I think the 'no pain no gain' mindset is hurting beginners more than helping them

I went to a local triathlon meetup last Saturday at the YMCA downtown, and I noticed something that bugged me. Everyone was pushing each other to 'embrace the suck' and go harder even when their form was falling apart. I get wanting to build grit, but I watched a new guy almost hurt his shoulder doing the same stroke technique over and over because he was told to just push through it. Honestly, I think the whole 'no pain no gain' thing is why so many people quit after a month. When I started couch to Ironman, I focused on really slow progress and listening to my body, not forcing pain. It took me 18 weeks just to build up to a steady jog without my knees barking at me. Has anyone else found that going easy and ignoring that tough talk helped you stick with it longer?

2 comments

2 Comments

miabennett14h ago

But isn't pushing through discomfort how you actually make progress? I mean, if you coddle yourself every time something feels off, you never learn the difference between normal soreness and real injury. The guy with the bad shoulder probably had terrible form from day one, and going slow wouldn't have fixed that, it just would have dragged out the pain over more months. The whole couch to Ironman thing sounds nice, but real training means getting comfortable being uncomfortable, otherwise you're just going through the motions. There's a reason elite athletes don't stop when it gets hard, they stop when their coach says stop.

blair_lewis8513h ago

Whoa, I gotta jump in on this one @miabennett. You're not wrong about elite athletes, but there's a difference between them and regular folks trying not to get hurt. Most people don't have a coach watching their every move, so they rely on how their body feels to know when to back off. If someone's been doing deadlifts with bad form for years, pushing through that shoulder ache isn't gonna fix the problem, it's gonna make it worse. Slow and steady builds the habit of listening to your body first, and that's how you avoid the kind of injury that sidelines you for months.