4 ms·
I agree, but I also disagree. There is a lot of discomfort that has nothing to do with long-term physical damage to your body. The author takes the distinctio
by dkarl 6y ago
I agree, but I also disagree. There is a lot of discomfort that has nothing to do with long-term physical damage to your body. The author takes the distinction for granted:
> I’d have stopped if I felt like I was truly injured
I think what the author is talking about is that we start as children from a position of trusting discomfort unconditionally. It distresses us, and we avoid it. Through experience, we learn that that the distress that many types of discomfort causes us is disproportionate, and we start to react to it differently. We even learn to associate certain types of discomfort with the reward of hard work. If life doesn't force these experiences upon us, we have to get them by choice, or else our lives can end up overly constrained by discomfort that we never learned to put into context.
But you're right as well. In the gym, people first learn what their bodies can do when they use emotion and bravado to unlock levels of effort and discomfort they had never experienced before. As they gain that ability, they also learn to moderate it, to use it wisely in the context of how their body responds to what they're doing with it. The first without the second is dangerous, and the second without the first is constricting.
- Enginerrrd 6y agoYeah, there's a big difference between being hurt and being injured. I'd go so far as to say that most athletes will deal with both during their career. Learning to manage it is truly an art. If you're too conservative you leave a lot on the table. Being too aggressive absolutely will get you injured. The one consistent thing though that research shows is that if you are considtently doing workouts that you would rate as a 10/10 on your own internal uncalibrated scale, you are at much higher risk for injury. The art of knowing how hard to push yourself isn't something that people just intuitively know. It takes experience of failing in both directions to nail the sweet spot. It's not impossible to learn, but I agree that most athletes don't even have it nailed. Thats one of the things a good coach is for.
- clipradiowallet 6y agoIn basic training, drill sergeants used to yell the phrase "Are you hurt, or are you injured?". If you said injured, you went to the medical facility to get checked out, if you said "hurt", expect some fashion of hazing(and you wouldn't repeat "hurt" in the future most likely).
- 1experience 6y agoThe author doesn't seem to me to be talking about healthy discomfort but suffering, that middle ground between discomfort and injury is what in a multitude of sports will get you hip replacements and herniated discs when you reach your 50s.