We were all looking forward to arriving in Koh Samui and finally start Muay Thai kickboxing camp as a family. We chose Koh Samui and in particular Jun Muay Thai because not only was it the cheapest option, but they received many positive reviews and many of the trainers had been champion fighters in their hay day so we knew that we would be in very capable hands.
We are a sporty family and love to try different things so we decided we definitely had to add this to our itinerary. We decided to train for one week and see how we went. We ended up staying in Koh Samui and training for 2 weeks as we enjoyed it so much.
Jun Muay Thai in Koh Samui
We found Jun Muay Thai on the internet and after reading reviews about the training thought it would suit our family nicely. Previous to our visit I had several email communications with them and they seemed lovely and were happy to have us train as a family. The prices were very reasonable costing around $7.50 USD per day or $33 USD a week to train. Children were the same price as adults, however, our 3 year old was free. He did participate occasionally, but mostly he just watched.
There are 2 sessions a day and you can choose to train once or twice a day. The session times are 7:30-9:30am and 4:30-6:30pm. The trainers were very professional and had a lot of patience for our children. As they are open sessions there were people of all different fitness levels and abilities training at the same time from all over the world, however we were the only family.
There were many fighters from all over the world also training at the same time as us in preparation for fights that were coming up on the island.
Training Sessions
The beginning of the session was skipping or running for the first 30 minutes. The next part of the session involved shadow boxing and then being paired up with a trainer for sparing. We were kitted up with hand straps and boxing gloves and our trainer would then direct us to do different actions.
We did 4 rounds with our trainer and in between rounds we would do push-ups. Next was bag work or tires. On the tires we would practice only boxing, and on the bags we practiced everything. The sessions were ended together with kicking and knees on the punching bag.
We also did more pushups, sit-ups and pull-ups before stretching at the end of the session. The training sessions were intense but very good workouts.
How Did We Go?
The sessions were hard work and the humidity didn't help much however we persisted and enjoyed our training. I did injure my hip on the last couple of sessions we did but it has seemed to heal itself.
The trainers were fantastic and very good at what they do. We met lots of people from around the world who had also come to Koh Samui to train at Jun Muay Thai. We mostly did 1 session a day but sometimes we did 2. (As the price was the same whether you did one or 2 sessions a day.) J lost a heap of weight but unfortunately for me I did not. (Not that we were doing it to loose weight but it would have been nice!)
How Did the Children Do?
We were pleasantly surprised with how well our children did. We initially only committed for 1 week as we were unsure of how our children would go and we ended up training for 2 weeks. They ended up enjoying the sessions as much as we did. They were enthusiastic about training and looked forward to it each day. They learned lots of new things including how to defend themselves if they need to which was an unexpected benefit.
Overall we were very happy with how well the children applied themselves and that they tried their best to listen and do what the trainers asked them to do.
Recommendations for Kickboxing in Thailand
We thoroughly enjoyed our training at Jun Muay Thai kickboxing and would highly recommend them for other families that wish to try something similar. Jun can help with other things such as accommodation and car hire if you need, however we found our own, as we were not sure how long we would be in Koh Samui.
Our older children enjoyed the experience much more than our 3 year old so if you have toddlers, maybe you can tag team. One goes to the morning session and one to the night session.
We were a little sad when the experience was over and will miss Jun and the team. We would love to go back and train one day for a month or so and maybe even participate in a fight? You never know!
