When I started to run, 4 years ago, I started knowing that it will hurt. I was weighing 20 kilos more, I was depressed and I just knew that everything that I want to obtain will be very, very difficult. I just knew it.
Fast forward 4 years, until today: at this very moment of my life, I covered probably more than 6.000 kilometers by running. I finished a few marathons and a few ultramarathons ranging from 60km to 220km. I also participated in 24 hours and 48 hours running events. All without any major injuries.
And you know what? After all these years, after all this training, after all these milestones, I know something else: it doesn't need to hurt.
Let me explain.
Social Programming and Innate Stupidity
First of all, I want to clarify the term "stupidity". It doesn't have any negative connotation and it doesn't imply any qualitative difference form a human being to another. It's more like naivety, or confusion or the penchant to believe everything we're told. From this perspective, we're all innately stupid.
When we're kids, we believe everything our parents or caretakers are telling us. We just do. We make some connexions between the fact that they're taking care of us and their ability to understand the world. We equal safety with knowledge.
This bias is much more profound than we want to admit. We carry this thing with us way into our adult age. If somebody proves to us that he knows what he's doing once, twice or maybe three times, then we're giving him credit automatically.
We're also giving credit to certain systems, like the social system we happen to live in. Just because the system is keeping us safe, we tend to believe that the system is also right.
It's not.
One of the most obvious parts in which the system fails to deliver is the very title of this article: no pain, no gain. When did pain got equal value with gain? How the hell do we got to believe this? Because if this is true, believe me, after all my toothaches I should have been as rich as Elon Musk.
I'm not.
This "no pain, no gain" paradigm is just a part from what I call social engineering. I don't know your definition of that, but for me, social engineering comprise the totality of approaches a social system uses in order to lower its own entropy. It's a very complex topic, hence I'm not gonna talk about it today, only about this tiny little part.
Aerobic versus Anaerobic
In order to explain why "no pain, no gain" is inaccurate at its best, and dangerous at its worst, let me make a little detour through the world of running.
We, humans, have two motion systems: one is aerobic, in which we are burning predominantly fat, and the other one is anaerobic, in which we are burning predominantly glycogen (sugar). The aerobic system can generate moderate speed for very long distances, while the anaerobic system can generate very high speed, but for very little amount of time. We carry far less sugar in our bodies than fat.
The aerobic system is what made us successful at persistence hunting (running after a deer for days, until the deer overheated and just feel down) while the anaerobic system was very good in survival situations (when a bear attacks, you need to run fast, but not for long).
In 95% of the training systems today, the strain is made on the aerobic system. There is a lot of speed training and that training is prolonged more than it should be. Hence, the abundance of the running related snacks, or gels, which are just extra stores of sugar. The mainstream method of training today is about prolonging the anaerobic system for as long as it takes.
Even when it hurts. And it doesn't hurt only while running. It hurts after the running as well, because maintaining the body in that state has long term implication over the body acidity, level of cortisol and free radicals. All this is bad stuff.
Another approach to the speedwork, a method which is far less popular these days, because it doesn't root in the "no pain, no gain" mantra, is to become faster by running slower. In other words, it starts by running in the aerobic interval and just increases the distances. Surprisingly enough, after a few months of training, the aerobic system improves. And you start to experience an increase in speed as well. And all that without pain, without extra stores of sugar and without injuries.
I speak from experience. This is how it works.
Now, back to our article.
There Is Always A Better Way
In any life situation there is a way. There is always a way that will give you the desired results and nobody has set in stone that "no pain, no gain". Nobody. This is just social engineering and you don't have to fall for this.
You don't have to go through hell in order to rejoice paradise. Of course, given our uncontrollable shitty life we're forced sometimes to go through hell. But that doesn't necessarily mean there will be some inherent gain from it. It's just hell, folks.
It took me a few years to wrap my head around this and running helped me a lot. When I saw that I get far better results when I'm training slower, my doubts were shaken. In a few months, I was a believer.
And now I really think there is no direct causality between pain and gain. You can gain a lot in this life without feeling pain.
Once you'll look at the "no pain, no gain" mantra from this perspective, it will all come to the light.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses