Learning to Deal with the Pain of Muay Thai

On Saturday I had my first Muay Thai lesson. The last couple of days have been spent suffering because of my lack of preparation for this. After the lesson I felt a bit stiff, and this continued on into Sunday. It wasn’t until Monday though that I really found out about the pain of Muay Thai. I blame it on the 100 bench sit-ups, but I suppose the real culprit is my low fitness level. I had felt good about the fact that I’d been working out quite regularly by myself, but the truth is that I never really pushed hard. This meant that when a trainer did push me my body suffered.

On Monday I woke up to find some slight discomfort around my abdominal area, by the afternoon it hurt to move. I was fairly convinced it was muscular but couldn’t understand why it would occur two days after the training session. I turned to my best friend Google, and it appears that it is quite common for the pain to begin after a gap – something to do with the lactic acid building up in the muscles. Monday night I found it almost impossible to find a comfortable position in bed and kept waking up. Movement was uncomfortable all day yesterday as well, but things have settled down today.

I have never experienced so much pain following exercise, but I suppose it’s to be expected. I know for sure that it won’t put me off Muay Thai – although I do hope that it won’t be something that occurs after every training session. I heard that it takes about a month for the body to adapt and that sounds about right. I hoped to do a lot of training this week to better prepare for the next class but I was unable to do anything yesterday; hopefully I’ll be able to do more over the next couple of days.

The pain of Muay Thai is actually not such a bad kind of discomfort because I feel sure that it is benefiting me. I want to push my body, because I know that this is how you get good results. I punished my body needlessly for almost two decades and had nothing to show for it – this time it is different.

Chenārān Don’t Forget to Visit the Middle Aged Muay Thai Website (just click on the highlighted text and you will be taken right there)