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.