No Pain No Gain

 We all heard the term: “No Pain No Gain”, I use it quite often with myself, sometimes even with my trainees. However, I am not sure people actually understand the meaning of it.

We tend to confuse between pain of stupidity to pain of wisdom, between the physical pain of hard work to the pain of a fracture or a nerve.

The pain of a fracture might be to signal us that we are on the wrong path. A pain of a nerve could try to say that maybe we are pushing too much, a pain of stupidity could be when you think you should jump higher than you ever practice for or before, or when you just go for a marathon run when you never run for 10 km in a row. All those versions of pain could not be and should not be part of that statement.

Believe me when I say, that it is more painful to push through mentally when a thing seems statics then physically when you can feel the wrong pain. It is easier to say to yourself “if I don’t feel the physical pain I probably don’t push hard enough”, then to keep going when you can’t see where.

But when you learn the concept properly, you grow to understand that it is not about damaging your body, it is more challenging yourself mentally using your body.  

It is about becoming wiser with how you push yourself in your workouts, in your practice, instead of putting your body at risk of injury, meaning, instead of taking too big steps, you consciously take one step at a time, and you consciously challenge yourself with patience and practice.

You move your mind where you move your mind and not where your mind moves you.

I heard so many people blaming Yoga for tearing their muscles and joints, or lifting weights gave them inflammation and so on.

Well, it could be true, but it also could be that those people have failed to understand that it is not that pain that makes the gain.

It is the mental gain that minimizes the pain. And that mental mastery requires a lot of practice, almost a never ending practice.

So next time you are pushing yourself to your limits, explore yourself internally at the same time. Explore your abilities on all levels at the same time.

With love and gratitude

Ilan Halfon