Learn Why Working Out is a Great Choice For Those Who Hate Pain

Do you hate pain? Welcome to the club. It's called being human!

Working out hurts with "good" pain, meaning pain from muscle soreness, plain and simple. Lifting weights is uncomfortable. Keeping your heart rate elevated for long periods of time is uncomfortable. Stretching is uncomfortable. Sense a theme here?

The benefits of working out are in direct relationship with how much pain you are willing to endure. Sounds pretty awful right? Not really, depending on if you think about it the right way.

The idea behind working out if you hate pain is that it actually reduces pain in your overall life:

• Pain from being weak and unable to do the things you want to do.
• Pain from having poor posture and muscular imbalances from repetitive activities. Learn more about our Corrective Exercise Workout Plans.
• Pain from feeling cheated because you are unable to do what you used to do when you were younger.
• Emotional pain from feeling bad about yourself and unattractive.
• Pain from the fear that your health is deteriorating. Or pain from the reality that it already has.

So working out, while causing pain for the moment, actually reduces all these other pains that never go away unless you pop a pill, and even then only for a little while. They are with you 24/7 if you don’t do anything about it.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. The harder you are willing to work--that is, the more pain you are willing to endure during your workout, the faster and more completely you can eradicate the pain from the other areas of your life that are due to not being in shape.

Here is my proposal - since working out is going to hurt anyway, no matter what, why not work as hard as possible to get the best pain reducing benefits you can? It’s like paying upfront for anything you might get in life. Working out is your way of paying upfront for a more enjoyable, pain-free life.

While we’re on the subject, any workout that claims to be able to help you get in shape easily and with no post-workout pain from sore muscles is a crock of crap. While there may be certain benefits to that particular workout, in general the harder you work and the harder it feels, the better it is. End of story.

Some people say as a trainer I’m blunt, but I prefer to be called honest. I tell you how it really is to save both of us time and words. There is no getting around working hard. But you’ll benefit more than everyone else around you if you do.

What About Injury Pain During Workouts?

To be clear, pain from injury isn't something you should have to deal with or ignore while working out. If you need help with "bad" pain like this, please check out our Corrective Exercise page.