Hello, I just recently started Muay Thai less than a month ago. Last Monday I was doing shin conditioning where I would kick the bag as hard as i could. It’s going to be Friday and my shin still hurts a lot. How long should I wait until I can continue training?

So I have a bit of an issue with sparring. People often escalate with me, especially more experienced guys and competing athletes. This recently culminated in getting dropped with a fractured sternum. This has led me feeling a bit apprehensive about sparring in general. 

I have recently moved countries and travel quite alot so bounce from gym to gym. 

When things escalate, I try to de-escalate but that doesn’t always work. I’ve noticed that sometimes when I’m able to tag someone more experienced or someone who competes, or he is unable to land, things escalate and continue to escalate until they are able to land. 

I’ve kind of reduced it to 3 possibilities. 

I’m frustrating to spar with and things get competitive. 

I’m using too much power. 

I look ‘big and durable enough’ for people to tee off on.

Context on potentially being frustrating: 

My ‘biggest base’ in terms of striking is in Karate and Boxing, but I have a reasonable amount of muay thai training including a camp in thailand.  

I really enjoy the cognitive and strategic aspects of sparring. I like to use confusion and unpredictability and that means a lot of feints, stance switches and deceptive techniques.

I’ve built a reasonable base of muay thai from an orthodox stance. But my muay thai / boxing / karate from southpaw is much more effective. I was training and using a textbook MT approach, but was encouraged by a coach to go more freefrom and mix it up.  

So I typically start a round using textbook MT, then mix up stances, angles, patterns and rhythms. This causes a visible confusion for alot of sparring partners. 

Context: On using too much power: 

I’m reasonably big in the context of muay thai. I spar at sub 30% power with hands and always pull my kicks, but sometimes when someone closes in and you land simultaneously it can have some pop on it. Sometimes accidental connections are made. I don’t feel like the accidental connections are the issue though. Like pulling a question mark kick, is MUCH more likely to cause escalation than accidentally making a solid connection with a jab as they come in. 

Context: On looking big and durable: 

I’m a relatively big guy especially by Muay Thai standards, 180cm and 90kg with a background in powerlifting / strength training, so maybe that impacts the perception of how much power people should use.

What I do when things escalate: 

I will verbally try to de-escalate but I won't break off the session.  

Normally I start to focus on defense and focus on just shutting down their offense as best I can and countering, if the escalation continues.  

I try not to ramp up on my side in terms of power, speed or intent, but there almost certainly will be some level of increase due to the increased intensity.

The issue with going defensive is that it invites offense. My instinct in these situations is to return the intensity in kind and also become more offensive, but obviously that is not a good route to go down as it will lead to a full blown fight. 

WHAT DO DO. I want to spar. I don’t want to fight to the death. 

Hey, so it’s been a week since my first fight and I lost via 2nd round TKO. He swarmed against the fence and I shelled up, didn’t know what to do, and felt trapped. I know I could’ve done more looking back at the film, but it just bugs me inside. I say I’m fine on the outside, but internally it genuinely bothers me. I’m not mad I lost—of course, losing is not ideal—but it’s the way I lost. I felt like I let my friends and coaches down and wasted all their time. I haven’t shown my face at the gym since and just feel so embarrassed. This loss has had me contemplating if I should continue or just focus on MMA or something else. I started off somewhat strong but subconsciously went into defensive mode the whole time after I landed a hard 1-2, which I think rocked him. He didn’t clip me clean but just threw more, and I felt overwhelmed. Physically I felt ready, but mentally I may have had a mental block.

Will be interesting to see how they adapt to the current KC ruleset, which I believe is equivalent to MMA striking with limited grounded strikes.

Only one I know is saenchai and tawanchai. I would like to know some more to study. Thank you in advance.

I’m thinking of getting these rival gloves but I can’t decide between 14 and 16 oz , my hand circumference is 21.5 and all my other gloves are 14 oz (booster , primo), anyone got the rivals and how’s the fit?

I have recently been in Phuket and Koh Lanta for a reasonable amount of time.

Have had some pretty disappointing experiences at some of the big gyms in Phuket (Sinbi, Bang Tao).

I found the big gyms to be tourist training factories where the coach clocks in for a shift and just holds pads for you for an hour. Very few attempts to correct technique/impart wisdom. I am sure that if you spent a long time training there and getting to know the trainers your experience would massively improve, however if you are only training at each gym a handful of times the coaches can be quite disinterested.

Had a particularly bad experience at one very big gym in Phuket which I won’t name where the coach refused to correct technique instead just shouting NO when I did things wrong. We then did a few rounds of sparring where he didn’t let me throw a single strike by just dominating me with teeps, sweeps etc. Didn’t feel like a ‘tough love’ learning experience but rather that he was annoyed by my mistakes on the pads lol.

Small gyms on the other hand, such as Nicha Muay Thai on Koh Lanta were the opposite experience. Coaches were friendly, privates often lasted an extra 15 mins and was generally a much more relaxed, personalised and rewarding experience.

Tldr: big gyms bad, small gyms good

I see people reference in passing how Muay Thai is a spiritual practice for them but I am interested in specifics. In what ways is Muay Thai spiritually significant for you?

I started training with 2 friends, one of them stayed kickboxing with me and the other got into amateur boxing.

For me I felt like I was already quite flexible and thought “if I’m going to learn to fight, why not learn to use my whole body?. Like why not learn to kick and elbow also?"

That was just my thought process.

Does anyone else have any other reasons to why they chose Muay Thai over other sports?

I can only think of people joining because they appreciate the culture or like derived fans from MMA.

Just need some inspiration, I’m looking to mention someone’s story in my newsletter this Friday.

I really want to get good at kicking out peoples legs when they throw head kicks. Is it bad etiquette to give someones legs a little tap when they throw head kicks in order to get good this. Obviously don't want to knock people on their arse or kick too hard but is a little tap okay?

What would you say is the best exercise to train your reaction time, for dodging catching and parrying ?

Muay Thai hurts. You're gonna be fine. It hurts, but it's probably not an injury. You're all good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eObqYBwHRk

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBWSeJ3ykuj/?img_index=1

Who won this fight in your opinion? I see a lot of people from kickboxing type backgrounds and countries believing the aggressor swinging wild pressure forward, therefore "dominating" the fight. Erdem made a long post claiming Westerners always loose on the decisions and that this was a huge robbery. People in the comments too claiming robbery, but where is rws set on the scoring criteria? I dont understand why people wanting to swing wild and hope for the knockout cry robbery when they can't get the knockout and the thais outscore them with better range control and backward fighting. Where is the scoring going to go in the future, if this is a "robbery"? Not hating by the way, they are both great fighters.

Hey guys. I need to cut 2.5-3kg (5.5lbs) in 10 days. Im running everyday, im on caloric deficit and im gonna cut water in last 2/3 days. Any other tips? I've heard about keto and throwing out carbs.

So I’m going to my 3rd class tonight at a pretty small gym. Typically there’s only 6-8 people there. Half the people seem to be there with someone else that they already pair up with, or are vastly different in height from me.

My first class the coach paired me up with someone.

For the 2nd class he told everyone to pair up without specifying anyone for me, so I asked him if he wanted me to be with anyone specific, and he paired me with the same person.

I feel bad for my partner since I’m brand new and am so bad at everything from remembering combinations to holding the pads. I feel like half his workout is him showing (and re-showing) me stuff, and I don’t want to mess up his training.

Do I:

1. Keep pairing up with the same dude?
2. Keep asking the coach?
3. Just stop overthinking and try to pair up with someone else regardless of anything else?
4. Other?

Edit: For everyone saying 3, do I disregard height, etc?

UPDATE: So I ended up going into class a couple minutes early and just walked up to a guy and just kinda BS’d with him a couple minutes. Ended up asking how long he’d been coming, and he told me. I mentioned that I wasn’t totally comfortable pairing up yet, and he offered to pair with me that night. Ended up being a great partner and I definitely learned different things from training with a different person.

The more I get into MT, the more I love the entire community.

Training Muay Thai and once a week we have boxing sparring which is pretty intense. We have national champions and pros in the club. Sitting in office and this is the only thing I can think about, my goal is basically just to be able to handle the heat…

I’ve been studying Muay Thai for about a year and have gotten to rank 3 at my gym. I plan on moving to the advanced classes soon but wanted to know, before I start preparing for my first fight, where I can learn more about techniques for perfecting my skills. If it matters, when I was in the best cardiovascular shape in my life and at the lowest weight I could possibly be I would still have classified as heavy weight. Of course by channels I do specifically mean YouTube since I tend to go on it whenever I am waiting on something, but any resources that I can use in idle would be immensely helpful including things such as manuals and web archives.

I've been training for ~9 months and I have an issue that bugs me greatly.

If my opponent is throwing a combo then i often see openings in their defense but i fail to disrupt their rhythm. I see that they leave their head open while throwing a combination but can't counter them.

Have you had similar issues? Any tips on how to fix that?

Do you just diet down and weigh in or do you diet down a bit and then do something else to lose the last bit like cut carbs on fight week or something?