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Before Muay Thai, I was playing soccer and had to stop due to a knee injury (torn meniscus).

I was looking for a sport to do for the fitness side without any risk of further knee injuries, but somehow ended up doing Muay Thai. I fell in love with this sport immediately and nothing was going to stop me not even my knee.

It's been two years and probably twice a year I get bad knee pains mostly from running :( it gets so frustrating, it stops me from kicking and especially running sometimes for a week or possibly a month.

At the moment I am contemplating whether I should have surgery on my knee before I leave for Thailand (hopefully around August). I don't want to go to a gym and say I cant run because I'm worried they will think I'm using excuses. I just choose to skip for longer rounds as it gives me a lower risk of an injury.

I'm worried to have surgery but then again it could end up well? Sometimes I believe it can be healed with rehabilitation and strength training and just being cautious, but then again I don't want to go to Thailand and have anything stop me from my goals...

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I tore my meniscus several years ago and did not do surgery, just PT and rehab work. I stopped running and instead swim at the pool. I'll do some sprint work with the team, but like 90-95% of my running has become swimming. My knee has been feeling SO much better.

 

I don't know how that would translate to training in Thailand, but I'd say good shoes and proper form will help. Also, if you can rest your knee with swimming or some other form of cardio these few months so that it is healed and in prime shape for a Thai gym and the running there.

 

Good luck!

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I tore my meniscus several years ago and did not do surgery, just PT and rehab work. I stopped running and instead swim at the pool. I'll do some sprint work with the team, but like 90-95% of my running has become swimming. My knee has been feeling SO much better.

 

I don't know how that would translate to training in Thailand, but I'd say good shoes and proper form will help. Also, if you can rest your knee with swimming or some other form of cardio these few months so that it is healed and in prime shape for a Thai gym and the running there.

 

Good luck!

Thank you ! that's a good tip.  Any advice is greatly appreciated.

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I have the same exact worries. 

Thought it's not my meniscus but my MCLs that are the problem. From what I've heard, meniscus surgeries have good % of success and are not so long to heal (like 8 weeks). 

I just partially teared my MCLs for the third time (1996 and a month ago for the right knee and 2011 for the left). That one of the reason I had to postpone my training in Thailand to 2018. I got surgery in 1996 not in 2011 and waiting to know for this one. But anyways, even before I torn it again it was a concern for me. The biggest. Really I fear not the whole training in Thailand but I fear the 10km run of the morning and the 5k in the afternoon six times a week BIG TIME. This is a major concern for me as I heard you do not get the respect from the coaches if you do not do the running. 

So I second you question. I'll do 2 hours of bike if needed, but I know that I probably won't be able to do that amount of running on a regular basis for more than two or three weeks without seriously injured myself. 

Is there any way around it and still getting the respect of the coaches in Thailand?

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I have the same exact worries. 

Thought it's not my meniscus but my MCLs that are the problem. From what I've heard, meniscus surgeries have good % of success and are not so long to heal (like 8 weeks). 

I just partially teared my MCLs for the third time (1996 and a month ago for the right knee and 2011 for the left). That one of the reason I had to postpone my training in Thailand to 2018. I got surgery in 1996 not in 2011 and waiting to know for this one. But anyways, even before I torn it again it was a concern for me. The biggest. Really I fear not the whole training in Thailand but I fear the 10km run of the morning and the 5k in the afternoon six times a week BIG TIME. This is a major concern for me as I heard you do not get the respect from the coaches if you do not do the running. 

So I second you question. I'll do 2 hours of bike if needed, but I know that I probably won't be able to do that amount of running on a regular basis for more than two or three weeks without seriously injured myself. 

Is there any way around it and still getting the respect of the coaches in Thailand?

Oh wow ! Hope you're doing fine.

That's true, I'm happy it's not as serious as the ACL.

How did you feel after the surgery ? Did it feel normal again ?

Probably just be extra extra extra cautious when running and have a good warm up..

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Oh wow ! Hope you're doing fine.

That's true, I'm happy it's not as serious as the ACL.

How did you feel after the surgery ? Did it feel normal again ?

Probably just be extra extra extra cautious when running and have a good warm up..

Well the surgery I had was in 1996 I am not even sure what I had because back in the day, there was a big transition in the health system and they fucked up everything. Basically it was more butchery than surgery. I have a 4inch scar on the knee. When I came out of surgery they told me to move my knee as much as possible and the week after they put a cast on my leg from ankle to the thigh for 2 months .... 

Anyway. my knees always hurt, they really are bad. Both of them. Thought it's not so bad when I boxe and kick, the take downs are where I hurt myself. 

So for now, I am waiting to see an orthopedic to know if I need surgery (I am in Canada, free health care but long health care). I can't train right now. Well I do cardio and upper body stuff but I can do power transfert so I can kick or boxe or clinch. 

Really sucks. 

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To answer fully you question. 

It never felt better really. I mean, as far as I remember my knees always hurts. I was 6' at 12 years old. It's like wave. There is sometimes when they feel strong and sometimes when they hurt, can't seem to understand why. 

Awww man that really sucks !! I did hear some good and bad experiences with knee surgery, but hey, if your knee is stopping you from training then I don't see why not give it one more go ? It's good to see that you're going to see an Orthopedic about it. Thankfully I can train but I'm always aware during training, always feeling unstable etc.. I kinda have gotten used to it..

Thanks for sharing your experiences and best of luck with the orthopedic

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Thanks, 

Yeah the worse is not training. The pain I don't really care and it's not really painful anyway, but I am not able to extend my knee so there is no way I can train. 

Anyways,

Thanks again and happy Aussie day on Thursday. 

Haha thanks !

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if its going to injure you then don't run, its not worth it.

Depending on the gym your going to, if its a foreigner friendly gym they probably won't mind about the running since your paying anyway, just train more intensively to earn their respect. The problem may occur if you ask for a fight, training wise should be fine.

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if its going to injure you then don't run, its not worth it.

Depending on the gym your going to, if its a foreigner friendly gym they probably won't mind about the running since your paying anyway, just train more intensively to earn their respect. The problem may occur if you ask for a fight, training wise should be fine.

But that's the thing, what if I want to fight? I mean I know this is in part a cultural thing, but there is some boxers and mma fighters that do not run and bike or swim instead. 

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But that's the thing, what if I want to fight? I mean I know this is in part a cultural thing, but there is some boxers and mma fighters that do not run and bike or swim instead. 

 

In my experience of Thai gyms, if you don't run you don't fight. They will train you but I've never met a Thai who doesn't consider running an important part of fight prep. Whilst there are people in MMA and stuff who don't run, that is not the Thai way, and they think their way is best. 

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Have you tried kinesio taping as support for your knee? Some physiotherapist use it even as part of the therapy, but I usually handle my knee pains with kinesio tapes and in a few days the pain is over. I don't have any diagnosed problems with my knees, though. They just hurt sometimes. Warming up properly helps a lot! Kinesio tapes also help me get rid of the "unstable" feeling in my knees when I have a weaker day. I love them!

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Have you tried kinesio taping as support for your knee? Some physiotherapist use it even as part of the therapy, but I usually handle my knee pains with kinesio tapes and in a few days the pain is over. I don't have any diagnosed problems with my knees, though. They just hurt sometimes. Warming up properly helps a lot! Kinesio tapes also help me get rid of the "unstable" feeling in my knees when I have a weaker day. I love them!

That's a good idea. Thx. 

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But that's the thing, what if I want to fight? I mean I know this is in part a cultural thing, but there is some boxers and mma fighters that do not run and bike or swim instead. 

Well that's where you sit down with your trainer and speak with them about this, I think in the south the gyms are so foreigner friendly they they probably will let you fight, but it still depends on the trainer and the gym. 

So, I can't really answer this question properly.

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Well that's where you sit down with your trainer and speak with them about this, I think in the south the gyms are so foreigner friendly they they probably will let you fight, but it still depends on the trainer and the gym. 

So, I can't really answer this question properly.

Thank you. Anyways, for sure I will try to do it and cope with it. I guess it would be different if I do it and then if I my knees can't handle it, talk with them about it, than just arriving saying I can't do it.

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I personally hate having limits placed on me, so I hate writing this, but if your knees are bad enough where you can't train or have decent range of motion, you may need to set more realistic goals.

 

I know you mentioned waiting until 2018 to head to Thailand, so I hope this year you can do the things you need to do to heal up and be ready for the demands of fight camp, in or out of Thailand. My American coach allows swimming because it's more accepted here, but I can still run 5-10k at a whack with no issues and do sometimes when the weather begs for an outdoor activity. I don't do it every day because I don't want to be back at the ortho with more tears.

 

Depending on the gym and the trainer, it's hard to say what fight opportunities you'll have in Thailand. Take care now so you'll be in top shape and increase your chances of fighting there.

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I personally hate having limits placed on me, so I hate writing this, but if your knees are bad enough where you can't train or have decent range of motion, you may need to set more realistic goals.

 

I know you mentioned waiting until 2018 to head to Thailand, so I hope this year you can do the things you need to do to heal up and be ready for the demands of fight camp, in or out of Thailand. My American coach allows swimming because it's more accepted here, but I can still run 5-10k at a whack with no issues and do sometimes when the weather begs for an outdoor activity. I don't do it every day because I don't want to be back at the ortho with more tears.

 

Depending on the gym and the trainer, it's hard to say what fight opportunities you'll have in Thailand. Take care now so you'll be in top shape and increase your chances of fighting there.

Yes, it's my third time with this kind of injury. I know that all in all it takes about a year to heal (when you're not a pro that has 40k to put in this). Usually, if I go progressively I can run 5km per day. But from what I read, it's more like 10km in the morning and 5km in the afternoon. That a lot of fucking running. Anyways, I'll see how I am as the year go by. Thanks. 

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  • 1 year later...

I know this is an old post but I wanted to suggest something that has worked well for me. I too suffer from knee injuries(breakdanced for 20yrs) so now with muay thai it is so important for me to  protect my knees because I also have flat feet so it adds to the stress put on my knees and back. I stopped running!! I switched over to riding a road bike, which allows me to cycle in a way that not only keeps my knees working smoothly, but allows me to tailor my cardio workouts which is awesome. I usually ride 90+ miles a week 25-30 mile rides and I do sprints and hill climbing and everything in between. I also add deadlifting to this and between the two my cardio and leg strength go through the roof, my knees get much more stable and stronger and I don't get the impact and wear running can give you over time. I am only 155 lbs but I can deadlift 250-300lbs. but even with moderate or light deadlifts my muay thai training is so much stronger and balanced. there is a reason dead lifts are used by every single sport, they work!!! just a different angle worth looking into to help you reach your goal and save some wear and tear on your joints:)

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I know some of these posts do go back quite a while, but I was reading it anyway; and I have asked one of the Orthopaedic Surgeons at work about training etc with meniscal injuries.

Basically: meniscal tears never heal; they can't. Resting the leg may well stop any pain and ease symptoms, but any sort of impact exercise will make it all start up again. The damage will probably get worse with continued impact and action. Essentially, you have to decide whether continuing is worth it. Surgery is available (and getting better all the time - no more three months with a full leg plaster!) but it won't stop more damage being done in the future. You can either decide to continue training with such an injury and put up with the pain and wait until you're stopping your MT and then have surgery; or have surgery now and then have to have it again in the future (assuming by then you have any meniscus left!) Really, your best bet every time is to discuss it with your orthopaedic consultant - they know you, they know the extent of your injury, they can discuss your training wishes, and give you the best advice suitable for you. After all, they are used to working with keen marathon runners who aren't going to give up running; with horse riders who aren't going to give up riding; and martial arts fiends who aren't going to give up fighting.

Pain from arthritis is often eased by maintaining good leg fitness because the muscles help hold the joint apart and stable. I have inoperable (well, it was inoperable when first diagnosed 16 years ago, they could probably do something about it now) mashed up meniscus but I have found keeping good muscle condition helps enormously and I now (touch wood) hardly ever suffer from any symptoms. I've got stunningly flat feet too!

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  • 5 months later...
  • 4 years later...

I've been getting quite heavy knee pain lately during and after my rides.
It started when I bought my new gravel bike that i purchased from online here and took it for a 3hr ride and towards the end my left knee starting acting up, when I got home I had troubles walking down stairs or putting any type of weight on the leg.

Long story short, I sold the topstone (for a few other reasons as well) and bought an Orbea Terra M30 and on 3/3 of my rides on this (50 min, 1hr 45 min and 2 hr) my knee got painful again. The pain seems mostly centered towards the front, outside and backside of the knee and when it gets really bad it also hurts down my leg around the top of my shin.

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Torn knee cartilage is a weird injury.

If the tears are small they can break off completely or lay back down and, either way, cause no pain.

I've got torn cartilage in both knees but that's what happened to me so I am pretty much symptom free with normal range of motion and strength.

That said, arthroscopic cartilage trimming is pretty quick to recover from.  I know one person who had it and was walking without crutches the next day (that may have been unwise but he had no discomfort/loss of strength from it)

Another friend had the cartilage trimmed and went out dancing that evening.  

I certainly DO NOT recommend that however the point is it's a simple surgery and recovery is comparatively easy compared to more invasive surgeries ... weeks vs months

You're a young guy and it's giving you problems and if it was me I'd get it fixed.

YMMV but I believe in fixing problems when they're small

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As fighters train into fatigue, Instinct is also invited in, to speak and inform the Mind. The Aesthetic of Muay steps in to hold the two together, also brought together in the social glue of the kaimuay itself. There is an important mutuality to training, which also falls to the traditional forms of Thai hierarchical culture, a way that the Past inhabits the Present through social bond. Muay Thai is the art by which the Past is allowed to continue to speak, so as to inform (and be informed by) Intelligence. This occurs though, principally, through the exposure and involvement of speeds (intensities) designed to provoke emotion, which itself must be modulated by Buddhistic appeal. This is a fundamental shoreline in training, which then expresses itself in a higher state when fighting.  The Fighter and the Unconscious: the flinch and the archetype To follow along in this discussion its important to understand what the nature of the Unconscious is. We are very far from Freud's vision of a repressed Unconscious of drives. We are thinking of a productive Unconscious, the Unconscious understood as everything from flinching to (perhaps) Jung's concept of archetypes. This is because the Unconscious is everything that falls below the threshold of awareness. It includes all the aspects of one's personal history, the experiences of childhood and before, all the things learned as "forgotten", and (following Jung) the energies of one's personal force such as the Shadow or the anima/animus, etc. In training the fighter is engaging, in a systematic craft of intensity exposure and development (its no accidental that Muay Thai is by custom part of the pedagogy and maturation of male adolescents), eliciting emotion for its relative control, turning it onto a conduit. The conduit is connecting Mind (Intelligence, Thought) to Instinct (the Unconscious), and back again. It is drawing forth on the resources of the Unconscious (all of the Unconscious - from the composite of the organism and the species, all those reflects and affective capacities and perceptions, to archetypal forms of being in a social world, the mythos of the Individual - all of it), to animate and inform the art of the Muay, which operates as a continuous aesthetic. Both the flinch as a reflex, and the flinch as a half-memory when you were hit as child, (and also the flinch that served emotionally as a recoil from a dominance, a psychic positioning of your energies before a stronger energy), all of those levels of Unconscious capacity are drawn into the aesthetic of the Muay, and are given words to speak, so as to be symbolically present, imbued in movement. The movement is also informed by those Unconscious qualities and many others, made full, through the deeper knowledge of survival and persistence. Key is understanding that the Past is not regressive. The Unconscious is not limiting/limited. It is full of a wealth of the capacity to do...but, it is beneath awareness, and definitionally not accessible by Intelligence/Thought alone. The instinct to flinch, the reflex, following our example, despite violating the aesthetic of the fighter is imbued with tremendous resource, a speed of perception, a defensive priority, which surpasses any conscious action. Those extra-personal knowledges are to be folded into the Aesthetic of Muay. So this is the case with enumerable capacities to sense and act, affective energies of presence, aspects of the organism and the Self which are so infinite they cannot be known. Imperceptible transitions between modes and embodiments of Time. The training (and the performance) reaches reaches through up from the reflex to the sweep of the mythic Self, all of it inaccessible to the direct perception of the Mind. Emotion and Intensification Noted above, in training intensification gives rise to emotion, which opens the doorway to the Unconscious (Instinct). Intensification on one level, let's say in terms of sparring (play), operates along the aspect of speed. One is exposed to speeds, including changes of speeds (tempos), which defy the capacity of the mind to follow, which gives rise to emotion. The intensification though is not emotion. It produces emotion. Emotion that rises to the point of object obsession (that "fighter" is doing this to me, that "technique" is doing this to me, making me feel this) has already lost its role. It's role is to open Thought to Instinct. The coaching and calculating mind, the analytical mind, will lead emotion in the wrong direction. That is why the Buddhistic aspect of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai works to solve the mis-steps of emotion. The Buddhistic aspects of Muay Thai are embedded in its aesthetic form. One doesn't have to think of emotion in terms of Buddhism, but it can help. This is to say, the directionality of the rise of emotion is toward Instinct. One wants to open a two-way door toward the Unconscious. Because Muay Thai is trained also through fatigue and an aesthetic of dominance, intensification (and its attendant rise of emotion) can also occur through fatigue or dominance. Together they can create a very large doorway, weaving together both the materiality of the Body (fatigue) and the psychodynamics of personhood and social status (hierarchies). Turning to the aesthetic of Muay, its conditioning of Ruup (body posture and form), its characteristic display of presence and being at ease (physically), its flattening of emotion, allows the doorways of intensification/emotion to remain open, productive and expressive. Ideally perhaps, emotion per se is stretched out toward Mind, experienced more so as direct intensification alone, a portal to Unconscious Instinct, and the formative powers of what one is. The Mythos of the Self and the Fighter Thailand's Muay Thai is culture bound, which means that its figures of significance and valorization are drawn from the culture itself. It operates within a Thai-Siamese mythos. For this reason great legends of Thailand's Muay Thai past, let's say of the Golden Age of the sport or before, stand in the same light as the gods that are performed and invoked in the Ram Muay. In my discussion of the 10 Principles of Muay Thai I call this "be the god". The meaning of this is to be understood within the mythos of the Unconscious, both at a personal level, but also at the collective level of a people. The fighter in the ring draws up from the Past (the Unconscious) the supra-personal forces that go beyond their mere ego (constructed identity), so that they can assume a symbolic capacity within the ring, making of the art a collective rite. This occurs through the aesthetics of the sport, and the ways in which the fighter has attained the capacity to transmute intensifications into Instinct and Thought syntheses. In this sense fighters can become embodiments of a collective, mythic past, drawing on the forms of what anchors a people, but remain inaccessible to Intelligence alone. The openness of this capacity is achieved in the openness of training, through play and the aesthetics of Muay. Time and the Nature of Muay (the Natural) Bergson's concept of Duration (la durée) is an important building block for understanding what is happening in traditional training and in fighting. A duration for Bergson is an unbreakable envelope of Time. Returning to the example of cinema, a shot holds a certain complete shape to itself. If you edited it in any way you would break what it is. Bergson describes duration as Time what is "swollen with its past". Just as a story is told in a narration, the ending of the story is swollen with its history, the telling of it from the beginning. A duration is anything that cannot be broken, in terms of Time. There may be durations within a duration, unbreakable envelopes within the duration, this does not disturb its wholeness. The image is given of music where one has the musical piece (a duration), and individual notes played (a duration), as well as refrains, phrasings, melodies, etc. Our lives are durations, our days, our thoughts, our bodies, anything that swells with its past, with the passing of time, so to complete it. When one enters a Thai kaimuay to train, or enters a ring to fight, one is entering as a duration (in fact a duration made up of many durations). And one is joining a duration, the event. The rhythms and shapes of the event envelop your duration hold you in concert with other durations you will encounter. In a kaimuay these are the patterns of training, the aesthetics and customs of the art as trained; in the ring it is the aesthetics of Muay as it is fought. This is the set-up. As you train your duration, what is the you of you, your temporal wholeness will be challenged by intensities of speed, fatigue and dominance. This will lead to intensification, and usually emotion. As Thought ceases to be able to manage one's place, one's wholeness, one opens up the the Unconscious/Instinct, to draw on resources that allow your duration, your rhythm, your wholeness to persist. The Time of which you are made (your duration) is enriched by the rise and integration of Instinct, and that which usually falls below consciousness. Your duration is expanded. Fighting is the art of breaking another's duration, their rhythm and tempo which makes them whole. This is why Muay Thai is principally a Time War, and why it occurs under an aesthetic of narration (the scoring is narratively anchored, and not abstract point counting). The techniques of engagement are temporal battles, strikes holding their own duration within the larger duration, attempts to break the unbreakable coherence of the duration of the other. This is why Ruup and continuity play such a large role in Muay Thai aesthetics and skill building. The Natural, the Tammachat, comes from the presence and integration of Instinct, the presence of the Unconscious, which is engendered to flow with Thought. This is achieved in training, through the application of intensities and the invitation of modulated emotion/affect.       Bergson on Instinct and Thought, from Deleuze and the Unconscious (2007): one can leave aside the direction of this argument toward frenzy and the mystic. Important is the relational dichotomy of Instinct and Intelligence.      
    • Instinct and the Thai Principle of Tammachat (ธรรมชาติ) This will remain somewhat obscure, as it's hard to fill the gap in my recent reading, but thoughts on the nature of Tammachat (natural), which is one of the more essential, basic yet obscured qualities of Thailand's Muay Thai - and one that non-Thais most deeply struggle with. How can something be "natural", which is trained? They seem a contradiction, or at the very least in strong tension. Into the gap Westerners try to place concepts like "muscle memory", as if you can create a new causal chain, a new "memory" in your body which then operates with something like "naturalness". This supposed manufactured "muscle memory" is often trained with great tension - a very high degree of unrelaxed, biomechanically precise constant correction. It does not really solve the problem of Tammachat, and instead inserts a mechanical bridge between between what I'll call Instinct and Thought. I'm drawing from these two passages in the excellent book Deleuze and the Unconscious (2007, Christian Kerslake) discussing the influence of the philosopher Bergson. Bergson is concerned with how matter and memory work together. In a certain sense we all have a powerful inheritance of memory, something which includes not all of our conscious experiences, but all of our experiences, much of it unconscious. This is not just things that we can recall to our mind, but rather the very large raft of causes well below the threshold of our awareness, including our biological instincts. Instincts are wisdom, skills, reactions, frames of perception which have been developed through not only 10,000 years of ancestry, but also 100s of millions years of life itself, well below our species. All of this is inherited, in a way, in "memory", the form of the matter of which we are made. When "memory" is acting, this by default is read as "natural". If someone fakes a punch and we flinch...this is natural. It is speaking from our memory. It flows, seemingly, without thought. But Thailand's Muay Thai has a concept of developed naturalness, which is to say the qualities of physical expression which also can flow with the ease that memory has. The temptation is to create "new memories" (that's why "muscle memory") is a thing. If we can train and cram-down memories back into our causal shoot, far enough in, then they too might come out some what "natural" in the future. You see a great deal of this in the proliferation of the "combo", a fixed pattern of strike that is trained over and over again, trying to force it back down into the causal chain, so it can come out "natural"...though it almost always, when trained like this, comes out "forced" and far from Thai Tammachat. The reason for this failing is identified in the passages below (though, this is just a note, and the passages themselves may be hard to decipher, I'm drawing out a line of their thought). The point or idea is not to create new memory, or new instincts (they will never be as strong as those inherited by the instincts of biology, or of those learned deep in our forgettable pasts), its to put Instinct itself in relationship with Thought (or, in the text Intelligence). The ideal state, the Tammachat state, is one in which Instinct and Thought alternate and affect each other. Not only does Thought shape Instinct, Instinct shapes Thought. In some sense the great history of our Being, our personal Unconscious (all things experienced, most of it well below our threshold of awareness) and our collective biological Instincts, all the causes of how we act, is placed in communication with Thoughts, Intelligence, Ideas, in the sense that there is dialogue and mutuality, and no priority of either. In "flow states", presumability, this communication becomes utterly suffused. This is why "play" plays such an important part of Thai training and development, it approximates in a low stakes way this suffusion. Aesthetics and Thought The role of Intensification. In the philosophy of Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari) there is emphasis on speeds. The exposure to speeds (sometimes in an absolute sense, sometimes in terms of changes in speeds) produces an intensification within oneself. Something that is too fast, but also something that is too slow...intensifies. In this framework I'll position this as that-which-challenges-thought, or that-which-is-where-thought-cannot-follow. This is to say, using Intelligence to keep track, plan and react is no longer sufficient. Intensification is what puts Thought in relationship with Instinct. (And keep in mind, here Instinct isn't just animal reactiviness, though it includes that too. It is the sum of our Unconscious causations.) Intensifications produce a dialogue. Muay Thai active training, aside from drills and conditioning, is thought of as "getting used to" certain speeds and intensifications, things that would just throw you into pure instinctive reactions if you were untrained. But, it is much more than that. The "getting used to" is not just exposure therapy, it is actually putting Thought and Instinct into communication with each other, by degrees. You want both dimensions, otherwise you will never receive Tammachat. This is how Thai aesthetics - to which a non-Thai must submit and be shaped by - work to sew together these two aspects of our Being. The over-arching picture of what the art of Muay Thai is, is what allows the space in which Instinct and Thought can develop together in unanticipated, experimental ways. Each must shape each...within the Aesthetic, held together by the Aesthetic. The use of intensification - there are many aspects of intensification, but we can stay with solely the quality of speeds - is to unseat Thought and place it into community with Instinct (your Past). If the intensification is too strong Thought will be forced completely down into Instinct, too light and it will operate over Instinct. The key to Tammachat is that they suffuse, the "wisdom" of each in combination. This is why Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, its very high level of command over the fight space, is an art. Fighters develop within a sphere of progressive, integrating, creative intensifications, and the fight is conducted at the level of a Tammachat suffusion of Thought and Instinct. This is what the great legendary fighters of Thailand's past exude an extraordinary degree of being "at ease", which is why they are so "natural" in their speeds and relations. One is not simply "getting used to" speeds and intensifications. Your Past (the full causal panoply of what you are, reaching much further back than even your person, into what you are as an organism) is being synthesized into an Aesthetic, a certain kind of creative completion, or some variation thereof.                                  
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    • The first fight between Poot Lorlek and Posai Sittiboonlert was recently uploaded to youtube. Posai is one of the earliest great Muay Khao fighters and influential to Dieselnoi, but there's very little footage of him. Poot is one of the GOATs and one of Posai's best wins, it's really cool to see how Posai's style looked against another elite fighter.
    • Yeah, this is certainly possible. Thanks! I just like the idea of a training camp pre-fight because of focus and getting more "locked in".. Do you know of any high level gyms in europe you would recommend? 
    • You could just pick a high-level gym in a European city, just live and train there for however long you want (a month?). Lots of gyms have morning and evening classes.
    • Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?..  Appericiate all responses, thank you! 
    • In my experience, 1 pair of gloves is fine (14oz in my case, so I can spar safely), just air them out between training (bag gloves definitely not necessary). Shinguards are a good idea, though gyms will always have them and lend them out- just more hygienic to have your own.  2 pairs of wraps, 2 shorts (I like the lightweight Raja ones for the heat), 1 pair of good road running trainers. Good gumshield and groin-protector, naturally. Every time I finish training, I bring everything into the shower (not gloves or shinnies, obviously) with me to clean off the (bucketsfull in my case) of sweat, but things dry off quickly here outside of the monsoon season.  One thing I have found I like is smallish, cotton briefs for training (less cloth, therefore sweaty wetness than boxers, etc.- bring underwear from home- decent, cotton stuff is strangely expensive here). Don't weigh yourself down too much. You might want to buy shorts or vests from the gym(s) as (useful) souvenirs. I recommend Action Zone and Keelapan, next door, in Bangkok (good selection and prices):  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Action+Zone/@13.7474264,100.5206774,17z/data=!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x30e29931ee397e41:0x4c8f06926c37408b!2sAction+Zone!8m2!3d13.7474212!4d100.5232523!16s%2Fg%2F1hm3_f5d2!3m5!1s0x30e29931ee397e41:0x4c8f06926c37408b!8m2!3d13.7474212!4d100.5232523!16s%2Fg%2F1hm3_f5d2?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
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