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For information about Thai Boxing In Birmingham, please visit our main site.

In this blog I will share with you how you can feel successful and use this feeling to motivate yourself to even greater things.

Notice that i said ‘feeling’ successful as many people are successful by ‘normal’ standards, but still don’t ‘feel’ successful and  everyone else is amazed when they find out that they don’t feel successful. The reason for this is because of the goals, rules and standards that they have set for themselves are very high. They haven’t met them, so the don’t feel successful.

The person on the forum was comparing my shows to another show and insinuating that the other show was better or more successful. Maybe on the outside that may appear true, but firstly , they were two completely different type of shows and secondly, MY shows meet MY goals.

Let me explain, the other show features lots of top Thai boxing stars from gyms all around the country, what we call ‘A Class’ fights, where as my goal for my shows is to highlight my own gym and my own fighters and mainly features what we call ‘C and B class’ fights. I am in NO way competing with these shows. So this person (not the promoter by the way) should really be comparing them with like for like.  So the big A Class show should be compared with other A Class shows such as MSA Supershows, The main Event, Xplosion by Semtex and Supershowdown and Power of Scotland up in Scotland. Is it better than those shows? I don’t know.

All of the above shows are better than mine in one way, but I am not trying to compete with that.

Let me explain a little more about what I mean when I say how successful you feel depends upon the goals you have set for yourself. Imagine being a British Champion at your favourite sport, Imagine being a Millionaire, Imagine loosing 10 pounds of body fat, Imagine having your own 5 bedroom house, or brand new BMW etc All pretty great achievements and I am sure that most people would feel pretty successful if they achieved any of those things.  BUT what if you wanted to be World Champion  and was ‘only’ a British Champion? You wanted to be a Billionaire, but was ‘only’ a millionaire, wanted to loose 15 pounds of fat and have 6 % bodyfat, but ‘only’lost 10 pounds, what if you wanted a 10 bed room mansion or a Ferrari etc? Now you might not feel so successful, because you hadn’t achieved what you wanted, even though by most standards you are .

So. I thought that I would share with you, what some of my goals are and why I feel pretty successful in some areas of my life. With my shows, my goal is and always has been to promote my own fighters and gym. This all started out many years ago when I was first starting out running my K-Star gym, at the time I wan’t running shows, so would put my fighters on other peoples shows. As K-Star  was one of only  2 active Thai Boxing gyms in Birmingham that often meant fighting on Kickboxing shows. The local kickboxing promotor keep trying to stitch my fighters up by putting them with more experienced fighters, so I decided that I would have to look after my own fighters and put on my own small shows. Which I have done ever since.   My shows ALWAYS have several K-Star fighters on (sometimes upto 10) and they are usually in the main event.

I believe that we always have a very exciting show at the Tower, I believe that my shows always show my fighters and my gym in a good light. Over the years I have been able to promote my fighters in a safe and logical manner and I have been able to make sure that they have had the opportunities to fight for the titles that they deserve. Over the years, for my own fighters I have been able to arrange title fights at all levels Area, English, Anglo Welsh, Anglo Irish and British titles. Also for my own fighters I have promoted a few European title fights and 2 World Title fights for Damien Trainor.

Other shows may be bigger but I don’t feel bad about that, as that is not what I am trying to do, so I am not in competition with those types of shows. Good luck to the promoters, who I am sure would not be satisfied with putting on shows like mine. But ….. given what my goals and aims are, I feel that I have done a great job , consistently, over many years, so I feel VERY successful after every show as I know that I have fulfilled MY goals!

When I set up K-Star, I had one major goal and that was to make my students better than I am/was. That was and is my goal and I have certainly done that! I pretty much stopped competing so that I could focus all my efforts into my students. So many of my students have done so much better than I have and as an Instructor, I feel so proud of what they have achieved. It’s pretty hard to measure how good someone is, but I was the BTBC Midland Champion and I have produced Many, many area Champions, English Champions, British Champions and also European and World Champions, so I feel that based on my own ability, I have done an amazing job and as I said earlier, I am very proud of that, so I’ feel’ very successful.

Now days I focus a lot on training my students to be full time instructors in my Muay Thai academies and again my goal is to produce better instructors. I have now trained a lot of Instructors , infact a lot of the most  successful Thai Boxing Instructors in Birmingham have been trained by me and gone through my Instructor training programme. I have a brilliant team of Instructors running my current academies who are doing a very good job and I am proud of them and I know that K-Star will get stronger and stronger, so again I ‘feel’ very successful.

How does this help you? Well I will show (in part 2) you how to set goals so that you always ‘feel’ successful at every step of your journey to become a ‘successful’ Thai boxer/ nak muay or whatever you want to be.

2 Steve Jones Stoke
Max Skidmore Chao Phraya Lincs

Ismael Paulo Fight for Peace
3 James Dore K-Star

4 Amy Houghton Chao Phraya
Pethra Terry Stars gym

5 Sam White Ely Warlords
Marc Williams F’s freestyle

6 Ragnar Raul Iceland
Simon Forrest Chao Phraya

7 Tom Holland Thaitans
Tony Delaney Evolution

8 Sean Skeldon Evolution
Birgir örn Tómasson Iceland

9 Stuart Davies Banbury
Rafal Gorka oxford

10 Thomas Kamara Fight for Peace
Mark Timms K-Star

11 Meli K-Star
Pete Douggles Fight for Peace

12 David Sa Fight for Peace
Tom Booth Casos Hereford

Dan Howard Chao Phraya
13 Luke Davies K-Star

14 Aaron Turner Thaitans
Olegs Jablonins Oama

Kurtis Farr Ely Warlords
15 Jym Thomas Phraya Pichai

16 Graeme leggatte Thaitans
Ravi K-Star

17 Liam O’Brien Ely Warlords
Adam Iwaniszewski 0

.

Steve Jones, Stoke MT V Max Skidmore,Chao Phraya Lincs, 2 Up and coming fighters having th…eir first B Class fight.
Tom Holland, Thaitans V Tony Delaney,Evolution B class

Sean Skeldon, Evolution V Birgir örn Tómasson,Iceland
Thomas Kamara, Daniel Samm V Mark Timms, K-Star
Meli, K-Star V Pete Douggles, Daniel Samm
Dan Howard, Chao Phraya V Luke Davies,K-Star
Graeme leggatte, Thaitans V Ravi,K-Star

More fights to ba announced soon.
Tickets are £25 from any fighter on the bill or K-Star Thai Boxing 0121 331 4074 www.k-starthaiboxing.com

For information about Thai Boxing in Birmingham check out our K-Star Thai Boxing websites

A strong neck is one of the greatest assets that you can posses in Muay Thai or any combat sport.

A strong neck will help you to absorb blows to the head. A strong neck will be a massive asset in clinching situations. Outside of the gym or the ring a strong neck will help you to avoid the painful injuries associated with whiplash.

Most people do not use their necks too often in their normal day to day activities, that is why they get injured so easily. The neck can be developed to very impressive proportions in just a short time of working out.

As with any exercise / strength building programme, you need to have a good workout plan and plenty of rest for the muscles to recover.

The best way to develop strength in any muscle is through ‘progressive resistance’ with progressive being the key word. As your neck will be fairly underused in the beginning it is very important to start off slowly and gradually increase the intensity of the workouts.

Start off with an exercise that is easy and safe, but very effective.

1) Lie down on you back; lift your head slightly off the floor. Now turn your head from side to side so that your ear is facing towards the floor. Do this for 25 reps each side (50 in total).

Now with your head still off the floor, lift your head forwards so that your chin is on your chest. Then push your head back as far as it can go without touching the floor. Do this for 25 reps.

Rest for about 20 seconds, then repeat the exercise.

To start with just do 2 sets for the first 2-weeks, then do 3 sets per workout.

Workout 3 times per week, but always have a t least one day rest between workouts. This will last for about one month.

It is better to concentrate on getting the consistency before you worry about the intensity.

2) After about one month of CONSISTANT exercising with the above exercise we will be ready to move onto the second part. This will involve Isometric exercises.

Isometrics use an ‘immovable’ or static resistance to build the strength as opposed to a moving type of resistance such as the exercises above or press-ups or weight training. These are excellent for developing strength in the neck especially for Thai Boxing, as that is exactly the type of strength we want. We want our necks to be immovable so that we can not get our heads pulled down in the clinch.

We will still use exercise No1 as a warm up. Now you will just do one set of 25 reps.

The Isometric exercises are: -

FRONT. While standing, lean you head as far back as it will go. Now place the palms of both of your hands on your forehead. Resist with your hands while trying to push your head forward. Remember that you should not be moving. Hold the tension for a count of 6 seconds, then relax.

BACK. While standing, lean you head as far forward as it will go. Now place the palms of both of your hands on the back of your head. Resist with your hands while trying to push your head backwards. Remember that you should not be moving. Hold the tension for a count of 6 seconds, then relax.

SIDE. While standing, lean you head over to the right, so that your right ear is almost on your shoulder. Now place your left hand on the left side of your head above your ear. Try to push your head to the left while you resist with your left hand. Hold the tension for a count of 6 seconds, then relax. Repeat the opposite way around for the other side of your neck.

You should do 2 sets of each; you may do them one of 2 ways.

1) Do 2 sets for the front (5-10secs rest between sets), the 2 sets for the back, then 2 sets for each side.

2) Do 2 supersets, where you do one rep for the front, followed immediately by a set for the back, followed by a set for each side. You only rest at the end when you have done all four sides. Rest for 10 seconds and then repeat the super set. (This is my favourite way)

This is an excellent way of developing a strong neck. It takes very little time, requires no equipment, can be done almost anywhere and IT WORKS!!! (But only if you use it)

Try this workout for a couple of months and you will notice the way you seem to be able to absorb punches better (good defensive skills are still recommended and preferred at K-Star!) and you will be much stronger in the clinch.

Later when you have developed your strength with these exercises I will show you some advanced neck exercises.

Steve Logan

Nak Muay or Muay Thai fighters spend a lot of time developing the Muay Thai Clinch. In Thailand they will often spend hours training and perfecting the muay thai clinch.

In Thailand ALL Nak Muay are full time fighters, so have a considerable amount of time to practice the muay thai clinch, in the west however, due to work commitments etc, we may not have as much time as the Thai’s to practice clinching, however we must still put a great emphasis on getting as good as we can at the Muay Thai clinch.

A good Muay Thai school will spend a lot of time making sure that all it’s students have a good understanding of the Muay Thai clinch .

One of the main things that we should focus on is our balance and trying to unbalance our opponents.

This post is unfinished and will be updated very soon. for more information please visit K-Star Muay Thai Boxing Birmingham

The history of Muay Thai is very long and interesting. This post about the history is currently  being written. The history of muay Thai will be updated as soon as possible.

Well the gym is coming along fine. It took a lot longer than I was expecting to sort out the lease and all the legal stuff (I was hoping the open in May of June 2011) and it was finally sorted  on 13th December, which didn’t leave much time before Christmas to get the gym ready. We are working hard though and we should be on target to open in mid January.

So who will be the instructors? Well the students in Sheldon are very lucky because they are getting  2 CHAMPIONS to teach them!

Adrian Maguire and Nathan Epps will be the regular instructors along with K-Star founder Steve Logan.

Both Adrian Maguire and Nathan epps are Current Champions and A Class fighters. A class means that they fight under Full Thai Rules (FTR) which allows elbows and knees to the head and is fought over 5 x 3 min rounds, so they are doing it exactlty as they do in Thailand!

Both have fought at all levels of competition and are still fighting regularly now. Along with this practical ring experience, both have completed the K-Star Instructor training program that has produced some of the best Instructors in the area, so the are both fully equipped to help you reach your goals.

At K-Star our aim is to help EVERYONE reach their own personal goals, whatever they may be, so having fully trained instructors who are active fighters means that you will be well looked after as these guys have been through everything that you will ever go through and will be able to guide you, with the back up of Steve Logan.

Here is a video of highlights from one of Adrian’s recent fights! (Adrian is in the blue K-Star shorts) adrian highlight

Here is a video of Nathan Epps winning the Midland area title by KO  Nathan Epps

Adrian Maguire is a Red Band at Muay Thai

Qualified K-Star Thai boxing Instructor.

Ringmasters 2011 Champion

IKF English Muay Thai Champion

Nathan Epps is a Red Band at Muay Thai.

Assistant K-Star Thai Boxing Instructor

UKMF Midland area Muay Thai Champion

Adrian’s next fight is on 5th Feb in London for the WBC British title and Nathan’s next fight is on sat 25th Feb at the Tower Ballroom in Birmingham, so both are very active fighters. For more details check out K-Star Muay Thai Boxing Birmingham