Hamilton YMCA offers Muay Thai, also known as Thai Boxing, just a 12-minute drive from Mercer’s West Windsor campus.
Muay Thai is a martial art from Thailand that involves a variety of kicking, sweeping and clinching maneuvers. Practitioners typically wear shinguards and boxing gloves.
The YMCA classes are offered Wednesdays and Fridays and led by Anthony Camacho who has been practicing Muay Thai for the last 25 years, and teaching for the past 7 years. He has had Muay Thai studio in New York where he taught women self-defense.
His class starts with the punching bags that are set up for each student. Camacho demonstrates a routine of moves such as the roundhouse kick, left hook, and front kick.
To make sure students of different skill levels can follow along, Camacho takes a slow and deliberate pace, showcasing the moves several times. After the demonstration, he makes sure to visit every student at their post fixing their form and offering tips on how to improve.
When asked about newcomers attending his class, Camacho says it is important to “Leave your ego at the door. We’re a family here. Like I tell all my pupils, slow and steady. There’s no rush to master your technique.”
One of Camacho’s students, Angelia Mei Zen Liao, says of the class, “I like that it’s just like a way for me to kind of like [relieve] stress and it’s just a way for me to be active in my adult life.”
In addition to offering stress relief, students also learn self-defense. Anthony Perez, a student in Camacho’s class says, “I really like Muay Thai. Personally, I think it’s the most effective martial art…It’s important to know some basics, to know how to protect yourself.”
The class is an hour long, and for the first half, the class learns the routines. The other half is spent lightly sparring with one another, incorporating the new moves.
During the last 10 minutes of class, Camacho selects a student volunteer to demonstrate how to correctly spar with a partner. The students then try this technique during the next scheduled class.
Camacho is informative and thorough when demonstrating how to correctly strike with these moves.
Rebecca Liu, another of Camacho’s students, says she appreciates his guidance. “I like that there’s a lot of set instructions for me to follow…I like that there’s a social aspect to it,” she says.
The atmosphere in the studio is light-hearted. The sport can be challenging to learn but participants say it is rewarding and it is a great way to burn some calories while building a skill.
