Women in Dubai now have a dedicated space to train in Muay Thai, one built specifically to dismantle the cultural and physical barriers that long kept the sport out of reach for female athletes and curious newcomers alike. The gym addresses a genuine gap in the local sports landscape, giving women a place to develop physical capability, confidence, and self-defence skills in an environment designed around their needs, not adapted as an afterthought.
The gym’s founder, Lara Fawzy, arrived in Dubai nearly 15 years ago from London to work in the corporate sector. A professional relocation became a personal transformation when she discovered Muay Thai and committed to the sport for close to a decade. Her path reflects both the opportunities and the obstacles women have faced accessing martial arts training in the region. When she began training in 2016, female coaches were scarce. Women’s classes, where they existed at all, were typically led by men inside mixed gyms that offered little privacy or cultural comfort for female participants.
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The decision to open a women-only facility grew from direct feedback. As Fawzy posted about her training on social media, women reached out asking to train with her at home. She recognized that a private residence was unsafe for the sport and understood the deeper issue: many women wanted to try Muay Thai but felt intimidated by its reputation as a male-dominated, aggressive pursuit. “There needed to be a space that was born from real curiosity and pain from females,” she explains.
Her own resilience shaped the gym’s philosophy. In 2016, Fawzy suffered a severe arm fracture at a sports event in the UAE, requiring major surgery and the insertion of a metal plate and nine pins. Rather than abandon the sport, she trained intensively with professional fighters and returned to compete in her first amateur fight, which she won. She has since broken her nose as well, accepting these injuries as part of the sport’s demands. That fighting spirit extends to her business vision. She spent seven years training consecutively in Thailand and competed there as a professional fighter in 2023, absorbing authentic technique and learning from world-class athletes.
Fawzy has intentionally replicated the rigorous, traditional training methods she learned in Thailand while adapting them for women’s physical needs and safety. The gym’s dense mats protect against falls. The coaching style remains demanding and pushes participants to their full capacity. “It’s tough training, and very good training,” she notes, “but you always feel you’re an add-on, or that the culture’s not always geared towards you as a female and how you need to train.” Her gym corrects that imbalance directly.
Current members testify to the impact. Dania SaifEldawla, 16 and a student, had never trained in martial arts before joining. She credits Muay Thai with teaching her that she can accomplish what she sets her mind to. “I really like it because Muay Thai makes me challenge myself, and it’s such a detox for yourself as well, and it’s self-defence,” she says. Mohaddeseh Moradi, now a coach at the gym, arrived in Dubai for a competition and decided to stay and teach alongside Fawzy.
Meanwhile, the broader sports landscape in Dubai has shifted markedly over the past decade. When Fawzy began competing, finding female opponents was difficult. Today, far more women compete in Muay Thai across the region. The UAE Muay Thai Federation has actively promoted inclusivity and female participation, contributing to that change. Yet Fawzy remains clear-eyed about the distance still to travel. “We’re still miles away from where we could be, and I think in the next 10 years, it will still shift dramatically,” she says. Her gym exists partly to accelerate that shift, closing what she sees as a significant quality and participation gap.
Beyond physical training, Fawzy emphasizes the sport’s capacity for personal development. Muay Thai demands self-awareness, humility, respect, and mental fortitude alongside physical strength. Inside the ring, she discovered her own tendency to procrastinate and learned to recognize habits that shaped her life outside it. For women in Dubai, the gym offers not just self-defence skills (which Fawzy considers essential for all women) but also a structured environment for building character and understanding oneself.
More information about the gym and Fawzy’s approach is available at gulfnews.com/uae/the-woman-giving-dubai-a-fighting-chance-creating-a-muay-thai-community-where-women-build-their-strength-1.500642907.
The question now is whether this model spreads. With the UAE Muay Thai Federation pushing for greater female participation and more women entering the sport each year, the demand for women-centred training spaces is only likely to grow, and Fawzy’s gym may prove to be an early marker of a much larger shift.