How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do | Hacker News Reader

How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do

nytimes.com

91 pointsedw51976 comments

I'm a former NCAA wrestler who's finished 2 marathons (with the blazing times of 5:01:00 and 5:00:30). All I can say is that anytime you push through a mental barrier, you become that much stronger. Your mental limitations are like muscular limitations - the more you push to the limit, the more powerful you become.

I absolutely believe that there's nothing I cannot do, given the time and energy. I've run 2 marathons at the point of mental fatigue. I've cut as many as 20 lbs in a week for wrestling. I finished a college degree with honors while getting at least a dozen confirmed concussions, who knows how many unconfirmed, and while still competing.

I really feel like I can conquer anything. I actually gave up NCAA to work for free at as many startups I could during my 4th year to do the jobs that no one wanted to do. I definitely feel like a made the right decision. I can't be a pro wrestler these days :)

Edit: Typos -- the head bonks are showing :)

Would you be able to share a little about the 20 lbs in a week?

Don't eat anything besides lettuce and orange juice frozen into popsicles. Run 5 miles every morning wearing 3 layers of sweat suit, possibly carrying a smaller wrestler on your shoulders while you do so. Use chewing tobacco between class so you don't pass out during the day. As soon as you weigh in, eat as much as possible until the match, as both a recovery aid and to actually weigh more than you're supposed to for your weight class, giving a slight advantage over the guy who has to turn you over.

Cutting to make weight is not really a good model for healthy, sustainable weight loss.

Ditto to everything maxawaytoolong posted

TLDR: Mostly lost water weight. I'd done it enough to really know how my body worked. I knew the exercise techniques that worked particularly well for me, and I ate a super-clean diet.

This wasn't a Jared Fogel style "I lost x lbs." He lost fat/tissue. For wrestlers, it's mostly a water cut. In sports like wrestling, boxing, or anything with a weight division you may need to lose water weight to get down to the cap of your division. I was 171 in HS and 197-184 in college. You have to be below the division cap (any over 171 in this case would get you DQ'ed).

Water weight isn't too hard to lose when you start. In your sleep, we all lose from 1-3 lbs, then we use the restroom when we wake up (.3-.6 lbs). If you start with a workout in the morning (1-2 lbs depending on the workout), you can walk 2-3 more lbs off throughout the day. Of course, normal people eat and drink in the course of the day to "refill." Over time, you get to the point where you know how to master this cycle, with extra workouts to boost it, and control your diet to engage the metabolic systems. It's a delicate balance.

In college, I wasn't a starter who had to weight in weekly, so I wasn't always close to weight. Even though we'd work out 2-3 hours a day, we have our bodies to the point where an extra push is required to get down to size. Typically, someone my size and structure should never have been more than 5-10 lbs overweight at most. I just came in one Monday weighing a great deal, and I was also tapped to start for that match to give our starter a rest. Since my resting/homeostasis weight was 5-10 lbs over, losing the first 10 lb chunk was easy. The next portion was a little rougher, but I'd been doing this for 7 years (HS + college), so I knew how to do it.

As for the techniques, I would run, jump rope, and wrestle wearing sweats. Wrestling has a higher caloric exertion rate than boxing, which is already way higher than running or jumping rope alone. Our college facilites also had a steam room, so I would clock time there to keep my sweat up after finishing a workout.

As for diet, I'd start each meal with a couple big glasses of water, so I wasn't quite as hungry and wouldn't binge. I'd then eat nutrient-dense vegetables (spinach salad, bell peppers, seeds, berries). Then eat lean protein (chicken breast, fish, no beef). To end I'd either drink a V8 or a yogurt shake. After all of that water and nutrient dense food, you feel stuffed.

All this being said, you'd have to be completely moronic to try to rapidly that much lose water weight without having done so before. Do. Not. Try. This. At. Home. Trained athletes have died doing this wrong

What's the wrestling opinion on "hyperhydration" (drinking as much water as possible up until two days before weigh-in to manipulate vasopressin and aldosterone levels to essentially mimic diuretics, Tim Ferris wrote about it: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/18/how-to-cut-w...)? That's what's popular in drug-tested powerlifting. I hated cutting weight and the whole "sauna suit" and exercise approach sounds like torture to me, but I've cut up to 15 pounds using hyperhydration and steam rooms without having to do all that much (but I still hated it).

It's the accepted practice now in the collegiate and post-collegiate levels. In high school, people still stick to the old school death by dehydration method, but more experienced people know about the hyperhydration methods.

Actually, some of the best athletes move up weight classes now. Cael Sanderson (only 4x undefeated NCAA champ) comes to mind. It's being determined that moving up and eating well increases your strength and speed, and makes you more successful than cutting too hard (to a point). Everyone these days is incredibly lean and well trained- the difference factor is in stamina now, and it is night and day between someone who cut too much weight and someone slightly smaller, but better nourished, than his opponent.

That's pretty much the opinion I found when I trained with the more elite powerlifters. The top guys only cut when they want to take a national or world record in a lower weight class, and even then they try to lose as much weight as possible by dieting months in advance.

I have been using drugs when I was young as well as being a distance runner and, well, runner's high is very similar to artificial intoxication. In fact, nothing I've ever tried has given me the same level of intoxication and euphoria as a run over 70 minutes long. There are studies that show similarities between a runner's high and opioid intoxication but I never tried opioids so I can't tell anything about it from experience.

The problem was that I quickly became addicted to running, I would feel extreme depression if I didn't run in the morning and I would often go for a second run as I was craving the pleasure. During my two years of distance running I fantasized about becoming a social outcast who does nothing but runs. Which is what I was, actually. I didn't have many activities aside from running.. I was eventually kicked out of the job I had because I had to go for a team workout in the middle of the day, which screwed up my job performance. Friday nights, Saturday nights, and Sunday nights were spent pounding the pavement.

And I wasn't skinny either, 40-50mpw with workouts sky-rocketed my appetite so I would go on a "Runner's diet": eating everything that was edible. I have lost a lot of weight since I stopped running :)

This might be a controversial view but I do think that running can lead to addiction and even though it's more socially acceptable (not to mention cheaper) than, say, heroin, like any addiction it has its downsides.

"Runner's High" is something I often hear about, but still have trouble fathoming. Whenever I'm running, all I can think about is how boring it is and how I want to stop. (and it's not because I can't do it - I'm in pretty good shape and could probably run 3-5 miles today without having done it in a while).

Any tips on learning to enjoy running?

Runner's High is also called The Zone, and it's very similar to many other things that are called The Zone, including that hyper-focused state of consciousness that programmers can achieve, and that semi-hypnotic trance that lets you drive for 6 hours on I-5 from SF to LA without going mad. It doesn't happen every time, depending on mood, stress, environment, sunspots, etc.

For me, it has a lot to do with rhythm. I find a good pace that lets my breathing and my steps achieve some sort of parity. Then I let my actions become automatic. It takes a little while, your muscles have to reach some sort of equilibrium, you have to get a feel for the surface you're on, and my mind usually needs to dump some useless junk first. Eventually the buzz dies down to a drone and you don't think about anything except the motion of your limbs and the air in your lungs.

Find a back road with no distractions and very few other people. Some people like music, some don't (Grateful Dead is popular). I find roads absolutely impossible, they're a erratic pile of breaking concentrations held together with joint-destroying concrete. Find a pace where you don't have to stop. Find a trail long enough where you can forget in the middle how long you've been running and how much longer you have to go. It may take a while. Exhaustion helps.

I've been in runner's zone much more frequently than I've been in runner's high. I can get into runner's zone 1-2 miles in (usually after muscles are warm) but runner's high I can only get after a run that's longer than 8 miles.

I've experienced it several times, all of the times on runs over 80 minutes long. Basically, it feels like you're a seven year old.. you start getting these flashbacks into childhood where everything was calm and peaceful.

I remember the first time I had the high I flashbacked into my 8th birthday, where my parents bought me a radio as a gift and we went to my grandmother's house and there was a lot of sun, and everything was so warm and fuzzy. I ran for a couple more miles, came back home and noticed that everything was warm and fuzzy there too. This was a night run, so I slept/dosed off in the bed through the next day and woke up around 2-3am 24 hours later.

That's when I was hooked. That's also when the shit started going wrong.

(short: run faster); My experience is: most important: trust your inner voice, don't demand too much of yourself (be gentle and forgiving to yourself); BUT ALSO "no pain, no gain", run every(!) day at least one hour, run faster until you feel slightly(!) uncomfortable, push yourself a bit, and then try to hold your speed longer and longer (3, 5, 10, 15, ... minutes this is essential for experiencing runner's high), look only a few meters ahead, concentrate purely on running [e.g. how your feet touch the ground, breathing], don't think actively about life problems, be here and now (also essential for runner's high). Don't expect too much, there will probably be days where you perform not super good, that's ok. Allow yourself some slower sections or short pauses (the pressure to urinate is welcome) in between, but after these, don't forget to raise your speed again, until you're running (not jogging). Do some stretching after running (for faster regeneration). Do it daily like teeth brushing (no discussion), not more than 1 day pause in 7 days (light rain is no excuse); trust, that "bad mood-" or "having eaten too much-" feelings disappear after 15, 20 minutes of running. This is how I learned and learn daily to enjoy running more and more (runner since at least 10 years).

Stretching after exercise can be harmful to recovery, actually. A massage is OK, but stretching should not be done until at least several hours later and preferably the next day.

Is this your own experience? I have never had any problems because of stretching after running, it feels very good, it takes the tension out of my muscles, loosens them. I've met another runner, and we did that after running automatically. Rhythm: 20 secs, short pause and 20 secs again.

The theory is that stretching after exercise worsens the muscular microdamage beyond what can be repaired during the normal recovery cycle.

Whose theory is that? My source of information (book "Ernaehrung und Training" by Dr. W. Feil and Dr. T. Wessinghage [european champion over 5000m in 1982]) clearly states, that "stretching [immediately after sport] is the gate of regeneration".

Oh, God...that is not worth it! ;)

It sounds harder than it actually is, you can always adapt to your personal situation, but if one always does only 15 minutes "jog, jog, jog", two times a week, without challenging himself and higher-tempo parts, that will not be enough for "runner's high". One has to put some effort into it, before you can reap.

I think it's important to acknowledge that the first few miles of a run are the worst. If you think 3-5 miles is an exceptional distance you've probably never run long enough to really get into an enjoyable state. For me, it's around 7-10 miles.

Where you run matters too. I enjoy running near water - Fresh Pond or the Charles River. I'd suggest running daily, following Hal Higdon's marathon training guide wherever it's most beautiful. http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/Mar00index.htm

I "can't run more than a block" but I can ride my bike all afternoon. I've only experienced this a few times on long rides. This was back when I was riding quite a bit more than I do today - it took about 30-40'ish miles to get it. For reference this is on flat ground at about 1800 ft elevation. I'm not sure about running, but I would estimate that 3-5 miles isn't enough - maybe 10?

> Any tips on learning to enjoy running?

Run cross-country, or better yet, try another sport like cycling or long-distance/cross-country rollerskating.

It's an acquired taste. It's like first time you try espresso and you hate it, and then you're like "hey, espresso!" so you drink more, and then you finally love it.

Also like espresso, it is more harmful to the body parts involved than alternatives.

Run somewhere you may enjoy it. Running on the streets is an abomination. I know not everyone can live less than 1 km away from a forest, but...

I’m sitting here chuckling, imagining people upvoting mannicken because their subconscious wants to believe running is addictive and makes you fat.

Running doesn't make you fat or skinny. Your diet makes you fat or skinny :)

Just want to point out that there's a difference between "pain" and "discomfort".

Pain is your body saying "I'm injured. If you don't stop now, expect things to become worse, potentially causing permanent damage." No athlete I'm aware of pushes through pain unless they expect to retire immediately after, or go into surgery. Runners who do this tend to get knocked out of the sport. Good runners recognize pain for what it is and stop immediately.

Discomfort is different. This is what the article is talking about. Running through cramps. Throwing up but still not stopping. Feeling tired but still pushing ahead. Leg muscles sore but still holding pace.

Of course you need to be careful about discomfort too. It could be a sign that you're severely dehydrated, or have too few electrolytes in your body. This is mostly an issue for distances greater than a marathon, however.

You have to learn how to tell the difference. It isn't at all obvious to an inexperienced person, which means that "discomfort" as you put it (we just called it "bad pain" and "good pain") can cause a lot of anxiety for someone who isn't used to it. Even professional athletes sometimes make mistakes and injure themselves in training, so the distinction isn't always clear even to them.

You're very correct. The differentiation likely takes years of training to fully develop. A general rule of thumb to keep injury risk low is to never push yourself more than 10% of what you normally do (lots exercise books say this). If you can hold that level for several weeks without problem, it's likely safe to "notch up" another 5% or 10%. Lots of other variables at play too, of course (rest, stretching, warmup, etc...).

Yeah, discomfort v. pain makes it seem like less v. more but that's not the distinction at all.

I'm not a runner at all, but I know that stabbing feeling in my side and my lungs frantically gasping for air isn't going to kill me or make me lose a limb...but that annoying clicking in my knee might mean trouble down the line.

> Just want to point out that there's a difference between "pain" and "discomfort".

You are redefining words to make an argument. Endurance athletes, in particular, will most certainly experience various pain sensations in the course of normal training or an event.

Body awareness is another matter: an elite athlete (presently or potential) is usually better able to interpret what their body is signaling - including noticing when something is going wrong.

Edit: And, actually, sometimes a real injury manifests itself as a discomfort during exercise, not pain.

…

For what it is worth, you can become dehydrated enough to compromise performance in an hour, less if it is very warm. Dehydration to the point of needing medical attention can occur in 2-3 hours at a moderate intensity. Typical symptom of mild dehydration (the kind you can suffer sleeping on a hot night) is discomfort in the form of a headache.

I was a competitive runner for many years and trained with some of the best. The difference between great runners and cyclists and everybody else is that they learn to tolerate pain - a lot of it - on a regular basis. They crave pain and can push their pain threshold far beyond what normal people would be able to tolerate.

If you've ever seen a great runner working out - it's almost painful to even watch - but always very impressive.

> and trained with some of the best.

If you don't mind me asking, what were your PRs? I got lapped on a mile in high school (the guy ran a sub-5!)

Have you read Once a Runner? Was that what your training life was like?

Interesting offshoot - The whole point of training 20 hours a week for the Ironman triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile marathon) is so that the body never goes anaerobic during the actual Ironman race. When the body goes anaerobic (lactic acid buildup), everything goes downhill rapidly - it goes from racing a PR (personal record) to whether you will finish the race.

And then there are the Marathon Monks of Tendai:

> The ultimate achievement is the completion of the 1,000-day challenge, which must surely be the most demanding physical and mental challenge in the world. Forget ultra-marathons and so-called iron-man events, this endurance challenge surpasses all others.

Only 46 men have completed the 1,000-day challenge since 1885. It takes seven years to complete, as the monks must undergo other Buddhist training in meditation and calligraphy, and perform general duties within the temple.

http://www.howtobefit.com/tendai-marathon-monks.htm

PRs: 5K 14:53, 10K XC: 30:29 all from college.

Nothing fancy compared to people I trained with.

I've read Once a Runner a long time ago. Training life is similar - it's all consuming really. In many ways it's like a job and a way of life.

Since I gave up running and got on with my life, I still train and compete competitively - even low key competition is enough to keep things interesting and motivating even though it's not the way of life it used to be.

I don't recommend that people do marathons actually. I've done 3 and they take such a tremendous effort to recover from that a lot of people just stay on the couch and don't start running again.

Elite runners can take enough out of themselves that the recovery is much longer. Recreational runners--well, I used to be able to do two or three every fall. Hell, I knew a guy who would run one a week. He drove race directors crazy, because he expected the gates open and the tee shirt ready when he got to the line in 5:30 or 6:00.

Nice. It must be a thrill to be able to win your local 10-K if you want to.

Thanks for that marathon monks link, it was a great read. Is it weird that I want to do that now?

If you want to do it, you haven't thought it through.

Oh, I have. It's crazy that I would be intrigued by the idea of spending seven years running, fasting, and generally starving my physical body, especially when I don't particularly have any spiritual reasons for doing it.

I was a decent recreational runner in my late 20s. But pain tolerance is not "the difference", just "a difference". I do not have the classic marathoner's frame, and at above 60 miles per week, I would start to feel twinges here and there, which likely would've developed into injuries had a continued to train at that level for more than a couple of weeks. Now, 60 miles per week is nothing for a marathoner, about half what the true stars run.

As with any form of highly competitive athletics, the best advice is to choose your parents carefully.

They crave pain and can push their pain threshold...

These two things seems contradictory. If they crave pain, why would they need to push their pain threshold?

(Disclosure: I'm a wimpy athlete. I always thought pain was the body's signal that something was wrong, so I backed off. Your remark confuses me even more. Just trying to understand.)

Pain is an interesting thing. When you first feel pain, it's scary and, usually rightly so, is the body telling the mind to stop something. The problem is that in order to get better in most athletic endeavors, athletes must push their bodies into an area that often causes some sort of pain[1].

A couple things eventually happen. First is the athlete starts to associate pain with progress. This is actually a bad thing since pain should always remain as valid feedback and signal a person to think about the actions they are taking. Second and more import is that the athlete accepts the pain and deals with it. Like most things in life, it sucks a lot more until you know what to expect. For example, getting punched in the face causes pain, but more than that it causes surprise. Remove that surprise and even if the pain is the same, the athlete will now react in a more sensible way from the punch.

For reference, I don't do any long distance (5k is what I maintain) running but have always played various sports, trained in MA, and primarily powerlift now (at least until the ski slopes open!).

[1] After experiencing all sorts of pain over the years there are definitely good pains and bad pains. IMHO, it takes time and experience to recognize what pains are what :)

I am an "endurance athlete" that regularly rides my bike 60+ miles. It's not a serious physical pain, like when you twist an ankle - I know when I am doing my body harm. It's pushing past a major amount of discomfort in order to achieve a goal. Granted, doing so without proper nutrition and hydration can cause injury, however your body is better off when you push through your concept of "too much".

Seriously, my body used to tell me "oh god stop stop stop this is too much" after 30 miles of flat riding. Now it take 60 miles of hilly riding to experience that, and it's not nearly as strong.

I guess to sum it up, it isn't normal pain, it's more of a mental wall that you push past.

I have done a fair amount of MA training and I think the best way to think about pain is recovery time. If I do this it will take my body less than two days to recover and it hurts but, that's reasonable if I want to progress. The next level of pain takes longer than that to recover from and should be avoided at all [1] costs. Fast recovery pain still has its downsides if you needed to escape from a burning building or run from a tiger right after a serious workout you would be slower and have a higher risk of injury etc. But, the modern world is fairly safe so it’s reasonably safe to ignore that kind of pain.

Unfortunately recovering from injury takes longer as we age so reasonable habits for a 19 year old can get a 35 year old into serious trouble. Also, you tend to get a mix of short and long term dammage so repeating low level pain can still be a sign your doing significant long term dammage.

[1] People are often willing to do longer term damage in major contests and fights. How reasonable this is depends on your personal goals.

You make a great point about recovery time. Many people incorrectly assume that if you finish your workout hurting then it was a good workout. The problem is that as you get better it becomes much harder to hurt and it becomes a recovery management challenge. What people seem to have anecdotally found is that more workouts which can be recovered from in a day or two are much better than the giant ones that leave you hobbling for a week. I think this becomes even more important where there are skills involved beyond only strength (like MA).

They may seem contradictory, but they aren't. Pain is wonderful. Pushing through new thresholds brings new truths.

As a person who regularly runs marathons and ultramarathons, I often get asked "Why?".

I usually offer the "joking" response "I like suffering" with a chuckle. Except it's not really a joke, I DO like the suffering. When I'm out there suffering on the trail, I learn many truths about myself. There's no facade or BSing. I either press on, or I quit/fail.

But you can't explain or rationalize this to a layperson who doesn't seek similar ventures. They aren't of the right mind. So you make it a "joke".

I love the quote "Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness", but I suspect it's for a different reason than what Dostoevsky meant.

You don't need to be an "elite athlete" to experience this or push past the pain. For some people, it's running a 5k.

So true on all accounts. I really enjoy hiking and in particular high altitude hikes. I get asked why all the time and my standard joke come back is "because it's there."

But in reality I also enjoy the suffering. There have been many hard hikes where I could simply turn around and the only person who would know is me, but I kept going anyways. You're someone who can understand the feeling of simply focusing on your next step and having the rest of the world melt away. After dealing with complexities all day at work it's nice to do something so...simple. Climb this mountain or lift this weight (I also love powerlifting with deadlifts being my absolute favorite).

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath...I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. -Messner talking about his first solo ascent of Everest

You want to get the pain. But no matter how much your mind wants the pain, your body will be screaming at you to stop. In a way your pain threshold is less of "the point where you can't take anymore pain" but rather "the point where you stopped last time".

An athlete's relationship to pain is ridiculously complex. Partly because pain is so complex, and really should be split out in different concepts/words. Adjectives are just so clumsy. For example, high performance athletes must learn to differentiate the pain of training from the pain of injury. It is possible to push too hard, to suck up too much pain. But it's also possible to be too tentative. Striking that balance is what keeps high performance athletes healthy, but always improving (something I have big problems with).

I cannot speak for everyone, but when I and some of the more competitive athletes I am friends with go to train, we want the pain. Going into training, we look forward to the burn. We know that it's good, that it signals progress, that it will fade, and that it means that we are better. But once we get into the training, all the love and craving doesn't change the fact that your legs are dying and lungs are on fire and arms don't want to move. The love by itself will not keep you going on. You have to push through that pain. The fact that you were pumped up 5 minutes ago doesn't mean anything in the moment.

That's something I tell people who aren't used to training: you have to learn to tell the difference between good pain (you're working hard, so it's hard going) and bad pain (you're injured and if you don't stop it's going to get worse).

The fact that you were pumped up 5 minutes ago doesn't mean anything in the moment.

A thousand times yes.

> I always thought pain was the body's signal that something was wrong

I have heard it said that "pain is the feeling of weakness leaving the body".

It's a signal that your body is under stress, but that can be a good thing. One of the keys is understanding the difference between the pain of "I'm stretching my capabilities" and the pain of "I'm damaging something".

I think you are right edw519. I tried to push myself beyond the pain threshold once and instead I got a fracture. I think the caveat is that you have to be in good shape before you start pushing your pain threshold.

For programmers/entrepreneurs, this may translate to pushing past your concentration/sleep/tenacity threshold.

Runner's high[1] is one factor - I would presume that the dopamine from mastery (a new discovery compared to the previously believed dopamine release from completed tasks -don't have a citation on me right now) is another factor; the pain reminds you that you are pushing your boundaries and getting better physically and at your discipline. The pain itself is probably awful, but it symbolizes a lot to the athlete.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/health/nutrition/27best.ht...

I remember hearing a quote from a professional football coach after one of his players died during practice in part because of the extreme heat and intense regiment that day: "You have to know the difference between pain and injury".

Sometimes your body wants to stop just because it's hard, but your mental faculty recognizes that it's ultimately best if you can resist. Other times, it really needs to stop.

I don't think they're contradictory at all. As you gain more and more fitness you'll have to work harder to get to the pain. As you experience more pain you become somewhat more comfortable with it and can tolerate more of it over time.

Presumably because they want to improve as well.

The nyt should add some disclaimer to that kind of article, knowing people with little experience in elite sports would read it and maybe try to learn from it!

I did two sports on national elite level and whenever you train or race beyond the "threshold" you put yourself into great danger, and only because you spend years near that threshold you are able to handle it. An elite runner or cyclist or whatever can tell the difference between pain that will go away when you slow down, and pain that will get worse or could put you into a wheelchair. When elite sportsmen(-women) loose control because of any thirdparty event, even when in unbearable pain, they have a high chance to regain control because they don't think about how they do it, it just happens. It's not a coincidence, that those people walk away from a crash, where hobby sportsmen loose there life. (Remember Lance going through the grass at the TdF ~6 years ago?)

Lance cutting the switchback was likely not in 'unbearable pain', because it was towards the bottom of the descent. The only guy in unbearable pain in that situation was Joseba Beloki - because he crashed and broke his leg and some other bones. They rode down that same road this year, by the way... it was kind of cool - someone had cut a path through the grass.

> An elite runner or cyclist or whatever can tell the difference between pain that will go away when you slow down, and pain that will get worse or could put you into a wheelchair.

I don't think you need to be all that 'elite' to figure that out. You don't need too much training to start feeling what sort of pain is from effort and exertion, and what might be tendons or joints or something like that that should not be pushed beyond a certain point.

"It never gets easier, you just go faster." -Greg LeMond

I'm no elite athlete/champion, but this makes complete sense to me now. The last couple of weekends I have been taking part in hill climb events. Knowing every inch of the course definitely helped me pace myself and achieve a far better time than I expected.

Like the interviewee in the article, I definitely didn't look pretty in the photos: http://flic.kr/p/8KQANq

You look like every other cyclist I've ever watched climbing a hill :) shameless plug while on this topic, you should check out my cycling site, http://ridewithgps.com - really cool if you have a garmin edge 500, 305 etc.

That's funny, the picture that you are using for a GPS receiver is a Magellan Explorist 210, it's the GPS that I've been using for biking for the last few years.

But I don't think that it's compatible with your service.

Haha nice pointing that out - our old designer put that together, and I don't think he was fully aware of compatibility issues :) Thanks for pointing it out. However, you can still use the magellen, you just can't directly sync with the site using Garmin Communicator. Uploading a GPX or KML you pull off the unit manually will still work.

Awesome, thanks :)

Another performance trick during competitions is association, the act of concentrating intensely on the very act of running or cycling, or whatever your sport is

Oh cool! I've always told friends that if you can listen to music or talk, you're not running fast enough. It's for this reason that I can't ever go out for just a "jog" unless I really need to recover... when you get in that zone you're like an antsy racehorse wanting to shoot out of the gate. The desire is just to go as fast as possible.

I love that part of the run though, where it's your mind against your body. You keep repeating to yourself that you can make it... each step closer to the goal. Your body wants to quit, but each step boosts your confidence. It gives you that runner's high.

For me, running is always about that focused relaxation. As the pain increases, you must focus yourself to continue to exert as much energy as possible in a relaxed and fluid manner.

Here's a nice Radiolab piece on pushing past limits http://www.radiolab.org/2010/apr/05/

Maybe someday I'll be at the point where my fitness goals require regularly pushing through the pain, but right now I want to push through the resistance with mental work. As evidenced by the fact that I do eventually do most everything I'm supposed to be working on, I don't think any of my work is too hard absolutely--it only feels too hard or too long or too boring for how I'm feeling at the moment.

I'm a programmer doing almost all client work. Eventual goal is to build a different kind of business around building my own stuff.

One probable analog is knowing the course. That should mean it's easier to work well on tasks that I can see the end of, but it should also mean that it's easier to do something very much like something I've done before. The first may be helpful, the second is obvious and not helpful.

I have no direct competitors to keep in view or focus on beating. Maybe I can hack my brain to think about the work competitively somehow.

If there's an analog to focusing on the running, I'm not sure how it would work.

I think there is a comparison to be made about pushing past the monotonous work required to launch a product.

I'd say its worse. At least when running you have endorphins and hormones to help you out over the course of your few hours of "pain". Launching a product involves months or more of numbing drudgery, self-doubt and incertitude about whether a finish-line even exists, with coffee the pitiful substitute pick-me-up. Try that, runners!

I dunno, this sounds like a terrible way to develop. We often say coding is a marathon, not a sprint, but even then, it's a marathon that lasts months or years, not a few hours. And your brain is not a muscle, no matter how many superficial similarities there may be. The boundary between "stretching your limits" and "pushing into burnout territory" is not something you can feel very easily.

An interesting article on its own merits, certainly, but trying to translate this philosophy directly into an approach to mental work sounds to me like a recipe for burnout, not a recipe for extreme performance gains. And by the time you're done tweaking it to actually work on the brain, you might as well have just started directly with an approach tuned to the brain, starting with this stuff will only have hurt you.

There is a book formerly called _Toughness_Training_for_Athletes_ that talks all about the practical application of mental toughness. Loehr talks about the importance of finding, maintaining, and controlling your "Ideal Performance State", or IPS, and how being able to harness and control your IPS on command is crucial to being a successful athlete.

I've been fortunate to be able to start for two national championship winning rugby teams, and I give a small fraction of credit for my personal athletic success to some of the lessons in the book.

It's now called Toughness Training for Sports: http://www.amazon.com/New-Toughness-Training-Sports-Psycholo...

I took a 140 mile bike trip and noticed that if I started thinking about anything other than biking, I started going slower. But if I was focused and one-pointed in mind, and allowed myself to feel the pain fully, I was able to push myself harder.

This summer a 2x Olympian (mountain biker) recommended "Thinking Body, Dancing Mind". It takes a Taoist/meditation approach to athletics and business.

She mentioned that it changed her life (turning her into an Olympic athlete) and that it was very popular at the Olympic training camp.

On a somewhat related note, if you haven't read it yet, "Born To Run" is a great read.

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest...

  Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even 
  thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator 
  between the mortals and immortals
    - Mary Wittenberg

I think the quote works much better like that.

All serious athletes are used to withstanding high amounts of pain. When I was a serious runner, I think that was the thing the most people didn't understand -- as you get better at running, the pain doesn't stop. You just get better at pushing through it.

In any case, if you find this sort of thing inspiring, check out a documentary called Running on the Sun (trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-e4bOLAuXg ). It's about the badwater ultra -- a 135 mile road race through death valley to Mount Whitney, including 13000 ft of vertical ascent. Featuring air temps up to 130F and ground temps around 200F -- people have sneakers melt. Race by application only; you have to have completed a bunch of ultras so hopefully you won't die trying. The men's record is something like 22.5 hours and the women's is I think slightly over 25 hours.

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