The reason why active people stay in pain

I used to train really hard all the time. As in, being at or extremely close to failure because I thought that's how you got stronger.

No pain, no gain, and all of that.

I would then wonder why I always felt gassed. Always fatigued, stiff, and hurt. It was a part of what led to the disc herniation that put me out of commission for a while.

Runners do this all the time. It really does become an addictive activity once you get over the initial hump. They want to run faster and farther each time they put on their running shoes.

And people wonder why so many running injuries occur. It gives running a bad reputation and makes everyone afraid for their knees.

The commonality here is attempting to improve every single week of your training. This turns into "testing" yourself instead of building yourself up.

If I'm deadlifting so heavy that I reach failure during every training session, I'm testing my strength and not actually building it.

If I'm adding 5 kilometres to my best run every time I lace up, I'm testing my running ability and not actually building it.

Being this close to failure and close to your capacity generates a ton of fatigue and never allows you to fully recover, leading to recurring injuries and cycles of getting hurt, resting and feeling better, followed by re-injury once you return to your usual activity.

If you truly want to improve your strength, you'll still train hard, but you should leave 2-4 reps in the tank the large majority of the time.

If you truly want to get better at running, most of your runs should be at a manageable pace that you can maintain far past where you plan to stop.

This allows you to build a solid foundation so that when you do want to test yourself, be it a 1-rep max test or a race, you have that foundation to jump from.

Regardless of the activity, you want to find the sweet spot between enough challenge to cause positive adaptation but not so much that it's burning you out and injuring you.

This is not for people who don't meet basic activity requirements or struggle with consistency. Those people just need to get out there and train hard. But for those who are consistent each week, this is an unbelievably important thing to keep in mind.

To your good health,

Coach Stephen

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Thanks for reading.

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