Training
How fit do I need to be before I go?
Updated 2026-09-01
The short answer
You do not need to be fit to start, and camps take people straight off the sofa every week. What general fitness buys you is a slightly easier first week. It does not protect your shins, your hips or the skin on your feet, which is what actually limits people early.
From the records
Of the 44 camps we list, 34 say whether they take beginners, and all 34 of those say they do. That makes it the fullest of the 5 fields a first-timer would actually compare, and a column with no answer in it except yes is an invitation rather than a filter: it tells you that you will be let in, not what the first week will ask of you.
What camps publishRunning and lifting at home will not prepare you for two hours of kicking pads, because nothing prepares you for that except kicking pads. Strong runners still finish their first session flat.
If you want to do something useful in the weeks before you fly, work on hip mobility, ankle and calf conditioning, and skipping. Skipping in particular, because you will do a lot of it and being bad at it is a miserable way to start every session.
The other genuinely useful preparation is heat. If you are coming from winter, expect the first few days to cost you more than you planned for.
Still deciding where to go?
Six questions, and we will tell you which camps fit and which facts about them we have not confirmed.
Vocabulary
The words on this page
Bag work
Rounds on a heavy bag, usually after pads. It is where you get volume and conditioning, and where you practise the combination the trainer just corrected.
Gym languageRoadwork
The run before the morning session, usually a few kilometres and usually early enough to beat the heat. Thai fighters treat it as non-negotiable; camps rarely force visitors to do it.
Gym language
Training
Asked alongside this one
What does a day at a Thai camp actually look like?
Two sessions, morning and late afternoon, with the middle of the day left alone because of the heat. Each session runs roughly two hours: warm-up and skipping, shadow boxing, pad rounds with a trainer, bag work, then clinching or sparring, and conditioning at the end.
Do I have to train twice a day?
No. The two-session day is what the camp offers, not what you owe them, and nobody checks. Most people who arrive untrained do better on one full session a day for the first week, then add the second when their shins and hips have caught up.
Do Thai trainers speak English?
At foreigner-facing camps, enough for training: technique is taught by demonstration and correction, and the vocabulary you need is small. Conversational English varies enormously between camps, and at local Thai camps you should expect very little.