No pain no gain? I’ll take the sure thing, thanks. Photo: Jeff Flindt
“Your pain is your guru. There is no guru better than your pain. To the degree you listen to everyone else but you, you hurt.” –Paul Chek
Don’t get me wrong, I love to train hard. I love to test my training limits. It is the only way to improve. BUT there is a concept in fitness that needs to be addressed. Throwing lots of motivation at a problem is not clever and needs to stop. Being ignorant doesn’t change the reality of how the body works.
When I hear about physios telling their patients with knee/back problems just to run through the pain, something has gone seriously haywire!
We have all heard at least one of the following statements. I have even used a few in the past:
– No pain no gain
– Pain is just weakness leaving the body
– Throw up and count the carrots
– If you’re not crying, you’re not trying
– If it’s not hurting, it’s not working
Here are some good reasons why this has got to stop:
1. Most people move terribly already. Form matters when you train, especially under load. Movement matters. It’s what makes you stronger yet appear effortless. If you can’t move properly, don’t add load to it. You will just hurt yourself. Holding form when you are struggling the most is the difference between improving and not improving. If you are hurting, get out of the water. That’s it for the session.
2. Pain is most likely a response from your body, telling you not to do something. Listen before you suddenly can’t paddle, walk, sit up, or cough without pissing your pants.
3. Muscles can’t count. They have no idea how many repetitions you have done. They only know if they are fatigued or not fatigued. Reps are the single most important training variable, but they are also a cue for you to perform with the right form, at the right tempo, and with the right load to get you into the desired time under tension to achieve your desired training response. Put the ego down and grab a smaller weight if you need to.
4. Nothing re-programs your muscle memory faster than pain. Remember that! The more pain you are in, the longer it will take to re-program you back to form. It takes on average 300-500 repetitions of any movement initially to create unconscious competence. It takes as many as 5,000 to unwind it!
5. It doesn’t get you faster, fitter, stronger, better or anything any quicker than if you had trained within your limits. Often, pain does not equal gain!
6. Never train your muscle memory with what you can’t do but only ever what you can do.
7. If you are training with the desire to punish yourself, treat yourself bad, beat yourself up for eating that bit of cake, that’s sadomasochistic. That’s not training.
So there it is. My job is helping people in physical pain to get out of it. This is tricky stuff once that pain ball starts rolling and is so easily avoided.
If you have issues that you would like some help with, please feel free to drop me an email at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com or check out my website at www.weekendsurfwarrior.com.
