Treating Shins for Muay Thai Damage | Types of Swelling and Dents

above, 10 minutes on shin treatment

Fighting over 150 times in Thailand and training pretty much nonstop for almost 5 years now, negotiating my way around shin damage is a major factor in what makes it possible to keep going. Above is my 10 minute video which might be called Part 3 of a series I first posted on 3 years ago. You can read all my Shin Treatment Archive of posts here.

I’ve made two previous videos about treating shins for recovery in the world of Muay Thai (see at article bottom), the 1st has been one of my more frequently watched videos. It doesn’t matter if you’re a “weekend warrior” or a seasoned fighter: you’re going to have lump shins at some point. This installment is on the different types of dings you can get and how to treat them differently.

1. The lump: if you have a raised lump and you can move the liquid inside of it by pressing on one end, it can be drained. Warm up the area and work your way from bottom to the top of the lump to drain the liquid downward, pushing directly into the mound.
2. The dent: if it’s not a raised lump but almost a dent that’s full of fluid, don’t press on it. These are the most tricky of all dings to the shin and they generally occur right next to, rather than on top of, the bone. They take forever to go away but you have to keep treating them anyway. You can press around the mushy spot to get the liquid to drain and try to get circulation to the area with the hot water and rubbing around the edges of the dent, but do not press the mushy dented part directly. Just go around it, like a pot-hole. You can try to use Hirudoid cream on these to help keep blood circulating to the area and drain out the fluid. Apply the cream a few times per day. Also, you want to massage above the damaged area, higher up on the leg, where blockages may be.
3. The hard, general mass: these lumps are the kind that don’t have a fluid inside that you can move around with your finger. They’re more of a general trauma and may be an accumulation of untreated damage over time, like my left shin is at the moment. These you can’t really “drain,” but you treat them similarly, trying to use pressure and massage with the heat to flatten it out.

Generally, step 1 is to warm the area first.

Step 2 is to from the top down press out the swelling

Step 3, you can see the fluid build up, keep moving that out.

In the video I show that on broader kinds of damage I’ll use a massage roller to press out on both sides of the bone. Yeah, this hurts.

If you found this informative you can check out my two other posts in the series:

Part 1: Treating Shins For Recovery: Knots, Bruises, Bumps – and Training Injured – Muay Thai << this article contains the main video instruction on warm water massage

Part 2: How to Treat Shins – Healing Longer Lasting Shin Swelling In Muay Thai

and my full Archive of articles on shin pain

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