Your body, your goals, your pace.
Private lessons at The Camp serve a specific purpose: they allow the training to focus on an individual’s needs.
Those needs vary. You may want to adjust a movement that does not feel right, review something from a group lesson, prepare for a fight, or learn a skill that is not normally covered in the group programme. You may simply prefer to train at your own pace.
What group lessons provide—and where individual work begins
Our group lessons are organised around specific technical themes. Each session has a focus, and trainers observe individual movements and offer corrections within that structure.
However, people do not all encounter the same difficulty.
One person may understand a movement quickly. Another may need it broken into smaller parts. Someone else may understand the explanation but need more practice before they can reproduce the movement consistently.
A group lesson must balance individual attention with progress through the shared topic. It cannot spend the entire session on one person’s particular difficulty.
Private lessons provide that additional time. They allow the trainer to stay with your question, examine it more closely, and adjust the practice accordingly.
Adapting technique to the individual
Muay Thai has fundamental principles and movement patterns that we teach. But the people learning them have different bodies.
Limb length, shoulder position, strength, mobility and established movement habits all influence how a person performs a technique. The same instruction may therefore produce different results in different people.
A student may understand the demonstration without being able to reproduce it comfortably or effectively. Repeating the instruction is not always enough. The trainer needs to examine what is preventing the movement from working.
Where does the movement become restricted? Where is unnecessary tension appearing? Would a small adjustment to the stance, position or distance help?
In a private lesson, we can observe, test and refine those details.
The purpose is not to discard the fundamentals. It is to help you apply them in a way that works with your physical characteristics and current abilities.
Working on one specific technique
A private lesson does not need to cover a wide range of skills. It can focus on a single technique.
For example, you may want to spend the session working on your hook. You may want to revisit something taught in a group lesson, clarify an instruction, or practise a movement that you are beginning to understand but cannot yet repeat reliably.
In that setting, the lesson can follow a straightforward process:
- Identify the specific difficulty.
- Practise the movement.
- Receive feedback.
- Make an adjustment.
- Repeat and assess the result.
If the explanation is not helping, the trainer can approach the problem differently. If one part needs more time, you can stay with it.
The group does not need to move on, because there is no group timetable to follow within that lesson. The session is organised around the point you want to address.
Preparing for a fight
Fight preparation involves questions that are specific to the individual.
Being able to perform a technique is one requirement. Recognising when to use it, selecting an appropriate response and making decisions under pressure are separate skills.
This is part of what people mean by fight IQ.
A fighter may need to work on how to use their strengths, respond when an approach is not working, or make better decisions in particular situations. These priorities cannot be addressed fully through a group lesson built around a common theme.
Private training allows the preparation to follow the fighter’s specific requirements.
If you are preparing for a fight, explain what you want to work on and where you feel uncertain. That gives the trainer a clear starting point for deciding what the session should address.
Learning clinch and sweep techniques
Private lessons also provide a way to request technical work that is not normally included in our group programme.
Clinch training is one example. Clinching is an important part of Muay Thai, but The Camp does not currently include it in regular group lessons. Since the pandemic, we have kept this close-contact work outside the standard group format. We teach it on request through private lessons.
If you want to learn clinch fundamentals, work on movement within the clinch, or practise sweeps, tell us in advance.
The fact that a skill is not part of the regular group lesson does not necessarily mean it is unavailable. It means that the work needs to be arranged separately, with a clear understanding of what you want to learn.
Training at your own pace
A group lesson has a shared rhythm. Participants do not, however, have identical fitness, stamina or learning speeds.
Some people need more rest between efforts. Others want more physical work. Some prefer to pause, ask questions and understand an instruction before trying it again. Others learn more effectively through continued movement and feedback.
Private training allows the pace to reflect those differences.
You can spend more time on an unfamiliar movement, take appropriate breaks, or increase the amount of practice where it makes sense. The trainer can adjust the balance between explanation, repetition and rest around your needs.
This is useful both for people who find a group’s pace demanding and for those who want a different level or pattern of activity.
Choosing a padwork-focused session
Not every private lesson needs to be centred on detailed technical analysis.
Some people mainly want to hit pads, exercise and enjoy a physically active session. They are not looking to spend much of that particular lesson discussing small technical details.
That is a valid preference.
Our group lessons follow planned learning themes. We cannot change the whole group’s session because one participant would prefer to do only padwork. A private lesson gives us a way to accommodate that request separately.
If you want a padwork-focused session, say so. The trainer can discuss the pace and emphasis with you.
Private training is not reserved for fighters or people with complicated technical problems. It is also an option for people who know how they would prefer to spend their training time.
How to decide whether a private lesson would help
Start with the task you want the lesson to accomplish.
You might want to:
- Adapt a technique to your physical characteristics.
- Correct a particular movement habit.
- Review material from a group lesson.
- Practise one technique in greater depth.
- Prepare for a fight or work on tactical decisions.
- Learn clinch or sweep techniques.
- Train at an individual pace.
- Arrange a session focused mainly on padwork.
- Focus on Western Boxing rather than Muay Thai.
- Train with your child, or arrange training for a child under six.
You do not need to describe the problem in technical language. “This movement does not feel right” or “I want to go over what we learned this morning” is enough to begin the discussion.
Group and private lessons can also support each other. A group lesson may reveal a difficulty that you then address privately. You can subsequently return to the group and practise what you have learned within the wider session.
The decision is not about which format is universally better. It is about which format suits the work you need to do.
Tell us what you want to practise. We can then discuss how a private lesson could be organised around it.
For prices, booking and the two-participant option, see Private lesson options.