Lykte

Hi, I have been training muay thai for 5 years now with a vision of +8. I have never used lenses and i cant get an operation.My bad eye sight was one of the main things preventing me from starting sooner. I was convinced that it would be impossible for me to learn muay thai with such bad vision and that I would be severely handicapped. The first couple of years of training this were true. I struggled more than my peers with learning the basic moves. This combined with the fact that I was pretty overweight when I started out made me the worst beginner at my gym. The first semester totally sucked to be honest, I remember almost crying before going to class and wanting to puke when the instructor started paring us up for sparring. I knew that every single one there was more athletic than me plus had perfect eyesight. I pretty much can’t see the face of anyone without my glasses unless they are completely in front of me. This made for some pretty awkward situations when people would greet me from the other side of the gym and me deadeye staring back at them without acknowledging anything. I learned to counter this by faking an overly extrovert version of myself and greeting and smiling to everyone at the gym all the time like a madman, good times. I learned much about myself during this time, first of all that I’m stubborn as heck. There was no chance in hell that I was going to let my bad eyes and big ass get in the way of my dream of muay thai. I completely dedicated myself (and still am) to the art and became obsessed with moving past this. I had to work harder than everyone else at my gym to get to the level they were, I lost 30 kilos (60 pounds?) and slowly learned how to work past my eyes. I learned the basics and found clever ways to work around my eyesight. Sure, sometimes I miss with the teep, jab like a madman and totally miscalculate kicks, sometimes I’m in the wrong position and struggle to block. But today I feel almost as good as the guys that started at the same time as me, it just took a bit longer. I have accepted the fact that my eyes will never be perfect and that in some aspects i fall behind. Regardless, I will continue to train and compete in muay thai, and I love every second of it! In 3 months I will be going to Thailand for the first time and train for a month, look for the awkward looking Norwegian in the corner teeping into the air.