instead of oily-pepperoni or sausage, add some chicken breast that is a lean protein with 1 g fat per ounce. Add some vegetable for fibers and vitamins like onions and peppers. For more tasty pizza, you can add a little BBQ sauce. YUM!

Fish and Chips
Regular Fish and Chips: You know it- breaded and fried fish, oily potatoes, and creamy coleslaw.
You Better Fish and Chips: Cut the bread and try the crispiness from a pan-seared salmon. This way you reduce lots of calories and cholesterol and at the same time add more omega-3. Make oven baked potatoes by using just a little olive oil is obviously better than frying them in a pool of hot oil. Make your own coleslaw, this way you can choose whether to use low-fat mayonnaise or vinegar and oil dressing instead.

Nachos
Regular Nachos: Nachos are basically fried corn chips with cheese product and greasy spiced hamburger mixture and sour cream. It’s high in sodium and calories and low in other goody.
You Better Nachos: Bake the corn chips and use reduced-fat sharp cheddar and lean ground round. Top with diced tomatoes and chopped up fresh jalapeno pepper. This way you will get a lean of fat nachos but tasty and healthy.