When people find out I fight, the first thing they want to know is if I’ve ever knocked anyone out (no). The second thing they want to know is if I’ve ever been knocked out (almost). And if those two answers aren’t interesting enough, the next thing they ask: ‘What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?’
Muay Thai and recurrent injuries have always been blissfully wed. For example, knee clashes, my least favourite, when you and your sparring partner somehow crack your knees together. That’s no fun when you have to cycle an hour back home with a swollen knee.
Then there’s the odd bouts of rib pain. I’ve googled ‘how do you know if you’ve broken your rib’ enough times now to know if you have to google it, you probably haven’t broken your rib.
In third place is anything to do with my toes. One time I went into a fight blissfully injury-free for once, only to stub my toe somehow on the teammate who was warming me up. I came out of the fight with the usual scratches and bruises, plus a bloodied, bruised toe from the warm up to add to my collection.
But the absolute worst toe-related pain has to be when you catch one on the heavy rope in warm up. Everyone’s a tough guy ’til they stub their toe on a skipping rope.
The worst Muay Thai-related injury I’ve ever had is actually quite boring. I sprained my ankle in a PT with my coach. I wasn’t even hitting anything. All I did was pivot, and somehow my ankle twisted underneath me and we heard a crack before I was on the floor writhing in pain. This was three weeks out from a fight. Should I have pulled out? Of course, that’s what any sensible person would do. Did I? Absolutely not.
Every fighter has injuries, we all just work around them. Muay Thai is often referred to as the art of eight limbs - so you’ll hear a lot of us saying: ‘It’s all good, I’ve got another seven to work with!’
Fragile toes will be wrapped, dodgy limbs will be strapped and liberally coated in Thai liniment oil to make it through another session. There are those days when sparring is so tentative, in case you set off one of your old injuries again, and others where you’re so high on adrenaline you don’t notice ’til later you’ve knackered your knee again.
For anyone looking in, it’s profoundly stupid, yet living with pain is part of the game. In Thailand, it makes sense, because fighters aren’t paid as much as UFC stars or pro boxers per match, so traditionally they have to fight multiple times a month to pay the bills. Sometimes they literally can’t afford to rest.
I’m an amateur fighter, so I’m not even fighting for money. That should make it easier to rest, right? Well. Muay Thai has a way of taking over your life, even as an amateur. And when your entire identity is training and fighting, it’s unthinkable to pause it even to heal. Succumbing to pain becomes a sign of weakness, a sign you don’t want it enough. But, really, allowing your body to rest and heal when it needs it should be seen as a sign of strength.
This probably goes a long way to explaining why I waited more than a year to excise a nasty, infection-prone, cyst from my lower back. Recovering from this kind of surgery is gnarly. The doctor scoops out the infected bits and leaves you with a gigantic hole which needs to be packed daily with gauze to ensure it heals from the bottom up. In training terms, that means at least six weeks off.
(And if you follow me on Twitter you’ll know it also means six weeks of humiliation chasing up dressing change appointments)
Pre the coronavirus-infected 2020, that amount of time away from the gym was just unthinkable for me. When you use training as a band aid for your mental health problems like I do, even a week without seems like too much. I often trained myself to the brink of exhaustion because it meant I was too tired to think about being depressed. It’s a distraction. But it’s also borne out of some latent anxiety, because I’m always worried I’m not doing enough. (did I mention I do this for fun??)
I ended up getting the surgery last week, so even though gyms in England open this week and all I want to do is train, I’m sitting out for a little longer. And, yes, it’s killing me. But it’s just not sensible to go anywhere near a gym with a crater in my back. Any doctor would tell me the same.
So why am I still haunted by feelings of shame and guilt, as though I’m being wilfully lazy by resting? Combat athletes are so used to biting down on their mouth-guards and training through the pain that when we really do need to stop, we berate ourselves. The fitness industry as a whole seems to view rest as failure. If you’re not working, you’re not worth it.
I think a lot about the ‘no excuses’ crowd on Instagram, the ones who posted about staying lean and fit during lockdown while the world was, sometimes literally, on fire. What none of them say is it’s a huge privilege to be able to train as normal in 2020, particularly if fitness is your hobby rather than your income. It means you’re still healthy, mentally and physically, you still have money in the bank and/or someone in your bubble you can train with without worrying you’re going to kill off someone’s nan.
Then I remember so much on Instagram is fake. For all I know, they’ve been crying every day too. I’m just as much a part of the problem - it’s not as if I wrote about how depressed I was when I posted sun-kissed outdoor training videos this summer.
‘No excuses’ makes no sense in 2020. All you can really do when shit is going down is your best. And your best sometimes means knowing when you need rest.
All this to say, this ‘no pain no gain’ attitude may not exactly be fit for a global pandemic. In any case, my first post-surgery move was to delete Instagram so I don’t have to look at all that for a little bit.
Thanks for reading! Like I said I’ve deleted social apps off my phone so feel free to share away, but don’t be offended if I don’t see it ‘cause I have 10 mins a day on my desktop before my computer blocks Twitter and Insta. When I’m more connected, hopefully I can post some links to things going on in women’s Muay Thai, eg fights and the like. In the meantime, one thing I did see in my allotted social media time this week was this post from @female.nakmuays:
Following on from the females in training post, @bryony.soden has shared a very clear cut example of a bad weight cut vs a good one.
In the clip, Bryony is fighting the same opponent at the same weight but the difference in energy and power is almost unbelievable.
I’ll hopefully talk about overtraining in another edition - it’s a huge issue in the sport, particularly with women damaging themselves by trying to make low weight categories with little to no advice on how to so. Bryony’s story is so fascinating to me because she has experience of a bad and a good weight cut against the same opponent.
Hit me up if there’s anything you’d like me to cover! I’m mostly just making it up as I go along.