FOR MUAY THAI GYMS
A fight team, paid for by people who will never fight
That is the shape of a lot of Muay Thai gyms, and most software handles one half of it. The pad classes and the beginners pay the rent; the fighters are the reason the gym exists. They end up in two different systems, a spreadsheet and a group chat, and nobody can see that they are one business.
Muay Thai also has no governing grading system, so every gym invents one and plenty never write it down. Armbands get handed out by feel, and a member who has trained for a year has no idea whether they are getting better.
LEVELS ACROSS THE EIGHT LIMBS
Six levels, across all eight limbs
The Muay Thai template is levels over fists, shins, knees and elbows, plus the clinch, with counters recorded as counters, so checking a right kick is attached to the kick it answers, and combinations recorded in order, because teep-cross-left-kick is a different skill from the same three rearranged. Shin conditioning is in there as something taught rather than counted, because it takes years and a number would be a lie.
What that changes for a Muay Thai gym
Hard rounds, counted separately
A gym that cannot see the difference between technical and hard sparring in the record cannot manage a fighter's head. This is the number that keeps somebody fighting at thirty-five.
The clinch class that fills
Twelve spaces and forty people who want them. Booking with real capacity, from a phone, at eleven at night.
Camps you can read
Weigh-ins, pad rounds and bag rounds across eight weeks, so week three is a number rather than a memory.
6:30am and 8pm on one timetable
Early pads, beginners, fighter sparring and kids' classes, each with its own capacity and coach.
SEE IT AS THEY WOULD
Step into a Muay Thai gym
Four seats in a gym with a fight team, a beginners' class and one member six weeks out. It is Eight Limbs Muay Thai, Philadelphia, PA, an invented gym in a sandbox that resets every night, not a customer.
Nate Okonjo
Owner — a Muay Thai gym with a fight team
Owns Eight Limbs and corners at every show. Start here: the level system, the fighters in camp, and the pads-and-bags timetable that pays for it all.
Kru Somsak Prasert
Head coach — pads, clinch, fight team
Holds pads for forty people a week and runs the clinch class nobody else wants to teach. Look at his roster and at how a fighter's sparring load is recorded.
Chloe Bennett
Front desk — check-in, pad hire, walk-ins
Runs the desk through the evening rush and sells more wraps than anybody. Look at the desk screen, and at everything it deliberately cannot do.
Ellie Novak
Member — level three, first fight booked
Trains four times a week and has her first amateur bout in six weeks. Her dashboard is the one that shows what a member sees when a camp starts.