Is Martial Arts The Ultimate Cross-Training Workout?

Cross-training is a term that gets thrown around constantly in the martial arts world, usually by people who have not thought very hard about what it means.

So before answering whether martial arts is the ultimate cross-training workout, it is worth separating the two different things people mean when they say it.

Two Definitions

Everywhere else in athletics, cross-training means training something outside your main activity in order to develop qualities that activity does not build on its own. There is a primary thing and a secondary thing, and the secondary thing exists to serve the primary one. A runner lifts so they can run better.

In the martial arts industry, the word has come to mean something much lazier: training in two different martial arts at the same time. Boxing and Muay Thai. Muay Thai and jiu jitsu. Two arts, simultaneously, therefore cross-training.

That is not what the word means anywhere else, and the difference matters, because one of those is usually a good idea and the other one usually is not.

Training Two Striking Arts At Once Is Usually A Mistake

Take the most common version: someone with less than a couple of years of training who decides to do boxing and Muay Thai at the same time. Three nights of one, three nights of the other.

Think about what you are actually asking your body to do. On Monday a coach tells you to stand a certain way, punch a certain way, and move with a certain footwork. On Tuesday you are trying to refine and hone a completely different stance, a different way to punch, and different footwork.

The stance is different. The punching is different. The movement is different. And your brain is trying to lock muscle memory into one pattern on Monday and the opposite pattern on Tuesday.

You end up bad at both. Very few people can switch between genuinely good boxing fundamentals and genuinely good Muay Thai fundamentals, and almost nobody can do it inside the first few years.

The problem is the similarity. Both arts have you standing, punching, using footwork, holding a stance. They are close enough to interfere with each other and different enough that the interference is constant.

When It Does Make Sense

Two dissimilar arts are a different matter. Boxing and wrestling, or Muay Thai and Brazilian jiu jitsu. One is standing up with footwork, the other is rolling around on the ground, so there is far less to interfere. A beginner could do that and it would make sense.

The problem is time. Two nights a week in one and two nights a week in the other is four nights out of seven, sustained for long enough to actually learn something. Most people have trouble training twice a week consistently, never mind four or five.

So it can work, but very few people are actually in a position to do it.

Someone who already has real experience in both is different again. They can switch back and forth and look like a boxer one day and a Muay Thai fighter the next, and there are genuine benefits to that. A professional MMA fighter training Muay Thai and Brazilian jiu jitsu is doing something sensible, and that is probably the best mix there is for that goal.

What does not work is what most people mean when they announce they are cross-training: trying to learn and master two similar arts simultaneously, from scratch. Maybe one percent of people can pull that off. It is extremely hard, and almost nobody attempting it is in that one percent.

There is also a narrower version of this that works well. I have a fighter with a dozen or so fights who does not take a punch as well as he needs to. Too flinchy, too much reaction, eyes closing. And if you blink when the punch lands you cannot see the next one coming, so you can neither defend nor punch back.

So he is going to get sparring rounds in with professional boxers. Not to learn boxing. I do not want him throwing boxing style punches or moving on boxing fundamentals. I want the specific thing boxing does better than anything else: hitting without getting hit, getting his head off the centre line when he needs to, and learning to take a shot with his eyes open.

That is cross-training in the correct sense. One art, borrowed narrowly and deliberately, in service of the art he actually fights in.

The other thing that case assumes is time. Training two arts properly means five or six nights a week, and most people have a job, a life, a significant other, and maybe another hobby. Almost nobody actually has that.

What Genuinely Serves Muay Thai

Now take the proper definition. What would you train, outside of Muay Thai, specifically to make your Muay Thai better?

Yoga. High repetition weight training. Gymnastics. Ballet or dance, which will teach you to move in a relaxed way, and develop footwork, dexterity, agility and balance.

All of those are highly beneficial. And most fighters would not be caught dead in a yoga, gymnastics or dance class, because they think that sort of thing is beneath them. That is their loss.

Weight training is the exception. Strength and conditioning is already accepted in Muay Thai, so nobody needs convincing on that one. It is the yoga, gymnastics and dance that get dismissed, and those are the ones with the most to offer someone who already punches and kicks well.

What Muay Thai Gives Back To Other Sports

It also works the other direction, and this is where martial arts earns the cross-training label honestly.

I trained a professional hockey player who played for the Providence Bruins. He was a defenseman, and part of that job is fighting, so I taught him to fight. We worked mostly boxing and dirty boxing, because that is essentially what hockey fighting is, on skates. A hockey fight generally starts in a boxing stance with nobody holding onto anything, and then it gets dirty. Grabbing the shirt with one hand while you punch with the other. Pulling the shirt over the other man's head so he cannot see. That is dirty boxing.

I also trained a football player who came away with significantly better flexibility, mobility, agility and explosive power.

That is the pattern. Muay Thai develops balance, mobility, coordination and body awareness at an extreme, because it cannot function without them, and most sports use those attributes without ever really developing them.

So Is It The Ultimate?

Ultimate depends on what you are cross-training for, which is why nobody can answer that honestly in one word.

But if the question is whether martial arts makes you better at other physical things, the answer is yes, and the reason is straightforward. Train balance, mobility, coordination and focus at the level Muay Thai demands, and the demands of your sport start to feel manageable.