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Hey all, I've been doing Muay Thai on and off for about three years now and am looking to get more serious about it. I'm looking at doing a trip to Thailand for a couple of weeks to train in Chiang mai and or Pattaya October. My conditioning isn't the best, but I'm in decent shape and can do two classes at my gym back to back without much trouble. The only thing I'm a little worried about is road work. I am a godawful runner. Like, I did cross country for my Highschool P.E. credit and I pretty much never improved after the first couple week. I always feel like i'm dying beyond mile two. I've heard most gyms run 5-10k every morning, and that to get the most out of training one should show the coaches that they are willing to give their all. What I'm wondering whether it would be frowned upon to only complete part of the morning run, or walk for sections of it.

When the word "keto" escapes my lips, the first thing I get is a comment or message about how it's great for weight loss and terrible for athletes. As it happens, I'm an athlete and I haven't lost weight.... and yet it's good for me. Mostly people worry about endurance, hitting a wall, not having energy during training, etc. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that I also fast every other day. Not only is low carb supposed to make you tired, but no food at all should make you unable to move. I've experienced none of this. Not even so much at the beginning, before I was fat-adapted. But I will say this: folks who experience the drag and fatigue - or those who are simply afraid of it - I highly suspect the culprit is not calories or macros at all, but rather electrolytes. If you're struggling to train low carb or fasted - truly, either one - I would urge you to try focusing on your sodium, potassium and magnesium first. All those pre-blended satchets of electrolytes will have glucose in them as well, but I make my own without that and believe it's not needed at all. I'd wager that most of what people experience in being dead-tired when coming to Thailand, feeling depressed, exhausted, etc. is truly more to do with electrolytes than even the physical load. And the physical load is a lot; it's fucking exhausting. But if we're building a pyramid for what's most important, calories and breakdown of food comes a far third to both hydration (meaning electrolytes + adequate water) and sleep. You could eat absolutely nothing and have the electrolyte and sleep thing down and do okay. Even if you don't go low carb or keto, if you're struggling - anywhere in the world, but especially in hot climates where you sweat all day - start with electrolytes, fix your sleep. I heavily suspect people ignore or are ignorant of both these factors and so they focus on food. Did you eat "enough protein?" Are you eating enough or too much rice? Did you eat before training? You didn't eat before training. It goes on and on. On a violin there are pegs that pull the strings from the very end of it, on what's called the "scroll." Those make big changes to tuning the violin. At the opposite end of the string are little metal pegs, attached to the bridge. They make tiny adjustments to the string. Both are needed to tune a violin, but don't mistake them for each other. You can crank and crank at the little metal pegs and make no significant changes. Or you can barely move the bigger pegs on the scroll and have an entirely different sound. Sleep and electrolytes are the big pegs; food, even though it's important, are really those little pegs in comparison.