How to Treat Pain and Injuries in Muay Thai For Beginners
Let's start the article with, we are not doctors and this isn't medical advice. Always advise a doctor for medical concerns.
People tend to overlook the fact of how intense Muay Thai training is, and how hard it is on your body. In the end, we are talking about one of the most brutal striking styles where injuries are a common thing. Muscle soreness, bruises, shin pain, wrist soreness, and many other forms of pain are a regular part of Muay Thai training. If you can’t handle it or learn how to deal with this side of the sport, then Muay Thai maybe isn’t for you.
To make it easier for you, we have decided to bring you tips and advice on how to deal with pain and injuries in Muay Thai.
Focus on learning proper technique
What causes the most pain among all beginners in Muay Thai is the lack of proper technique. But bear in mind that this is normal, and each person, regardless of the striking style, has been there. Feeling the pain in your wrists and the top of the feet are just an alarm telling you to improve your technique. This is not a big deal and you can fix this very quickly with your coaches.
First of all, decrease the power in your punches while working on a heavy bag. This is the most common cause of wrist injuries, as beginners, for whatever reason, tend to throw punches and kicks with a lot of power. This is not just causing the soreness in your wrists, but it also stops you from learning how to punch the right way. Instead, focus on the motion of the punch and hip rotation. This might sound couterintuituve at first, but is very effective in forming proper technique and not having to unlearn poor technique.
The other great tip is to check if you are wrapping your hands the right way, or maybe you need to wear more padded gloves. But if the pain continues or gets worse, be sure to take a couple of days off as the wrists injury can easily develop into a fracture.
Condition your shins from day one
Muay Thai puts a lot of emphasis on hard kicking, which you are going to do a lot of in training. In the beginning, kicking the heavy bag hundreds of times will hurt like hell, and that is the reality of training. It takes time, patience, and a lot of shin conditioning to stop the pain. Here is what you can do.
Focus on learning how to throw kicks the right way, and above, land with the right part of the shin (not every style does this but here we follow Muay Thai style). If you land at the wrong angle, you will feel instant pain, and that is normal. Avoid throwing hard kicks until you get the kicking technique right. But once you got it right, be sure to kick the heavy bag as much as you can as this is the only way you can strengthen your shins.
Kicking the heavy bag 100 times with each leg per class will do two things to stop the pain. First, it deadens the nerves in your shins which results in less pain after a couple of months. And second, it creates minor fractures that, when the body rebuilds itself, will add an extra layer of calcium. Or in other words, it improves the density of your bones.
🚨 Are you enjoying this article? Sign up for our newsletter to get updates weekly about content and soon to be exclusive articles for subscribers only
At home, the best way you can treat the shin pain, bruises, and “bumps” is to take the pack of ice and apply it to the area that hurts the most. You can do this a couple of times a day when you are at home resting for 10–15 minutes. And be sure to use the famous Thai liniment oil to rub your shins before and after each training session.
Always wear a protective gear
Beginners should always wear gear whenever they are doing anything that can lead to injuries. It really doesn’t matter if you are working on a heavy bag, doing live drills, or sparring hard. Safety should always be in first place. We can often see new students acting tough and getting hurt just because they didn’t wear the following gear:
- Pair of full padded boxing gloves
- Shin Pads
- Mouthpiece
- Helmet
- Groin cup
Allowing a new student to train without protective gear is a recipe for a disaster. For instance, sparring without shin pads can easily end up in fractures, thorn ACL, and many other bad injuries.
These are the types of injuries that can put you away from the gym for months, and maybe forever in some cases. So putting yourself under such a risk is nothing irresponsible and the same stands for other gear. Don’t wear a mouthguard if you don’t like your own smile.
Training smart and wearing gear is the best way you can prevent potential injuries. The key behind achieving your goals in Muay Thai is to be patient, consistent, and healthy. Acting tough or being careless in training is one of those things that will backfire on you sooner or later. And once it happens, it destroys your progress and all the hard work.
Diet, hydration and vitamins
Eating healthy while training Muay Thai is the key when it comes to preventing injuries and staying healthy. The same stands when it comes to hydrating your body and taking vitamins. Still, this doesn’t mean you should focus just on eating healthy food. No, it’s all about balance and developing healthy eating habits in your everyday life.
This is because your body, like a car, needs fuel to go at long distances or full speed. The high amount of sugar, sodium, and other things you get from street food is not the fuel your body needs. No, it only makes your Muay Thai experience difficult and harms your health in the long run.
Instead, you should focus on eating a lot of healthy vegetables and fruit every single day. In fact, fruit and vegetables should be a part of every meal throughout the day. Instead of deep-fried foods, focus on grilled and steamed chicken, fish, and a lot of rice. I mean, there are no excuses. We are living in the era when you are one click away from finding good recipes for your Muay Thai training.
The other thing you must focus on is to drink a lot of water every day. You should drink, at least, 3 liters of water per day, and even more on training days. Water is good for many things, notably when it comes to recovery.
To improve density in your bones, you might consider taking calcium and vitamin D. But this is only in case you are not getting enough of these two vitamins through your diet.
Listen to your body and take a break
Muay Thai training is hard on your body and you will wake up with some type of pain, muscle soreness, and bruising every single day. But, there are some types of pain and soreness that can lead to bad injuries. You need to listen to your body and know when is the time to take a day off, or when you should fight through it.
As humans, we are all different both physically and mentally. Some people have a really high tolerance for pain, while some others tend to overthink stuff and panic. It’s up to you to listen to your body and respect its limits.
But, there are some general rules we should all follow. If the pain you feel is acute and is still present after a warm-up session, then you might consider taking a day off. Or, you should seek medical help if you have a hard time breathing or moving a certain part of your body. This is notably true when it comes to rib or head injuries.
And it’s not all about the pain. For instance, there were days when I didn’t feel any pain. But I felt fragile, it’s one of those feelings before you catch a cold, which makes you feel weak inside. For me, this is the alarm that my immune system doesn’t feel right and that I should stay at home, focus on eating well, hydrate, and take a rest.
📬 Get weekly updates straight to your inbox
💬 💬 💬 💬 💬 💬
We also have a chat room! (We use Discord) join here
The unleashed network is a network of all martial arts related accounts with ~1 million follows across all our accounts. We are on tiktok, instagram, medium, you name it.
