How Elite Athletes Become Elite – Learning to Endure Pain
If you want to know how elite athletes become elite, you must first understand how elite athletes learn to endure pain.
This is according to author Malcolm Gladwell and elite runner Alex Hutchinson. These two recently discussed this when talking to each other about what separates top athletes from the rest.
Alex Hutchinson states:
You can look at a spectrum of different activities, cognitive or physical activities, short or long duration. Fundamentally, what a lot of endurance activities have in common is that you have to hold your finger in the flame. You have to resist your impulse to pull it away, [resist] whatever your first impulse is. That is a unifying theme that brings together great athletes and great performers in business and other contexts.
We look for all the secrets [behind] the ways great athletes become great. On some level, they enjoy hurting—they don’t enjoy extreme pain, but you hear people talk about pain [positively,] “I felt alive during that moment. It was hard, but I felt alive.” I would bet that someday we’ll be able to identify that some people are wired to enjoy pain a little bit.
It can be a glorious thing to be uncomfortable. As a kid, initially, I loved the idea that you could stop running. It was only over time that I learned to acquire a taste for it.
How Elite Athletes Learn to Endure Pain
Gladwell and Hutchinson continue make several good observations within their conversation on the topic. However, I’m more interested in the actual mechanics of how elite athletes learn how to endure pain.
I cam across at article in Harvard’s medical journal that gave me my first clue. In it it states:
Research suggests that because pain involves both the mind and the body, mind-body therapies may have the capacity to alleviate pain by changing the way you perceive it. How you feel pain is influenced by your genetic makeup, emotions, personality, and lifestyle. It’s also influenced by past experience.
With this in mind, my conclusion is that much of pain, especially endurance pain, comes from the mind. If this is true, learning to endure pain is as much about the mind as it is the body. That is why a training technique called “positive training pain” is important.
According to the book Applying Sport Psychology: Four Perspectives, positive training pain is training to intentionally create nonthreatening pain. The goal is to push an athlete beyond fatigue while keeping the pain threshold under the athletes control.
The Association for Applied Sport Psychology states:
This pain often occurs with endurance exercise, and includes muscle fatigue and sensations in the lungs and heart that can range from unpleasant to what is typically thought of as pain. It is neither threatening nor a sign of injury…athletes know the cause, are in control of their effort, and recognize that these feelings are beneficial and can enhance performance. In short, positive training pain is a good sign of effort and improvement.
Positive Training Pain is the Secret
I believe elite athletes who learn how to endure pain suffer through a lot of positive training pain. I believe this not only because of my own experience as a high school wrestler and college football player, but also from reading what elite athletes say about their training.
For example, here is what 5x World and Olympic gold medal wrestler Jordan Burroughs says about his training regimen on his way to his 3rd world title:
We needed a light regimen that morning because the next two days held a gauntlet of excruciatingly painful workouts. Friday was to be tournament simulation day, in which we matched up with five different partners, and wrestled matches, simulating the grind of a day at the World Championships. But that wasn’t it. Saturday morning we were scheduled to run nine minutes worth of sprints up the infamous Incline trail. A 45 degrees path of pain, built into the side of a mountain. Nine minutes doesn’t sound too bad does it? You’ve obviously never done it. I’m talking about your butt and legs burning so bad that you can hardly walk for days after. Not fun.
As you can see, elite athletes eat pain for breakfast. There is no way of getting around it. If you want to be the best at what you do, whether is in athletics, business or another context, learning to endure pain is a must. You must incorporate positive training pain into your routine, and constantly seek to push your pain threshold higher.