“It’s not that bad. I’ll just keep going.” One of the participants said after mentioning some pain while performing a squat.
Gesturing for her to stop, I replied, “Let’s make sure you’re not hurting yourself.”
Her reaction to having a limitation was something I’d seen many times. Not wanting to cause a ‘disruption’, ‘loose time’ or show any sign of weakness.
No matter how much you try to hide it - they’re there. In the way that you cannot move, and how challenging it feels to perform what others seem to have down.
The truth is - once you accept where you’re at, the sooner you can start working in a way that supports your goal (not hinders it).
This is why I advocate for you to be curious when it comes to the program you’re following and the movements you’re performing.
Whether you’re in a class, or have a personal coach; ask questions. Yes, keep on inquiring until you understand what, how and why you’re doing that specific thing. A great coach will have a reason to make you follow a specific routine.
But I’m trying to figure this out on my own, Milchu.
We all are. And there are plenty of (trusted) resources you can find to ensure you aren’t digging yourself in a hole.
You have me to word vomit processes, strategies, tips and tools to simplify the process.
Today, I wanted to share how to discern pain from discomfort, understanding your discomfort threshold and perceived level of exertion. If you’re ready to make the most out of your fitness routines this is for you.
Pain Versus Discomfort
Most people confuse pain with discomfort. Any sign of something being challenging or requiring a bit of work becomes an S.O.S.
It’s normal, specially when it’s a movement or pattern you’ve never performed.
But when you don’t know the difference, it hinders growth, improvements and progress towards goals.
So what’s the difference between the two?
Pain is a warning sign of potential harm.
Think= intense, sharp or distressing feeling, usually in one spot. This can typically be signs of possible tissue damage or injury.
Discomfort is a tolerable sensation that is often uneasy.
Think = challenging physically and psychologically. This can feel like increased breathing or heart rate, burning or aching sensation in muscles, and sometimes fatigue and stiffness.
For example, if you’ve ever injured yourself you may have recalled the sharp sensation or something that told you something doesn’t feel right. And you might know how frightening it is to return to performing movements that once led to an injury.
When I injured my back a few years ago, it took retraining hip hinges through the discomfort of my back freaking out. My mind said, “go for it” but my body yelled, “we got injured last time we did this! Stop.” After a few weeks, I had relearned the difference between this is pain versus this is just very uncomfortable.
If you constantly confuse discomfort with pain, you leave a lot of effort unused.
Vice versa, if you overlook the signs of pain - you’re more likely to injure yourself and have a 6-12 week setback.
While pain has very specific signs - the game changes when you understand what and how to expand your threshold for discomfort.
Discomfort Threshold
Have you ever been in the middle of a workout and start questioning how you ended up there?
Or have you ever stopped in the middle of a set because it felt like too much?
Or have you ever walked into the gym, seen it completly overcrowded and walked right back out?
The point?
Everyone has a different threshold to discomfort.
It’s very individualized depending on their experiences and their relationship with discomfort.
Here’s a quick exercise to bring awareness to what your threshold is:
Think of the last fitness routine you completed- at any point during did you notice an urge to stop due to discomfort (not pain)?
That is your discomfort threshold. Perhaps it came midway through your routine, or as you finished your last set.
Regardless, that limit can increase over time where you are able and willing to exert yourself more.
Here are some tips on how:
- Gradually progressing the intensity and duration over time
- Use mental techniques like positive self talk (E.g- create pep talk phrases)
- Focus on breathing (For your body: exhaling = relax, inhale= get ready for action.
- Incorporate timed rest periods (Be intentional to allow physical & neural adaptations).
Building you threshold can be done safely and lead to better performance. Now you’re teaching your body to distinguish between normal exercise discomfort and pain. With that it becomes easier to know what level of exertion you are working at, and using it to progress towards your goal.
Level of exertion
You might have heard me ask at one point:
From a scale of 1-10, 1 being “I can do this all day.” to 10 “I’m about to pass out.” how challenging was that?
This is a way (for me) to determine what your perceived level of exertion is.
I say perceived because we can always push more than we think we can.
Keeping in mind that we are not aiming to reach the level of pain - when you learn how to correctly determine the difference between the levels you’ll create demands on your body required to improve your fitness.
The rule of thumb is to be working at about 80% effort. This is challenging, but not completely trashing yourself. (There are exceptions like deload weeks, or assessment weeks.)
Here are 3 questions to ask that determine if you’re hitting 80% effort:
- How many more reps could I have performed (without losing form)?
- Could I have performed another 5 reps (10/15…)?
- Can I jump into the next exercise in the next 10 seconds?
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If you answer ‘yes’ to any of these then you can do more. The intention is to make the next set challenging enough where your last three reps are pretty tough but not impossible.
That’s your cue to go heavier or increase the reps your performing.
As you become more experienced and learn how to perform movements properly - your capacity to push beyond your perceived level of exertion increases. And what once might have felt like 8/10 now feels like a 4/10 - that my friend is progressing.
Fitness is not just mindlessly performing squats and pushups. It’s not going to a cycling class and finishing barely being able to walk out the door.
Fitness is being able to connect with your body enough to understand when it’s discomfort over pain. It’s about knowing that if you tried to perform 3 more reps you’d lose your form. But it’s also knowing to distinguish when your mind has already given up before you even tried.
Over time, as you build your relationship with discomfort and how you move - you’ll find that it’s not about training harder, but smarter.
-Milchu “Expanding Thresholds” Perez