Understanding Positive Training Pain vs. Negative Training Pain
Elite athletes who train for elite competitions must deal with all types of pain in their training. The hope is that the pain is not a result of an injury battle, but often this is something you can’t avoid. However, pain from the result of an injury is not my focus today. Today I want to focus on the two common types of training pains that are not injury related.
Positive Training Pain
Positive training pain is training to intentionally create non-threatening 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.
Negative Training Pain
Negative training pain is similar to positive training pain in that it doesn’t threaten injury. But the main difference is that it doesn’t produce positive outcomes such as improved performance. Negative training pain is more of a punishment than anything else.
If not a punishment, it could also be the result of going overboard with techniques designed to produce positive training pain. In going overboard, negative outcomes such as persistent soreness and a decrease in performance is the result.
Preventing Negative Training Pain
Elite athletes must avoid negative training pain like the plague. Unfortunately, it’s often out of their hands as coaches are the most likely culprits for this type of training. As a result, the first way to prevent negative training pain is simple. Coaches should not use training as a punishment. Without doubt, using training as a punishment is counter-productive.
The second way to prevent negative training pain is to make rest and recovery a major part of the training process. When rest and recovery are part of the process, the risk of overtraining is reduced. What’s more, rest and recovery time is the perfect time to incorporate the mental side of training as part of the routine.