If you practice sports, you have a higher chance at injuries than somebody sitting on the couch all day. At least, that’s in theory. When you practice a very intensive sports such as Muay Thai, chance is that you will definitely will encounter injuries. Everybody gets injured, there are no exceptions. True, some may get it worse than others, but nobody gets away from it.
I myself have got some pretty nasty experiences with injuries. I bruised my ribs once in the first round of a 8 men tournament, I did won the fight but in the fight after that, I got a knee strike on the same ribs so I couldn’t continue. I think I bruised my toes like a hundred times during training, not even to say anything about my shins! But this must all sound very familiair to you. For a long time the worst injury I ever faced was the time I seriously bruised my ribs. This caused me to do nothing for six weeks, or at least do nothing for three weeks and train easy for another three.
It’s no good sitting at home doing nothing, even when you know you have to do nothing or face more time doing nothing. When I had a fight in Eindhoven, somewhere in the southern part of Holland, I broke my forearm in the first round. I suspect there was already a little tear in it from my friend from the gym. He likes to do jumping spinning kicks to the rib section and I tend to block it with my forearm. By the way, the guy weighs abiut 110 kg. That’s right.
Anyway, when I just started the first round, the other guy, who was a southpaw, kicked a lot with his left leg to my body. As I used to do, I caught the kick on my arm and countered with a right straight punch. This worked out a couple of times. But at one point I noticed that I punched him straight to the temple and nothing happened. Further examing myself, I noticed I couldn’t make a fist, I was hitting him with something that can only be described as a hand like a dead fish. Feeling no pain at the time, I could not figure out why my hand did not obey my command to clench to a fist. I fought a half minute more but was only occupied in my mind with my hand, I thought it could be broken. I signaled my trainer and pointed at my arm. At that point the referee asked what was going on. I explained my hand wasn’t working and he gave a time out to have it checked out by the doctor. He said probably nothing was broken but I could better go to the hospital to be sure. My hand was still not reacting very much. The fight was stopped in the first round.
That sucked real hard. I was the main event of the evening, waited whole day for this and after two minutes, it was over. Damn! We decided to go by the hospital to be sure and have some photos taken from the right forearm. After the first results came back, they told me my arm was broken in half. It wasn’t a ‘clean break’ so it got worse. They had to perform chirurgy to set the bone and put some piece of metal in it attached with screws. And so they did. Finally when I was home after staying a day in the hospital, my cast was really tight til the point I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. Time to call the doctor, who oreder me straight back into the hospital, cut open my cast and told me my arm was swollen so much that they might have to perform another operation, just to release the fluid. Luckily it did not got this point. I stayed with my forearm high in the sky hoping the fluid would come down by itself and every half hour the doctors would come and check just to see if they need to cut the arm open again.
The following days I sat at home with my arm in bandages and feeling sorry for myself. I never had to face this before. When you are used to training almost every day and suddenly do nothing at all anymore, you fall into a hole. I love to work out, go to the gym, sweat like a pig and come home all beat (sometimes literally). Muay Thai is fighting in the ring according to certain rules. Mentally it is a challenge as well as it is physically. The training process you put your body through prepares it for the upcoming fight. Due to hard training you can strengthen your body, sharpen your reflexes and improve your skills. In fact it is through hard training that you damage your body and because of good rest and nutrition you become stronger.
It is harder to become stronger mentally. There is no such thing is a mental gym. The only way you can achieve mental toughness is through overcoming obstacles and suffer disappointments. When you get a rough time mentally and overcome this, your mind has just become stronger. A certain test for your mental strength is when you suffer an injury. Expecially if you have to get a lot of rest and you are used to exercising on a daily basis, it can be hard on you.
Let me return to the story I was telling. I was sitting at home every day cursing my arm and feeling sad. This was hard on me and I got more and more restless. Now was time to show mental toughness and it was sure I could use it. However, I got very impatient and couldn’t wait to get back to fighting or at least to training. This led to me going to train earlier than I was supposed to. I went to France for a while to do some training and as this was planned for months already, I didn’t wanted to change it. Now I got to training there and even when I felt pain in my arm, I didn’t stop. I was really forcing it, thinking the pain would pass.
But it didn’t. When I got back in Holland and went to the Hospital for another checkup, they saw that it was broken again and I had to go with my arm in the cast again. This time six weeks straight while using a device called a bone stimulator. This worked and after this time I learned to be a bit more patient. My arm is back in shape but the scar remains and it always remebers me that I have to take my periods of rest to get stronger. You rest to come back and fight even harder. Remember that.
In strenght and peace,
Signing off,
MTD
