I was sparring today and got punched pretty hard straight in the face. How long should I take a break for?

 

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The short answer is that you shouldn’t. The first rule of Muay Thai is that everyone gets hit. If there is damage then that needs to be addressed by training smart while you heal. If you’ve got a broken nose or been concussed then you need to restrict partner work to kick sparring, clinching, and pad work. Once you’ve healed we need to make sure that training is done properly to minimize the risk of future injury in training. There are far too many ways to get hurt doing full Muay Thai sparring so for this reason even in Thailand all Muay Thai sparring is done extremely light. The only hard sparring is done with boxing so that fighters get accustomed to feeling power as well as seeing and defending punches with bad intentions, but headgear is always worn and vaseline is always applied to the face when this sparring is done to reduce damage done to each fighter.