No Pain No Gain?

The wall of my gym has “inspirational” quotes or expressions painted on it at various locations. I suppose that these are meant to create an atmosphere of motivation for all gym-goers, to encourage us to push hard and perform.

These words range from quite harmless (if asinine), like “sweat is fat crying”, to something a little more menacing and potentially damaging. There is one expression, painted in enormous letters on the wall that states “pain is weakness leaving the body”. This kind of mentality is a recipe for injury, in my opinion.

It is of vital importance that we learn to distinguish between discomfort and pain. Yes, we absolutely need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable if we wish to affect physical change. Anyone who is working on gaining muscle size (hypertrophy) or strength gains knows all too well how difficult those last few repetitions of an exercise can be, our minds are moulded into becoming our ally as we convince our bodies that we are capable of achieving the movement, of shifting the load. Our body sends us signals, it tries to preserve its current state by telling us, quite clearly, that it is incapable but we forge ahead regardless and find that the limits we thought were there were merely suggestions. This is how we change, by pushing those limits by challenging our beliefs and by moving – even exploding – out of our comfort zones.

Pain is something else.

Pain is a very real signal that what we are currently doing is dangerous and has the potential to cause damage. You should never, ever feel any pain when you are training. If you are performing a lift, or moving a load and you experience pain – address it immediately. It may mean that your form is incorrect, perhaps the load is too heavy for you to move with correct form or you are too fatigued to maintain your form and be safe within the movement.

Stop. Pay attention. Avoid injury.

We need to learn that listening to our bodies is never ever a weakness. There are no medal or hero awards handed out to those people who “push through the pain”, because when we don’t listen to the whispers of our body it shouts at us instead and when it shouts at us it is too late to change our behaviour because we will have already caused damage.

We need to change the rhetoric, pay attention to the language we use and stop idolising this flawed, extremely machismo attitude and learn to quiet the ego. Our bodies will thank us by remaining healthy, strong and serving us loyally as we meet (and crush) our goals.