No Pain, No Gain
Last week I wrote about protecting your fitness: how we can assess pain and potential injuries to decide whether to keep training or make an adjustment to the plan. When we have pain, compromise is a wise decision. So how does the concept of “no pain, no gain” fit in? Are there times we should push through the pain?
No, that leads to injury.
But there’s a difference between pain and discomfort, or fatigue. And sometimes, we need to push through discomfort and fatigue!
Pain Vs. Fatigue
The best person to judge how your body feels is YOU, and over time with continued training you will learn to distinguish between pain and fatigue. How do you really know know when to push through and when to stop?
Here’s how I think about it: pain is generally localized - you could probably point to the place on your body that hurts, or at least a general area. Discomfort of fatigue is an “all-over” feeling that can’t be pinpointed, and this discomfort due to exertion is the path to gains.
Here is my favourite illustration of the kind of pain we need to embrace to make gains! This is not an injury niggle or pain — it is fatigue, discomfort due to exertion:
“No Discomfort, No Gain”
The phrase “no pain, no gain” should really be called “no discomfort, no gain” but it really doesn’t roll of the tongue the same way does it? The truth is, you can’t make progress without sometimes challenging yourself and feeling uncomfortable in training.
If you always run easy you can’t keep improving.
Perceived effort is a way to guide training that ensures you will use a wide range of effort levels. The idea is that sometimes you will exert yourself more than you usually do. On occasion you will push your body hard so that you are not comfortable, and you would like to stop running or slow down, but you do not.
When you occasionally push yourself hard, it makes everything else feel a little bit easier relative to that hard effort, and this is how we make gains.
Make It Hurt!
How to Start
If you always run easy you’re just one step away from starting to make progress!
Start with the goal of challenging yourself in 1 run or workout per week. You don’t need to push to the max, but you do need to feel uncomfortable. Settle in at an uncomfortable pace for a while without going to the max. Practically, the best way to do this is in very short duration or intervals. Try the workout I designed specifically for this purpose: the Cycle Run which is detailed in this article.
Max effort is not necessary to make gains and I do not encourage pushing to your absolute limit except for high level competitors.
How to Keep Making Progress
The next step is to make sure you’re not running uncomfortably hard too often. Two hard efforts per week is enough to make good progress, as long as you make those two workouts really count!
If you run hard too often, you won’t have enough time in between hard efforts to recovery properly. Eventually the quality of your hard workouts will suffer.
Related Topics:
How to Know When You’re Recovered
Recovery Factors to Consider
Nicole Sifuentes is a former professional runner and 2-time Olympian, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and full-time Running Coach for adults of all ages and abilities. Read more about her services, and schedule your free coaching consultation.