Deinfluencing You From Muay Thai BS: What Social Media Won’t Tell You

If you spend even ten minutes scrolling through Instagram or TikTok right now, your perception of Muay Thai is going to get warped. Just think about it: How many times have you scrolled Instagram and felt like you weren’t doing enough?

You see highlight reels of teenagers in Thailand with “100-0” records. The coaches posting flashy combos they swear are applicable and useful. The fighters who seem to live in a perpetual state of “the grind”—always training, always hungry, always posting about it.

And when you see something enough times on your feed, your brain starts to believe it’s the standard.

You start thinking: If I’m not training through an injury, or buying the latest matching set, or fighting in a specific stadium, I’m not doing it right.

Social media is not reality. And, in a way, it’s lying to you about Muay Thai, both directly and indirectly. It’s curated. It is edited. It’s designed to make you feel like you’re missing something, so you keep scrolling, keep buying, keep comparing yourself to people whose lives you’ll never fully see.

We’ve all been guilty of “buying into the hype”. But let’s strip away the curated noise and give you some realistic insight into the mental side of this sport. We need to talk about the toxic narratives that keep people stuck in cycles of comparison, burnout, and injury, and why you need to let them go.

1. Muay Thai is hard for everyone. Your week 1 will never look like someone else’s year 5.

This sounds obvious, but it is the number one reason beginners quit. You see someone on Instagram throwing a perfect, fluid teep or flowing through sparring effortlessly, and you think, “Why can’t I do that yet?” You are comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle. You aren’t seeing the years of bad reps, awkward sparring rounds, and frustration it took them to get to where they are now.

Muay Thai is hard for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been doing this for a week or five years. It doesn’t matter if you’re a hobbyist or a pro. This sport is difficult. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It asks a lot of you.

If you have been training for six months and feel like you “should be better by now,” take a breath. Instead of using other people for comparison and beating yourself up because you aren’t on their level, use them for goal setting, to see what is actually possible. The most important thing is that you stay consistent.

You are getting better every time you put in work, even if it doesn’t feel like it. It won’t feel like it – not this month, maybe not even next month. But if you keep showing up for another six months, you will look back and realize how much you have improved. You rarely feel the growth while you’re in it; you only see it when you look back.

It is slow. It is frustrating. And it is completely normal. So if you are being consistent, you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

2. You don’t need to look like a fighter to be one.

Huge muscles. Lean. Low body fat. Tattoos. You know the “ideal look“, the one that fitness magazines and platforms exacerbate with their “get MMA shredded” workouts. And if you don’t look like that, you’re not “real.” And that you don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

Take a closer look. There are so many legit fighters who don’t fit the aesthetic. Look at some heavyweights. Look at some smaller women fighters. They’re not all giants walking around with six-packs and 8% body fat.

They’re fighters because of the work, not because of how they look.

3. There is no perfect training schedule.

People are always looking for the “perfect” training schedule. The suggestion or golden number that will “unlock all their potential”. It doesn’t exist.

Some people train twice a day. Some train once a week. Some take full rest days. Some don’t.

What works for someone else might not work for you. And that’s okay. Everyone’s lives, goals, bodies, and training responses are different. Don’t look for the perfect plan and start paying attention to what your body actually needs.

4. You don’t need to go hard every single session.

In fact, you shouldn’t be going hard every single session. There’s a difference between pushing yourself and overtraining. Many don’t know how to tell the difference until they’re deep in overtraining territory.

Overtraining has real physiological symptoms. Some people experience depression-like symptoms. They can’t recover between sessions. They get worse with time (instead of getting better, like they’re supposed to). Some people get really sick, prone to infections, hormonal issues, and adrenal fatigue.

It certainly doesn’t help that combat sports glorify overtraining: “the grind” and that anything other than that indicates you are simply weak and “not cut out for Muay Thai”.

It’s possible to push yourself without overtraining. Yes, you’re tired. But over the week, you’re still able to recover. And the overall performance is getting better, not worse. This can mean delegating non-negotiable rest days. It could mean less intensity on some sessions. Sometimes less volume. It could mean three rounds of padwork instead of five. It could mean less running, or choosing a mobility session over training.

Rest is not the enemy. Rest is part of the training.

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5. Training through illness or injury doesn’t make you tough. It makes you sidelined.

There was a guy in the gym whose shin was infected. It split open every time he kicked pads. He claimed it has been oozing blood and pus for almost a year. It needed stitches constantly. But he refused to rest because he thought pushing through made him a “real” fighter, and that addressing it made him “less than”. He refused to rest and let it heal completely.

Eventually, it got so bad that he couldn’t train at all. What could have been a week or two of rest turned into months of being sidelined.

Related to the previous point, the best indicator is to look at how your last several sessions went. Were you able to recover and go in fresh for the next one? Or is the recovery getting worse each day? Is your performance getting worse? If the answer is yes, you need to rest.

6. It’s okay to lose fights and have bad training days.

Social media has created a warped reality where everyone seems to be undefeated, constantly hitting their goals, and living in a perpetual state of “winning.” We see the knockouts, the hand raises, and the belts. We rarely see the losses, the doubt, or the devastating sparring sessions where you feel like you’ve forgotten how to move.

Everyone loses, literally or figuratively. Even your favorite stadium champions have losses on their records. Even the most technical fighters have days where they feel like they can’t get anything.

If you lose a fight, or if you have a week where you feel like you’ve actually gotten worse, that doesn’t mean you are weak. It means you are pushing your limits. In this sport, failure isn’t the opposite of success; it is the tuition you pay to get better. Don’t let a curated feed convince you that struggling is a sign to quit.

7. No one path is more valid than another.

Some people fight. Some don’t. Some train in Thailand. Some train at their local gym.

None of these paths is more “valid” than another. You don’t need to move to Thailand to be a “real” fighter. You don’t need to have 50 fights. You don’t need to train twice a day.

You’re allowed to do Muay Thai in the way that works for you, where you are happy and getting what you came for.

8. It’s okay to unfollow people everyone else follows.

There are influencers and coaches who have massive followings. Everyone talks about them. Everyone shares their content.

But if their content doesn’t serve you… If it makes you feel bad about yourself, or if their advice doesn’t align with your goals, you don’t need to follow them.

It doesn’t matter how popular they are. It doesn’t matter if “everyone” loves them. Unfollow accounts that don’t serve you. Curate your feed intentionally.

The next time you find yourself scrolling and feeling like you aren’t “enough”: not training enough, not good enough, or not “real” enough… remember that you are looking at a curated edit of someone else’s life.

You are allowed to unplug from the noise. You are allowed to question the trends. And you are allowed to train on your own terms. So trust your own process. Do your own research. And stop letting other people’s highlight reels make you feel like your behind-the-scenes isn’t valuable.