The myth of “no pain, no gain”
Fitness is in an all-time boom in terms of awareness, exposure and popularity. It seems that everyone nowadays wants to be fit and strong and it's showing with the number of fitness centers and gyms opening in the metro.
However, even with the progress we've made in exercise sciences, one saying keeps popping very often. So much so that it deserves a blog post.
No pain, no gain.
First of all: Really?!
Okay. Had to get that out of the way.
Though you rarely see this overused slogan in it's original form, you will see variations of it everywhere. Statements like, "Pain is temporary", or "Pain is the body's way of saying do more" are so wrong in many levels.
To go deeper into this saying, we need to know first what pain actually is. Pain is a natural defense mechanism of the body when it feels that it is reaching its physical limitations. Muscle fibers and tendons can contract and stretch up to a certain degree, and the heart and lungs can function in an accelerated state, again, up to a certain degree. It's different for everyone, which is all the more reason that you must listen to the signs of your body. Current exercise fads will tell you that pain is good and you should strive for pain, but there is a flaw in that philosophy.
One reason why this happens is because most people don't realize that pain is different from discomfort. Exercise can and will most likely lead to some discomfort which is normal, but when you feel pain, that's something else. That's your body telling you to stop doing what you're doing before you break something.
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Athletes will have a hard time getting this because we are taught that it's all in the head, mental toughness is preached as well a sacrifice. But a good coach will know when it is time to push and when it is time to lay off. One of the toughest things to do as a coach is to tell an athlete that they have done enough, and it's time to rest.
An easy way to make sure that you are pushing it just right is through a simple scale called RPE or the ratings of perceived exertion (also known as the Borg scale). This is a scale that goes from 6-20 and rates how easy or difficult an exercise is based on intensity. A 6 means that it's easy and very doable and a 20 means that it's bordering on impossible.
Though this is a highly subjective scale, we have to realize that people will have different capacities for intensity when it comes to exercise. Simply put, the more you work out (the right way) the more intensity you will be able to take. As a general rule, it's good to keep most of the exercises in the moderate intensity range (11-15) but we can push some exercises towards the high intensity range. Again, some, not all.
So the next time you train, aim for discomfort and you'll see that as you progress you will be able to take a little bit more. Pushing your body to pain can only end in 2 ways. One, nothing will happen at the moment but you will develop some overuse injuries or two, you will break something and you will be far worse than when you started.
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