A kickboxing trainer is someone who instructs people in the skills needed for one of the many kickboxing sports. This person will generally oversee the training of several people and offer tips on how to improve performance. Different kickboxing trainers teach for different reasons, with some teaching fitness skills and others teaching people for the purposes of competitive martial arts or self-defense. Sometimes a kickboxing trainer has some kind of formal certification, and sometimes he or she may have undergone an informal training process where no certification is awarded.
There are many different kinds of kickboxing in the world, and the activity is used for many different purposes. One kind of kickboxing is called Muay Thai, and it comes from Thailand. These practitioners fight with elbows and knees along with their hands and feet, and they spend a lot of time conditioning parts of their bodies for impact. Another version of kickboxing was developed by combining karate kicks with boxing punches, and this became popular in the 1970s. In France, there is also have a martial art called Savate, which is also a kickboxing sport.
Some people also use moves and exercises from kickboxing as part of a fitness program. In many cases, a kickboxing trainer will instruct them in various fighting movements, and they will use these for aerobic exercise routines. Sometimes these people may also use other exercise methods from the sport of kickboxing, such as rope jumping and heavy bag punching. This version of the sport is often called fitness kickboxing, or aerobic kickboxing.
Another adaption of kickboxing is for the purpose of self-defense. Unlike many other martial arts, all the moves in kickboxing generally have a long history of being tested in direct competition with other skilled individuals, and many people consider them to be reliable in a self-defense situation. All the varieties of kickboxing have been used in self-defense, but Muay Thai is generally more common for this purpose, partly because the rules allow for more street-oriented fighting techniques.
Many people who compete in mixed martial arts also have a kickboxing trainer in their training camp. These competitions generally allow for a very wide range of movements, including kicks and punches, along with wrestling techniques like joint locks and throws. After mixed martial arts sports were developed, many competitors generally gravitated towards kickboxing arts to find effective striking methods, and they went to competition-oriented grappling arts like judo for their wrestling maneuvers.