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After 2+ years of Covid-19 related restrictions, we’re so happy that Muay Thai and competition is back in full swing!

In the last few months, the Lotus Fight Team has been busy. Besides Poo Choi Kru Charles Chen winning the 60kg Open Class Canadian Championship belt, Fehn Foss and Phillip Kalicki won their fights at the Maximus Fight Night II event on February 11, 2023.

Poo Choi Kru Hyedie Hashimoto returned to the ring after an almost 4 year hiatus on March 25, 2023 at the InFightStyle Cup – All Female Muay Thai event at the Japanese Cultural Centre. It was a close match and although she lost to her opponent, we are incredibly proud of her performance.

Photo Credit (Maximus Fight Night) @bradardleyphotos

Photo Credit (InFightStyle Cup) @carlo_the_dino

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Congratulations to Charles Chen, our Poo Choi Kru, for becoming the new 60kg Canadian National Muay Thai Champion (Open Class)

In an exciting rematch at the Art of War 6, held in Ottawa at the Canadian War Museum, he defeated Gregory Gauvin from Siam No.1 Quebec a second time to win the championship.

Charles teaches classes at Lotus multiple times per week, is available for personal training sessions, and also leads Lotus’ fight team.

Thank you to Tony of Diamond Capital Promotions, and InFightStyle for the extremely well run event!

The entire Lotus family is proud of you, Charles!

 


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Three Lotus athletes competed at the 2022 Muay Thai Ontario Provincials Championship over July 20-31, 2022.

This is the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic that the tournament has been held.

Fehn Foss won her matches to be crowed the 2022 Provincial champion in her class.

We’re proud of Stephanie Kao and Cory Liu for competing and earning Silver medal finishes.

As we put the Covid-19 pandemic behind us (hopefully!) we look forward to more tournaments and fights to have the opportunity to test and express our Muay Thai in the ring!

Want to eventually try competing? We offer an Intro to Sparring class for experienced practitioners that want to move beyond just hitting pads, to learn how to apply the techniques in sparring.

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Amateur Muay Thai in Ontario is bouncing back after Covid-19!

Lotus Fighter, Fehn Foss, will be making her ring debut on April 9, 2022.

Event: Primo Fight Night – Saturday, April 9, 2022
Location: Lithuanian House, 1573 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M6P 1A6

Good luck to Fehn, and her opponent, Lindsday!
Buy tickets here and come support our athlete and amateur Muay Thai in Toronto!

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/primo-fight-night-live-muay-thai-fight-night-tickets-274462834727

 


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Our first two weeks since re-opening in the Province of Ontario’s Stage 3 framework has been a tremendous success! Thank you to everyone both new and old for joining us. We’re really happy about the positive feedback we’ve received about how good it feels to be back to training, and our bright and inspiring space (with a big garage door for tons of ventilation!).

There’s nothing like training together as a community, and also smashing pads with one another!

Check out some of the photos from our first couple of weeks of re-opening:

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Hello Lotus Family!

We are ready to re-open in our new facility in Liberty Village at 17 Atlantic Avenue! Please read below for instructions on how to (re)start training with us.

The Covid-19 pandemic created an opportunity for everyone, including us, to re-think everything. So not only are we in a fresh new space, BUT we have changed gym membership/class scheduling systems from Mindbody to a fresh, new, and modern system called PushPress. In starting fresh, after a nearly 1.5 year hiatus, here’s what you need to do to setup your accounts:

Please Be Patient!

We are both rusty (after a year and a half off!) and navigating new territory (new location, new systems, emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic) and ask for your patience and understanding as we relaunch both our physical gym but also our online systems.

Vaccination Requirement

After 1.5 years of being unable to open, and multiple indoor fitness/gym facilities causing superspreader events across Canada (including in the GTA), we have decided to require all instructors and members/participants to have received two vaccinations of Health Canada approved vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, or Astrazeneca) prior to participating. Members will have to attest to their vaccination status prior to entry. Muay Thai is an extremely close quarters activity, with padwork, clinching, and sparring, therefore, unlike outdoor fitness or solo-sport activities, this level of protection is required to keep our staff and members safe and healthy. Furthermore, as a business that has been mandated closed for almost 1.5 years, we simply cannot afford to cause a Covid-19 outbreak and be required to close for even one day.

Brand New, Or No Active Memberships

Easy! Just sign up yourself.

Previous Gold or Silver Members (Active in Summer 2020)

Please sign up for a new Gold or Silver Autopay(recurring) membership. If you had re-activated your membership in the summer of 2020 (during the brief period we were re-open), you may have some day(s) remaining on your last autopay charge and we will apply a pro-rated refund to your first month to square up. If you also were on a grandfathered rate, we will adjust your monthly Autopay accordingly. To request the pro-rated refund (if applicable) and/or rate adjustment, after signing up again, please send an email to info@lotusfitness.ca requesting the reconciliation and adjustment. Sign Up Now

Previous Class Pass Holders

If you had a balance from a 10,20 or 30 class pass, we have already issued you an invitation to setup a login on PushPress via email, and your account has already been topped up with those remaining class passes you had on or after March 15, 2020. We’ve given everyone a fresh 1 year expiration date (From August 1, 2021) on these passes, so please use them in time (we won’t grant further extensions).

Login to the Member Portal Here

If you can’t use them anymore, please write into us at info@lotusfitness.ca and direct us to gift these passes to a friend or family member (we just need their name and email address!)

Previous New Member Promo Holders (Summer 2020 Only)

A very small number (less than 2 or 3 people) signed up for the New Member Promo ($99) during our brief re-opening in Summer 2020. If you were unable to get in to use them and claim your gloves, please email us at info@lotusfitness.ca with the email address you signed up with, and we’ll check our sales register to verify you are owed gloves and classes.

Personal Training Credits

If you had a remaining balance of unused Personal Training sessions you had pre-paid for, prior to March 2020, please write in to info@lotusfitness.ca with the email address you used to sign up for them, and after we check our sales register to verify the balance, we will re-instate the personal training credits and give you a full year (from August 1, 2021) to utilize them.

 

Khob Khun Ka! (Thank You!)

Lotus Fitness and Thai Boxing Inc.


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Exciting news! We are going to be moving to 17 Atlantic Avenue in Liberty Village.

Update: We’re opening August 9th! Many restrictions regarding capacity and activities have been lifted.

In the meantime, we have started Outdoor Group classes, consisting of our signature HIIT/bodyweight conditioning and Muay Thai shadowboxing (no pads or partner work at this time is permitted). To join the Outdoor class, please check out our Instagram for the schedule and further details.


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Congratulations to Lotus Fighters Charles Chen, Cory Liu, Andy Tran and Callum Adams for outstanding performances this past weekend at Muay Thai Ontario Provincial Championships 2019 at Ryerson University.

Poo Choi Kru Charles Chen wins 132-lb A-Class Provincial Championship 2019

Andy Tran wins Silver 139-lb B-Class Provincial Championship 2019

Cory Liu awarded Bronze in 147-lb A-Class

 

Thanks to everyone for coming out to support! Back to the gym to keep on putting in more work!


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On this International Women’s Day, we’d like to feature Caroline Jankowski – Lotus Fitness & Thai Boxing’s most experienced competition team member.  She has been training with Kru Clifton Brown for many years before they both joined Lotus in 2018.  Under Kru’s tutelage she has fought many of Canada’s top female Muay Thai practitioners in her weight class (many of whom have gone on to represent Canada on the international scene).

After a 2 year hiatus from fighting, Caroline returned to the ring at Cold Warz III and came out victorious! Here is our chat with Caroline:

How long have you been doing Muay Thai for? And what drew you to the sport?
I’ve been training Muay Thai for almost 11 years. I was in University, looking for fun ways to get some exercise and get fit, and my boyfriend at the time suggested we try out a class at a local Muay Thai gym. I remember sitting there during my first visit and watching the more experienced girls hit pads, and I just thought “wow… I want to do that!”

Muay Thai had such a positive effect on my life after I began training – aside from the obvious benefits of regular exercise, I gained confidence, self-discipline, a strong work ethic, and I met some of my closest friends through the sport as well.

What made you want to go from practicing Muay Thai on pads and bags to stepping into the ring and fighting?

My decision to fight was based on several different reasons. I was seeing a lot of improvement in my technique so I began sparring classes and really enjoyed them; it was almost a natural progression to fighting after that. However, I was so nervous about fighting that it took me years before I finally stepped into the ring.

I think what really gave me the courage was watching my best friend train for fights which I found so inspiring, as well as being surrounded by incredibly skilled and disciplined fighters at my gym. I also had gone through a challenging year in my personal life, so I figured I had nothing to lose which lead me to stepping into the ring (actually, tripping over the ropes) for the first time.

At Lotus there isn’t much of a gender gap in our classes or even our Fight Team, however, when you first started it sounds like there was. What was it like being one of the few women who would train in Muay Thai? And how did it feel to be one of the few women on a competition team? Or did it even bother you?

When I think back, I never really let the gender gap bother me. I didn’t want to be treated differently just because I was a girl. But being one of the few women in a male-dominated sport definitely had its challenges. You would hear things like “man up!” or “you hit like a girl” being thrown around all the time, sometimes even directed at you; and when you got emotional, you would try to hide it because it made the guys uncomfortable.

The few women that I did train with were these strong and confident women I looked up to, and we would inspire and motivate each other all the time. I think because our group of girls was so supportive, it diminished any of the negative effects that came along with a gender gap.

With the changes in the demographic of Muay Thai students, do you feel like female athletes still need to work harder than male athletes to prove themselves?

I think that female and male athletes need to work EQUALLY as hard to achieve their goals. If you don’t do the work, you don’t get the results; however, I think us females put a lot more pressure and expectations on ourselves because of the gender biases that exist in a combat sport. This pushes us to work harder overall. We tend to feel guilty more often than men for letting people down if we don’t succeed, which drives our work ethic.

Congratulations on your brutally beautiful win this weekend! How did it feel to enter the ring after almost a 2 year absence from it? Was there anything different in your training camp or the fight itself that you hadn’t experienced before?

Thank you! It was a challenging fight with a very skilled and tough opponent.

Stepping in the ring after two years felt great even though I was so nervous leading up to the fight! I was worried about “ring rust” but I think the two year break from fighting was just what I needed. I felt sharp and in control, and much more calm than I remember feeling in my previous few fights.

I really enjoyed the training camp itself; I had made it a goal to have a fun camp and not over-train or let it consume me. It’s hard to strike a good balance between training, a full time career, and family obligations, and I think this is an issue that a lot of female athletes struggle with as well. It’s important to surround yourself with people who support you and help you work towards your goals.

Do you have any advice for women who want to step into the ring themselves?

My advice to aspiring fighters would be the same advice Kru Clifton tells me regularly; believe in yourself and believe in your training. If you have thought about fighting but feel too nervous, there is no better reward than facing your fears and overcoming them. There is so much personal growth that you gain, and once you’ve been able to challenge yourself in the ring, EVERYTHING else seems possible.