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While Muay Thai is a full contact sport that involves hand to hand combat using pads, some of which are thick and some of which are not, students rarely encounter injuries. There are two main reasons for this. First, our gear, which includes thai pads, thai shorts, focus mits and stomach pads, prevent us from getting injured. Second, and more importantly, most schools have very passionate communities where students are there purely to train and are not interested in hurting each other. Despite this, accidents can happen. When punches, kicks and knees are flying, sometimes the person holding the pads holds them the wrong way or lowers them before the drill is finished. Holding the pads improperly is one of the main reasons students get injured. Because holding is like doing a mirror drill in which you have to react on the left when the person in front of you acts with their right, remembering when you need to move left and move right can be very confusing. Most beginners I speak to tell me that holding the pads, versus learning the mechanics of punching and kicking, is the hardest aspect of learning muay Thai in the beginning. Luckily for most students the process of learning to hold the pads is a progression. Most instructors are good at keeping a group moving at the same pace, so if someone in your group is really struggling it is likely the instructor will notice and move them to a different group. If this is not an option they will recommend exercises they can do to improve their reaction times. This is important as most gyms charge quite a bit of money to train. Despite the fact that there is a solid community environment in most gyms, it is detrimental to a student’s progress for him or her to be training with someone at a much lower level than themselves, so it is in the instructor’s best interest to get all students at the same level (or at least at a minimum level where nobody will slow anybody down). When I got hurt it had nothing to do with holding the pads wrong. I was going for a head-high roundhouse kick when my weight caused me to lift up off the ground and fall flat backwards. Normally this would've been fine as we are standing on padding. However this time someone stepped behind me as I was falling, causing my head to collide directly with his knee. In the end we were both fine, as is usually the case. Because most students are there to learn, the only real accidents that occur are bruises and bloody noses, as no one is truly trying to hurt their opponent while training.
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