Micc

Emma, thanks for the advice, it actually seems do-able. I usually say that I can train all evening long, from 8pm til midnight, even running, but it's a bit weird and maybe even a bit dangerous doing your run at midnight :) (dangerous as in I live nearby a forest and lately we had wild boars as "visitors" in my area). I will run this weekend and try to work one sprint during the week into my schedule. For starters! :) Kevin, thanks for your advice, too! I will try it out one day, when I get used to running ;) dtrick, thanks for the running plan, I think I actually tried it once, but didn't really liked it. But I don't like running at ALL ;)

Can I talk about the fight itself for a sec? Coz it left me stunning! Coming back to your question though, I think Rory was trying to use his long arms advantage in using elbows just slightly outside of Robbies' striking range. That is my understanding. I'd also love to hear the pros talk about it :) The fight seemed kind of boring at first, but when I realised the intensity of both of them I was really hooked and amazed. It was truly one of the best fights I've seen lately, a lot better character-wise that the main fight McGregor vs Mendes. They went and gave it their all, I was so impressed!!! I still am!

Annie, I would love to stay longer, I originally planned for a month, but as it turns out life will not allow it ;) for now. And finances are a big issue for me here, too. I treat it kind of like a make-your-dream-come-true adventure, so even two full weeks will give me plenty of experiences and food for thought :) Unfortunately I don't make as much money as I would like to, so even if I think it's great in Thailand I will probably be able to come back in two years or so. Or later, if I want to finally have cabinets in my kitchen or my flat furnitured ;) or a car. or or or...true sacrifices going on here ;)

I have less than a month left before a high-paced 8 days summer training camp, where we will be doing 2 muay thai trainings a day PLUS running in the morning.... Me and running is like the worst relationship EVER. I neglect it, because I'm so bad at it....and therefore I can't motivate myself to go out and run, and I have no idea how I can run with my tight weekly schedule... Hearing the trainer talk today about prepping myself for the camp when it comes to running I realised it's last minute if I want to try and do something about it!! Can you give me some piece of advise as to when I should run? I'm like Tyler NOT a morning person, I get up at 7:30am (with a lot of struggle) and go to work, come back home around 5pm, cook and eat dinner, go to training at 7/8pm until 9/10pm - and this is what my week Monday-Friday look like. I feel like running only on the weekends will not help me much...or is it better than nothing? If I go to the club earlier and run lets say 30 minutes I will be SO TIRED in training that I won't benefit much out of the training. I don't really know how I should introduce running into my weekly schedule...Any idea is apreciated!! I'm honestly devastated about this issue :(

Wohooo! :D Let's celebrate the 50 hours milestone!!! :D :thumbsup: :banana:

Annie, thanks for your post! I was actually thinking about easing into it, just like you said, first week only one training a day, second week - two trainings. And it's almost set that I will be staying around 17 days in Thailand in mid-January. I'm planning to arrive on Thursday or Friday, look around the gyms I previously pick out and just get used to the climat (I have NEVER been to a hot climate, only stayed in Middle/North Europe all my life :D), and then have two full weeks of training at the gym I finally choose. The first week I also plan to enjoy some of the tourist attractions if it will be possible to combine it with the training. Do you guys think this will be a good plan for a first-timer like myself?

Yeah, the thing he talks about: promotions lack fighters with fierce personalities. They don't show the personalities. On one hand, the thing I love about Muay Thai is the respect and control of emotions. On the other hand - yeah this is exactly what prevents the best fighters to be recognizable for their personalities. I admit the drama the MMA circle is creating really draws attention, but sometimes I feel disgusted by hearing how top fighters bad-mouth each other. So I'm kinda in-between. I want Muay Thai to be better known, but I don't want the "morality" to go down the drain. I came to watch MMA when I learned about the UFC The Ultimate Fighter Season 20 with all girls on board :) I liked Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey before, for being pioneers in the MMA arena, but I started following some fighters after I watched the series ;) I don't really watch Muay Thai fights...I'm a bad fan. I prefer training :)

Gavin, as long as the goal will keep you motivated to move and not "sit in front of the TV" as you said, I'd advise you to stick to it. It might take longer, but it's a learning process. As long as you handle your schedule, you can do it. I work a full time job and train 6x a week, but I also have a part-time job from time to time that takes up around 5h a week. It's not much, I know, but I still manage around it to make my training schedule work. Uh, if you are ready to give up most of your social life ;) And congrats on the weight loss! I finally managed to move a bit down on the scale, too :) It's just 1kg, but a firm 1kg-loss is better than nothing :) I watched my first sparing video from last year a few days ago and I was like "nooo, is it me? it's me. nooo. It's so hilarious!!" But I'm not embarassed, because I think I made some progress during this year, technique-wise and even though my weight is exactly the same as last year, I think I look slimmer now. :)

I put my whole experience with the tight muscle into a blog post! :D Finally something informative I can share with the community! :) Blog post.

Kevin, why is it political? I don't quite get it :( I get that it's funny, but why political?

I stumbled across this MMA Hour with JoJo just now, where she talks about it. I don't know how to embed videos, so here's the link

Joanna's style is much more aggressive than JoJo's, as far as I have seen it. So I think she will deal with knees and with everything that JoJo might want to throw at her. I also liked JoJo in the house, but I heard Joanna talking about JoJo having some private stuff to deal with during the UFC Fight Night Cracow, and it seemed like she was concerned for her, so maybe they are friends? At this moment, I don't see anyone in the strawweight division who might have what it takes to beat her in the Octagon. She will have a perfect game plan ready and will stick to it - this is what I'm amazed at, she really sticks to the game plan. But I really love hearing and watching videos of other fighters react to her. The straw-weight division seems also split - some think she's one-dimensional, some think she's great. Sooo...I think the UFC strawweights should lift their training to a whole new level, if they want to be Joanna-ready. They are amazing athletes anyway and I'm happy that WMMA is becoming a choice of proffesion for young girls who are into martial arts! :) So many great athletes to look up to!

Haha yeah I feel USA is kinda getting into a Joanna-hype, but I'm sooo happy for her, that she has her time to shine! She puts a lot of hard work into it, so I'm totally up for letting her enjoy the Joanna-Champion-hype. The article was okay for me, good read, with lots of references, but in the end only she and her team know her real abilities and work on them. I'm happy and proud that a small girl from a small city in Poland has such a big fist and big personality, that she can make UFC and the US-American fans worship her :D :D I'm also looking forward to her history in the UFC and how far she will take it.. But for now, I hope she enjoys this moment of stardom to the fullest!

Emma, Steph, I have tight calves when I skip rope AND when I run :D I need to take a serious look at my posture, I think this is where the problem is. They say good shoes can fix a lot of problems. Emma, I was told that I have this problem with skipping rope and tight calves, because I'm overweight, so it's interesting to know this also happens to people whose weight is okay. This shows me that there's not one and only solution to every problem... Gavin, thanks for the advice, yeah I have a bath, I will look for this salt, probably under another brand name here, but I'm sure I will find it. :) I actually taken a quick look at Google and Epsom salt does so many good things! wow, I need to try it! :D

Oh, now that you mention it, it makes complete sense! "443" is "ShiShi-san" -> Yoshimi :) :) At least in my manga&anime-based-Japanese-knowledge it makes totally sense! (4 is shi and 3 is san in Japanese, "-san" is also used as a honorific ending, kinda like Mr. or Mrs.)

I train 6 nights a week, and on the 7th day I have to do some relaxing like yoga, sauna and all social stuff goes around it. My friends laughed a bit at me at first that I have to schedule a meeting with them in advance, but yeah it's like that. Some of them, who also have a tight schedule (not necesserly because of training) understand it and cooperate with me nicely :) Others...well we just see each other like once in a month or two..or less. I have close to no social life, apart from spontanious outings with the guys from my gym after training. I think now my friends or people around me in general just don't care about me anymore, coz I withdrew myself so much from any kind of social life with them. My family cooperates with me nicely, if there is a family meeting and I have to leave the party early to go train, my parents understand it, my aunts and oncles don't, but I don't care what they think. :) My parents are actually helping me out a lot, letting me use their car to go to training, otherwise I had no way to maintain this crazy schedule (or I had to spend the money I'm saving for going to Thailand for buying a car ;)). I don't think it's connected with being a junkie of some kind, it's like you said: priorities. Before I shifted my focus to Muay Thai I was obsessed with rock shows, I had no problem with going to Germany, the UK, Czech, Slovakia, just to see my favorite bands, sleeping on the railway station or not sleeping at all - just going to the show and back home (like...a 6 or 12 hour trip one way, who cares? ;)). I was at a show almost every 2-3 weeks and this was the meaning of my life. Now, there are still bands I like to listen to, but if the show is on a training night I will try to make both work or let go the show. It's just that my priorities shifted from going to shows to training. I'd rather say it's a state of focusing of yourself, a kind of meditation and not being a junkie! But honestly speaking... I'd love it if my friends were more excited about my training, but it's so out of their worlds, they are only scared for me and don't understand why I'm doing it....Actually on Sunday my friend messaged me pleading me to stop it, coz she cought glipses of how Joanna Jędrzejczyk massacred Jessica Penne in their UFC title fight. :) :) I tried explaining to her why it happened, but nooo ;)

The pain is slowly starting to fade, I bought some potasium and magnesium suplement and take it once a day, it helps a lot!! I was shocked, but after the first pill it actually started to be less cramped. I actually tried some muscle relaxing pill before, but it didn't help. My trainer said I should try massaging the leg with thai oil before training, but I don't have it and I must order it online, so I can't have it like right now. I'm dealing with other warming up creams I have at home. I also tape it for support before training with kinesio tape - but with a technique I made up on my own, but it helps! It looks like in the picture below (there is pink and skin-colored tape, so it looks weird, but I just had these two at hand). I don't know if you see, but the tape goes in a V shape from my achilles upwards around my leg on both sides, and then the vertical tapes are for the support of the muscles, starting at the bottom of the muscle :) :) Picture (I still can't work out how to post them) During training I have to stop and stretch the calf every now and then, but I'm almost all good now! :) And training-wise I don't do any jumps or rope-skipping for now, I'm also careful when I jog during warm-up - I try to run on the middle part of my foot and sloooowly. It gets a bit cramped during technique training, when I have to repetively lift the heel of the foot, but I can deal with this kind of pain easily.

That's actually the first thing I did :) But Sylvie talks about conditioning your shins in these two videos I found, which is not where my problem was, coz it hurt at the side of my leg, not at the front-shin part. Right now I still think it's a muscle tightness, so I'm massaging it. I even took a tennis ball to work and I'm massaging every hour or so :) :) I also read a lot abouth thight calves on runner forums and am trying various stretching approaches. I still feel the tightness, but I'm going to training today! :)

This is a sweet video, and for me it has also the aspect of learning more about Thailand - I'm so focused on the Muay Thai part of Thailand that I forgot there's the whole middle class/high class, and it's interesting for me to see this kind of Thailand, too :) You could see this kind of movie in any European country for example, so it really shows there are not really big differences between the west and Thailand when it comes to the middle-class-level. And it shows that everywhere around the world we have similar problems and motivations :)

Thanks a lot for the advice, I've already taken 4 days off, only did some yoga, stretching and a kayak trip :D yeah I know.. ;) Today's some strength training in line and TRX. Yeah they are a lot of fun! :) Yesterday I went to a physio and I probably don't have shin splints, just an enormously thight muscle...although he felt some weird bump, so I will go check it at the doctors' soon, to rule out any bad things. I have really tight calves all the time and I probably don't stretch them enough...so maybe it's the cause for this situation. I think it has to be connected to something else, because my knee has started to click(?) when I walk around the time the muscle tightness started, sooo yeah I think my body has just hung a big red flag asking for some rest :)

MissBruise, I have the privilege to be the only female at my gym's Muay Thai classes, so other girls will probably look to me for style ideas, if they don't have their own ;) Or at least that's what I like to think. The girls I met at other gyms usually wear shorts or thai shorts with T-shirt or tank top, I think everyone wants to feel comfortable and has a common feeling for what is "proper" in gym enviroment. I struggle a bit with what is proper for my body type though, sometimes I feel that a snug tank-top is too revealing, because it clings to my big belly and you can see back fat and big arms...on the other side, it's what every other girl would wear, just in a smaller size, so maybe I'm just too self-critical. The same thing goes for wearing only leggins, without shorts on top of them...I've read so many critical things on the internet about chubby girls wearing leggins, that I'm scared to wear them. Poland is an extremely catholic country (and in "extremely" I mean on the extreme side, which scares me a lot), but when it comes to gyms, fitness and stuff like that I see a lot of pictures on Facebook or blogs, where the girls show they finely sculped buttocks or other parts of the body and the male audience is happy to see it, at the same time other girls use it for motivation, so...I don't recall a case of 'slut shaming' really when it comes to the way you dress while working out.

WaffleNinja, beaches are a universe on their own :) I've seen a funny comic picture (can't find it now, it was in Polish) showing a man with a big belly and man-boobs in beach shorts, beside him standing his chubby wife, topless, also with a big belly and boobs - they look identical. And the man says "woman, you're indecent!" :) :) So I think men don't see themselves as everyone else does, they always think they look like a Greek god ;) MissBruise, I'm big and curvy too, but I found that I feel most comfortable in rashguards with long sleeves even though they have a snug fit - especially when we're doing clinch. But I mostly excercise in sport T-shirts that are moderately loose, but comfortably snug and are from special polyester (?) materials that don't keep the sweat in (yuck!). Now that it's summer I train in knee-lenght leggins with thai shorts on it, but I feel so exposed! And my shinguards are uncomfortable. And kneeing the heavy bag rashes my skin :D :D hahaha first world problems...

I don't really run, but I'm overweight and have started skipping rope a lot more than usual during the last few weks...I heard these 2 factors put together can cause it...i still hope it's just a minor muscle tightness, but it hurts soooo much I think it's not... Thanks for the advice- body weight excercises make me think of TRX, which I like and I think I can use them!

Edit: I changed the topics name to not confuse readers looking for solutions. TL;DR - my shin splints were fortunately just a tight muscle in my calf. --- So it seems, I have severe shin splints. This is just my google-based diagnosis, I will verify it during this week, but all symptoms say it's that. The pain is awful, I can't even squat, coz my leg starts to hurt. And the pain starts the moment I start working out.... So I know I have to rest. But I can't rest! I feel it's such a waste of time! I'm thinking about training around this injury, but all options are out of question: no running, no kicking, no rope-skipping (which is probably the cause of my injury!!!), no shadow-boxing. So what can I do? Do you have any idea? I came up with: - yoga - training the upper body on the machines at the gym (booooring!) - rowing machine (I have to try if it doesn't flare up the pain, legs are strongly involved here too, but I never used this machine) Is there any way I can do some muay thai technique during this time? Any idea is welcome! I had to give up tomorrows' sparring session at my gym because of this and I'm so angry, but I know anger won't help me fix it. Just for the record, I already tried deep stretches of the calf muscles, anti-inflammatory medicine, kinesio taping and a self-massage. Oh and an excercise that strenghtens shin muscles. I will go to see a physiotherapeut this week hopefully and consult with a shoe specialist if I need some special shoe sole made maybe. I want to go to my doctor and get a MRI, but this might be mission impossible, coz it's so hard to get to the doctor :/ and I can't do a MRI without perscription :/ It's so hard to get in to the doctor when you work during the day like I do...I need to skip work to go to the doctor, I don't like to do it, it sucks!!!

I know this probably won't answer your question, but I would just look up other gyms...but I have a lot of gyms nearby to choose from, I don't know how's it over there at your place. Are you looking for a one-month organized camp at some gym, with training and accomodation? So you basically want to go train at some other gym for a month, like in Thailand, but in Europe, am I getting it right? If that's it I would start looking at some established gyms connected to the MMA business, coz this is what your interest lies in...Maybe UK/Scottland/Ireland? There are pretty strong gyms there...I'd try looking up these gyms where the UFC fighters train and try to find some info about holiday camps/training possibilities. You might also book yourself massages and do a month of spa and recovery :D I'm sure if I had no real choice, I'd do just that! :D