Suffering will come to most people eventually; no need to do fancy summoning rituals.
> When we each learned to suffer, we also learned that the suffering eventually ends
Oh that that were true!
I think it's a bit naive to call endurance suffering. I get that it might be nice to be able to experience endurance in a pure/controlled enough form where it can be retroactively framed as a positive experience / accepted as a nurturing challenge, but...
I don't think the difference is obvious to everyone, especially not everyone in a position to suffer for sport. Poverty is not the only suffering out there either, imagine someone choosing to be in pain and boasting about how they conquered it from the eyes of a chronic pain sufferer.
It’s great that some people can suffer for fun. I’d like to see them try to survive my life where there is no end, no escape, no relief. Only death will finally take the pain away.
There may be a difference in kind between sport and what I deal with but I gotta tell ya, I’ve yet to see anyone who can actually see the difference.
Im going to vapid for a second and im sorry to be an invalidator but I dont think discussing your existential suffering in a thread regarding the difficulty of sport is worth the time and you can see that.
"I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts. That's what makes you a champion." -- Muhammad Ali
Actually, I think they mean that pain doesn’t mean that you have to as well endure mental anguish. You can accept the pain. It doesn’t make the pain go away, but you’re not adding to it with your own mental anguish.
A climbing buddy of mine related this ‘fun’ scale to me years ago. I honestly kind of thought it was an off the cuff type thing from him, but I guess it’s been banging around.
How true it is, and the knowledge that suffering eventually ends is the key. The phrase I learned was repeating as many times as necessary “how it is now is not how it will forever be”
Nevertheless, I think there's another dimension to the ability to endure. 2 summers ago, I hiked the 230 mile Cape Wrath Trail in the Scottish Highlands with my brother. I didn't have any of the physical issues that the author described (despite almost endless wet conditions underfoot and frequently from above too). I had trained for and finished an extremely hard 50km trail race in the Colorado Rockies 2 weeks before the hike started, and was in excellent shape even before we started.
Nevertheless, it was only my brother's inability to even imagine quitting that got me to the end. I was variously bored, confused about the why, and/or simply willing to call it quits. I wasn't in pain, I didn't dislike walking all day with an insanely heavy pack on, I hadn't even minded a 30' fall down a mountain. But it still took everything I had, plus more from my brother, to get me to want to keep going.
People who can do that easily have my respect, admiration and envy (like ... my wife!)
I find when hiking there's a huge toll / boost from being the weakest or strongest link. If I'm hiking with friends who are relatively novice I find it completely effortless whereas with people more experienced than I I find the going far more though. Maybe it's just hard to be the slow one.
Being the weakest is just stressful for me. I worry I’m slowing others down and ruining their experience. It’s the same but not quite as bad, when I’m the fastest; I worry I’m ruining the experience for others and making them feel bad. You wouldn’t believe the relief I get when I’m in second position...
In competitive Cycling it’s this battle of poker that makes the mountains so interesting.
Everyone has bad days in a Grand Tour stage race.
They have to hide that from each other and themselves or their rivals will try to turn the screw just a bit further whilst pretending they have loads left in the tank.
As an experienced long distance hiker/runner would you have pushed through the pain as the author did?
It seems crazy to me, to push through pain so bad it "makes you chest constrict", likely coming from bone as opposed to soft tissue, and in an area (foot) where long term damage would be very bad. I've pushed through minor cases of shin splints and tendonitis but what the author describes sounds irresponsible to me?
So I'm wondering if I'm too wimpy or if the author is irresponsible?
I've always felt the same about ultra-endurance sports. When exercising, there's "good pain" and "bad pain" and if something is doing you damage rather than just stressing your tissues in an intended manner, that's "bad pain" and means you should stop immediately.
how would one be able to tell the difference when amped up on adrenaline or after having hit "the wall" at 30-35km during a long distance run?
I've run ultras before and not long ago crossed the Alps on foot with nothing but a tent and good cheer.
The thing that would always make me stop is issues with slow-tissue (bones, joints etc). Not because "I feel this is the right think to do", but my body isn't leaving me any other choice. Ofc assuming the decision to stop or keep going isn't influenced by peer pressure.
I've once come home with bleeding nipples (chafed by a new white Asics running top) so badly that it looked like I had been shot on the trail and the bleeding wouldn't even stop in the shower. It was pain far worse than a sprained ankle or broken leg.
In your analogy I'd consider a sprained ankle "bad" pain while the chafed nips "good pain". Severity of pain might not be the most reliable indicator in mid-range pain levels. But it's always reliable when it dominates over a strong will. Basically you always know when you're _done_. Peer pressure is a dangerous cloud in judgement here which is why I hate doing these things competitively or with friends (one always ends up the sparing partner of the other).
It's often as simple as "does it affect your form?". If you tweak your ankle, and spend the next bunch of miles favoring it, you're moving stress and load from the part of your body that was trained to support that stress and load to some other part of your body. This can lead to cascading failures and more injury.
Also "the wall" just means you didn't fuel correctly and now feel really tired/weak/etc. It completely sucks to be sure, but it's a "body" feeling, and not a "knee" or "hamstring" feeling at a specific part of your body.
Your chest constrict comment reminded me of this quote from Messner on the first solo ascent of Everest.
"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."
one interesting thing i've found is that the higher the suffering, the more fondly i look back at the event/time period and overcoming it. the inverse also seems weakly true - i'm not very proud of periods i've spent coasting in life.
second, it seems to create a fraternizing effect - i seem to also recall fondly the people with whom i shared the suffering. perhaps this explains some of the military people reflecting back fondly on times of truly intense suffering.
Part of the ability to look back fondly may be the higher intensity of experience packed into shorter time than when you coasted. Check out the Long Short, Short Long time phenomenon. The short period of intense experience later feels like a much larger period of time, and the long period of monotony later recalls as a very short inconsequential moment in time.
For example, the 24 hour flight to your holiday destination will compress into a very short unimportant memory where the holiday itself will recall as if it were a much longer period of time than it was.
VSauce tells me there is a newer emerging Short/Short time phenomenon of interacting with screens and watching TV and using social media; it seems like a short time when it's happening and seems like a short time reflecting back on it.
I like the message, but I'm not sure how generalizable it is. Suffering with an end date attached is way more tolerable than sudden, unplanned suffering. This is why people endure hard studies(PhD, STEM/Medical School) internship, infant rearing, you name it. I would also claim that physical suffering mentioned is somewhat easier to suppress than mental suffering, in fight-or-flight response context because we have a way clearer consensus of what is not-ok when it comes to physical pain, making the detection of it easier. (The author mention his pain not being back/knee/not serious made him keep going)
But for most of us suffering is not planned/predictable; it comes suddenly, unplanned and often is cyclic/wave-like pattern. For the case of cyclic pattern, telling oneself "suffering will eventually end" doesn't help that much because around the corner when it ends, looms the next batch of suffering again.
This is why "suffering will eventually end" sounds like a nice comforting advice to new parents/student/employee but is a terrible advice to someone that is going in-and-out of depression, in a life crisis, etc.
In cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression, you will be asked to observe and take notes on both positive and negative emotions. One reason is to become aware of the thoughts and behaviors that trigger them. This has a surface-level application: dismantle negative triggers, build positive triggers, feel good more often.
But another mechanism is meta. One of the worst elements of depression is the belief, "I feel terrible all the time for no reason (or for big intractable reasons), and I always will." This probably isn't true. You feel terrible sometimes, for specific reasons you can identify and work on. You also feel okay sometimes. The trick is to notice this. CBT putting it in your face on a regular basis can force an update to your model of feeling. Then when a negative emotion comes, it doesn't have a big powerful story about helplessness and permanence to interact with. The story was responsible for most of the suffering. Without it, the emotion passes in less time and with less intensity.
The waves roll in and then collapse. Tides change, moon phase changes, weather changes, seasons change. You don't have to believe the whole thing is going to stop to appreciate that conditions will be favorable again.
The timing of this article is interesting. I've been putting off going to the dentist to have my back molar pulled. I've had this toothache since December but the pain has intensified the past week or so. It's a constant low-level pain that spreads to my front teeth and vamps up as I try to sleep.
I'm wondering if I should "tough it out" and suffer through the pain until the molar completely dies and crumbles away? The process has already started and the tooth is a jagged mess. Will the pain then stop or will my mouth become infected?
I work at a homeless shelter and they suffer through toothaches, often without medication of any kind. At least I can take ibuprofen when the pain gets too much.
Is suffering the dentist of the homeless?
Update: Thanks for the comments, they are helpful. I will make a dentist appointment in the morning.
That is not what happens. At least not the only thing that happens. You risk infection that can climb into the nervous system in your face, the pain you have now could not compare. The consequences of damage to the nerves can be life long.
I've let a tooth die and fall out without getting infected, but most definitely wouldn't do it again. Dentist is so safer, faster and more comfortable!
I didi not know this. Thanks. As a person who grew up in India I never went to a dentist. After coming to USA I visited a dentist for cleaning because the insurance offered it for free. The dentist could not believe that it my first visit to any denstist in 27 years.
Don't be like me. My wisdom teeth pushed my teeth totally out of alignment. The headaches have been unbearable at times. I've had infections come and go.
It's been 15 years. I could have spent $3k 15 years ago to enjoy the following 15 years a lot more. What the hell was I thinking?
Well, I was thinking sort of like you are now. If you can afford to fix it, it's worth every penny.
Contrary to popular opinion: our ancestors survived just fine without dentists for a very long time. Yes, you risk dying, but it's less likely than you think -- your body is pretty good at fixing itself. Wisdom tooth extraction and braces and whatever new money-extraction-technique-du-jour will come out tomorrow is probably not necessary.
Anecdote: when I was a kid, I used to visit a dentist who would always "find" 5-6 cavities every year. After a few years my parents took me for a second opinion elsewhere, and it turned out those cavities weren't really there. Ever since then, I've somewhat distrusted dentists... When I was in my early teens, I was told I needed braces. I declined, and two decades later, my teeth look straight and are fine. In my late teens I was told I needed my wisdom teeth extracted... I declined, and same as before, my teeth are fine now almost 20 years later.
My personal stance now is: avoid processed sugar (for teeth and health in general), brush your teeth, and go to the dentist if something hurts and don't go away within a few weeks. Otherwise dentistry is pretty scammy as a whole.
Our ancestors with good teeth ate zero sugar, zero processed starch. This is so difficult in modern society as to be essentially impossible.
Sadly yes, dentistry has extremely poor, or rather non existant oversight. The answer however is to extremely carefully select your dentist, and get second opinions. Not to ignore dentistry.
Ignore it, no, but the industry has "fads" which are very questionable. Effectively every single dentist will insist you need to come in for "cleaning" every 6mo-1yr... yet there are plenty of people like me (either by choice, or lack of dental insurance or whatnot) who haven't been to the dentist in a decade or two and don't have any issues.
I think this is BS, actually. I think I'm allowed to say that because I've completed some long-ass hikes and other suffer-fests myself.
Suffering, in and of itself, isn't a skill. You will endure iff you want to endure. That is, if the perceived benefits of enduring outweigh the pain.
I've suffered through multi-week hikes with blisters and a too-heavy pack because I loved the views, the remoteness, the self-reliance and asceticism. And also because there were no good alternatives, because bailing midway would have been a different kind of emotional and logistical pain.
I've also bailed on things. Not a ton of them but always with good reason. I quit a job I hated after trying to suck it up for too long. I quit my college sports team after barely getting played for two years. I left a long-term relationship when I realized my partner wasn't treating me well.
I don't think of those bails as failures. They just didn't work out, and I'm happier without those things in my life. In fact I'm proud of myself for putting aside my pride and fear of being a 'quitter' in order to pull the plug on them. The hikes I suffered through aren't successes, either. With experience I've gotten better at preparing and packing, so even longer and more challenging hikes are easier for me now. Better views and more comfort is where it's at. No need to suffer just for the sake of suffering.
> Suffering, in and of itself, isn't a skill. You will endure iff you want to endure. That is, if the perceived benefits of enduring outweigh the pain.
This is what gets me through marathons. You hit the real hard part around mile 20 and fuck it, running another 6 is easier than going back the other way. Faster you run faster you’re done.
At least for running, my experience is that suffering is most definitely a skill that you can improve. You get faster when you realise that the level of discomfort that stopped you the last run could actually be so much worse, and yet somehow you can still run faster.
I agree that suffering for its own sake probably isn’t worth it, but if you want to run faster/farther, getting used to suffering will let you improve.
Don’t over train, but don’t always listen when your body wants to stop, unless it’s joint pain :)
For people who enjoy the suffering itself; well that’s a different hobby than running, and I won’t judge.
Hm, I don't correlate suffering with the feeling I have when pushing myself to increase my morning run from 4 miles to 5 miles.
I liked the original quote up top:
> That is, if the perceived benefits of enduring outweigh the pain.
Then again, I just looked up the actual definition for "suffering" and it's much less dramatic then what I associate with suffering. Simply "to submit to or be forced to endure" which, in that sense, I'd agree.
To be pedantic, you get faster by running more volume. To do that, you have to make most of it easy. Even when I'm hammering out 50+ miles and 2+ quality runs in the weeks before a race, I'm only truly suffering for about 30 minutes each week. Even threshold work rarely crosses the line into real suffering.
I don't buy the narrative that ultra endurance running is some kind of noble self inflicted torture. Most of the experience is just plain fun. That's why I do it.
Recommend "The Lost Art of Running" by Shane Benzie. He's trained people to complete lots of ultra events, including on pretty low milage - focussing on form/technique.
I agree with everything you said but I want to highlight one more condition: There must be a reasonable chance that the suffering will end if one toughs it out. It doedn't have to actually end or be highly probable but there has to be realistic hope. This is what differs some chronic conditions from the other cases talked about here.
I think what I have a hard time with is the word "suffer". I learned in the military that what your mind thinks your limits are and what different aspects of your body's limits are can be very different things. I have also seen this taken too far. The latter, I would call suffering.
So, is there a skill behind it? Sort of.
- mental fortitude and awareness to squeeze the juice when you are absolutely exhausted are skills. I realized this when I was winded, my muscles were sore, and I could feel the minute shifts in load on my back during forced marches. I learned to listen to my body and beg the question, "Am I fooling myself into being done, or am I hurt?" One time I answered that question with the latter, the rest of the time I would stare ahead, hum (or sing) something, mind my posture, snack, and sip water. Before I knew it, my time would slip by. This skill progressed over time.
- commitment and planning are skills and one precipitates the other. Some folks wanted to do the bare minimum and expected maximal results. I was not an infantryman, but I snagged someone who had been on more deployments than I had (that was an infantryman) and said, "Show me". He showed me how to align weight distribution for different terrain, what kinds of socks to wear when, how to dress for hikes, what to look for in boots, where to store snacks, how to walk, how to configure my plate carrier, how much water to carry per mile, etc... When I attempted to pass this knowledge on, some listened and some didn't.
I can't run now due to a knee injury ( I cycle, hike etc ) but 20 years ago when I did go running after 5-10 mins my body would say it didn't want to do that. If I played squash for 2 hours (running almost non-stop) my body would be fine with it. What I'm saying is, it's 90% mental and you can endure it if you want to...see Goggins.
A marathon is not just running. The prolonged length of time, distance and speed are heavy stressors.
The hike that the author discusses is just a nature walk with poor footwear. I did St. Olav's way back in 2019. There is no sanctity in hiking. It's just a walk and you either are prepared or aren't.
As a runner, I could say the same about running a marathon. A half-marathon (or near) distance was practically a light exercise for me for a long time there. A marathon would be a harder exercise, fatiguing, but not too challenging. Because I was prepared (running 5/10/15k regularly for several years). But I would never call it "just running" for anyone else.
The idea that hiking is "just walking" because for you it was, is similarly absurd. With elevation changes, gear on your back (10-40lbs depending on how lightweight you go, easier to be lighter than when I started with metal-framed packs), significant distances per day, potential time constraints requiring longer daily distances, you have similar "heavy stressors" in hiking.
This confusion you felt while you wrote it: That's the feeling of not knowing what you don't know. Remember it, so you won't make bad decisions when it happens in a more important situation.
In buddhism there is a distinction between pain and suffering. Having pain doesn't necessarily mean that you have to suffer. This helps me a lot to endure when I am sick or have other discomfort. It doesn't always work but I think it's a good guideline.
byron katie has some nice technique going in asking 4 questions about the suffering and getting behind the believe that makes the difference between pain and suffering. Very often it's the resistance toward pain that intensifies and turns it into suffering.
I really learned to suffer as a parent of, first, a newborn, then infant, and now toddler. The emotional burden is incredible but you know you must overcome it to provide a warm, caring, environment.
Learning to push through discomfort and pain is how you get injured. Both in sports and in general life. Ignoring those signs should be reserved for the most exceptional of circumstances. I would slap the enthusiasm out of young me, knowing now the price I have to pay everyday.
Really depends on the activity. For any activity where overuse injuries are common, it’s probably a good heuristic.
I consider myself reasonably fit, but I’m not sure any of the activities I do strictly require physical pain. Soreness? Fatigue? Sure. But rarely pain, unless I’ve made a mistake.
> Soreness? Fatigue? Sure. But rarely pain, unless I’ve made a mistake.
A big part of this is that people inexperienced with pushing themselves will mistake the soreness and fatigue for pain and quit. It's easy for you to say this because you claim to be "fairly fit". You have experience beyond average (at least in the US).
If you mistake the soreness and fatigue for pain and stop at that moment, you will still get in better shape. Really. It just gonna be slow. If you mistake pain for soreness and fatigue, you wont exercise until that injury you just caused yourself heals.
Also, if you are overweight, did not exercised for long, but are ambitious, that is the prime situation where it is easy to cause yourself an injury. Fairly fit means that your body is adjusted exercise at least somewhat and joints and such can withstand.
>If you mistake the soreness and fatigue for pain and stop at that moment, you will still get in better shape. Really. It just gonna be slow.
Fitness is a slow process anyways, why artificially increase it by spreading FUD about bodies? bodies get sore and fatigued. it's normal. When you think soreness and fatigue are pain, and for some reason you're ALWAYS in pain when you exercise, you're never going to do it.
last February I was in Tokyo training for the marathon. Whilst I was on a long training run round the city, I received a message that the marathon was just cancelled. At this point I decided to run as far as possible as it was my only chance to do so. Around half way I started to get a weird pain in the side of my ankle but pushed through it.
I still have that pain almost a year later, multiple MRIs and orthopedics have been unsuccessful in finding out what it is. I'm only now able to run very short (2.5km) distances. Pushing yourself to ignore pain is very possible and can be very dangerous.
Learning what is actually pain vs. discomfort is important. Exercising is often uncomfortable, but it shouldn't be painful. Learning how to deal with being uncomfortable both physically and mentally is a key skill in life.
Somewhat related, but my view of suffering really changed after reading "Man's Search for Meaning".
I've been on long hikes. I've also broken bones, some of which will hurt until the end of my life.
I agree with your point of view on hikes. It's a mind game.
But that's not the whole story. For some people, pain doesn't end. Pain is every day, and you get nothing in exchange. No trees, no fresh air, just pain.
I could go on, lay out the difference between pain and the resulting mental suffering. While you can't always avoid the former, the latter is up to you. But that's a whole other story.
Congrats on your achievements. Man, I wish I could go back hiking. You learned how to conquer your pain, may it be inconsequential and temporary. Bear in mind that, sometimes, it has long term (everlasting?) consequences. And that makes it completely different.
I agree. I've had experience with pain lasting several years due to issues with my jaw. No matter how strong you are, it takes a heavy tool on your happiness.
I had a friend that was going through painful knee surgery, and he was very optimistic. "Im good at enduring hard times" he said. I warned him to prepare for the worst, to be ready to reach out to friends if depression hits. He shook it of. But just a few months later, there he was. For the first time in his life, he was depressed. He could endure terrible pain for several hours. But when the pain just never ever goes away, when you get zero time to recover, it grinds you down.
Never ever risk permanent pain. It is a worse hell than you can imagine, if you've never been there.
In my favourite sport, Cycling, suffering has long been venerated.
The imagery includes stories of Hinault riding through a snow-storm with frostbite.
Or Pantani fighting his inner daemons (a battle he sadly later lost) to summit a mountain with his arms held wide like “Christ on the cross”.
The great Irish rider Sean Kelly once pulled down his shorts to show a journalist a saddle sore the size of an egg when asked why he wasn’t as good as expected.
I often speculated if it’s a coincidence that Cycling as a sport is traditionally most popular in catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, France and Belgium.
That's a very interesting idea. However cycling is also hugely popular in protestant countries, eg Netherlands or the UK. And other sports share this fascination with suffering. For example in mountaineering one of the most famous stories is that of Joe Simpson going down a remote mountain in the Andes with a broken leg and no food or water over several days.
That's very true and one reason why I said "traditionally" but there are no Monuments or Grand Tours in either Britain or Netherlands. It's just a thought and not a very well researched one so I wouldn't expect anyone to take it too seriously.
For Joe Simpson, or say Earnest Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic, these are stories where something went wrong and they were able to show heroic Endurance* just to survives.
In professional Cycling, it's slightly different, temptation is a factor.
You can stop at any time and you'll be picked up by the warm Broom Wagon or team cars that follows the race.
It would be so easy to give in to the devil on your shoulder offering you the easy way out...
Even giving in to that weakness is venerated by numerous photographs of weeping riders by the side of the road. Cycling fans seem to respond to a loser's suffering, as we recognise shared weakness.
That story of temptation seems to chime with stories of martyrs and saints.
Who knows though, like I said it's just a hypothesis.
I think that is because initially, "suffering" in sport is actually rewarding. It happens around the same time endorphins flow and you feel so good after. And then you feel improvement and achievement. You have to overcome some discomfort to get better, so trainers and coaches teach that mindset too. And it pushes you further and plus, you can imagine yourself as sort of tough hero. And you can brag about it.
The issue is when it becomes addictive and it is not good suffering anymore, but rather deliberate destruction of body with long term consequences.
Quoting Zizek:
"Don’t fall in love ... with your suffering. Never presume that your suffering is in itself proof of your authenticity. A renunciation of pleasure can easily turn in pleasure of renunciation itself.
I should imagine an experience outdoors person like her would be able to choose appropriate footwear! Boots are heavy and don't protect you from blisters either.
Many thru-hikers choose trainers (or really "trail runners") over traditional hiking boots. Even without aggressive ultralight gram-shedding, a contemporary pack weighs a fraction of what it once did and you don't need to up-armor your feet anymore.
I love this article. I haven't hiked that far, but I've hiked very long and high single days, and have taken quite a few falls that have seemingly caused long-term foot damage where every time I set my foot down for the first time in a day, it feels like my arch collapses. I think it's an incredible mental challenge one must go through to do something like the author talks about, but I do wonder if it's not distinguishable from applying the same mental game to something like doing boring intellectual tasks. Such as a boring programming job for a company you hate. In both cases, it never occurs to me to quit, and the same force drives me to keep trying until it gets better or it ends. But pushing yourself with your brain to do the mechanical process of taking steps seems much more within reach than using your brain to make your brain do something it's not going to do. For me, once a task is knowable, predictable, or just very routine, my brain seems to cloud over with a haze, and my ability to see through it is like shining highbeams at fog in the middle of the night. With hiking, taking a step forward is always progress, but with software engineering, the next step is a mental hurdle that might just not happen, no matter how much you've learnt to suffer.
Not listening to your body when it is talking to you is a guaranteed way to get injured even in a permanent way, your body is not against you, if it is sending you a message there is a reason.
When it comes to exercise avoid the three Ts.
Too much, Too soon, Too fast.
I wonder if there's a pain-tickling based program. Simply be very sensitive to your body signals, and cut when you hit 5% pain (absurd quantification but you get the idea)
I agree, but I also disagree. There is a lot of discomfort that has nothing to do with long-term physical damage to your body. The author takes the distinction for granted:
> I’d have stopped if I felt like I was truly injured
I think what the author is talking about is that we start as children from a position of trusting discomfort unconditionally. It distresses us, and we avoid it. Through experience, we learn that that the distress that many types of discomfort causes us is disproportionate, and we start to react to it differently. We even learn to associate certain types of discomfort with the reward of hard work. If life doesn't force these experiences upon us, we have to get them by choice, or else our lives can end up overly constrained by discomfort that we never learned to put into context.
But you're right as well. In the gym, people first learn what their bodies can do when they use emotion and bravado to unlock levels of effort and discomfort they had never experienced before. As they gain that ability, they also learn to moderate it, to use it wisely in the context of how their body responds to what they're doing with it. The first without the second is dangerous, and the second without the first is constricting.
Yeah, there's a big difference between being hurt and being injured. I'd go so far as to say that most athletes will deal with both during their career.
Learning to manage it is truly an art. If you're too conservative you leave a lot on the table. Being too aggressive absolutely will get you injured.
The one consistent thing though that research shows is that if you are considtently doing workouts that you would rate as a 10/10 on your own internal uncalibrated scale, you are at much higher risk for injury.
The art of knowing how hard to push yourself isn't something that people just intuitively know. It takes experience of failing in both directions to nail the sweet spot. It's not impossible to learn, but I agree that most athletes don't even have it nailed. Thats one of the things a good coach is for.
In basic training, drill sergeants used to yell the phrase "Are you hurt, or are you injured?". If you said injured, you went to the medical facility to get checked out, if you said "hurt", expect some fashion of hazing(and you wouldn't repeat "hurt" in the future most likely).
The author doesn't seem to me to be talking about healthy discomfort but suffering, that middle ground between discomfort and injury is what in a multitude of sports will get you hip replacements and herniated discs when you reach your 50s.
> Not listening to your body when it is talking to you is a guaranteed way to get injured even in a permanent way, your body is not against you, if it is sending you a message there is a reason.
As a former college athlete I can't agree with you. It's nearly impossible to tell when you are pushing yourself too hard and when you are just pushing yourself.
The first workout of the year feels like you will die. A few weeks later that same workout feels like a warm up. Pain is always involved.
Definitely changes from sport type, referring to bodybuilding/calisthenics I have always felt some kind of difference,
the former is much more like the joints and tendons are involved, while the latter is mostly the muscles (DOMS).
Either way, there's no need to skip training for a year and then hit the gym in one go (too much, too soon)
Hmmm but changes in you body habits WILL include some level of discomfort. Whether it is the first workout in a while or trying to eat less after the holidays.
But what about going through a HIIT routine or keep rest low between sets to keep the heart rate high. IMO you cannot tell what your body is 'telling' you until you have pushed and 'suffered' to the point that you know when you body is truly hurt and when it is just feeling some resistance and telling you to stop that because it's too much effort.
I know plenty of people who I have tried to train and work with who would give up on the first bead of sweat.
What you're missing is that there's a huge difference between toughing it out during "training" and toughing it out during "events".
In training, absolutely. If something doesn't feel right, back off, let your body recover.
But during events? Whether it's the big through-hike or that marathon or the ironman, you need the ability to push past the pain and suffering, and learn that your body is better than you think at fixing itself. It's effectively impossible to injure yourself in a permanent way, I promise you.
Few marathon runners will run a full marathon during training, even at slower paces. Before I ran my first one, the longest training run I ever did was about 35km, with most runs below 25 (for comparison, a marathon is 42.2km). The sheer amount of suffering you'll endure during those last 7.2km is probably the worst you'll ever feel in your life, but slowing to a walk or dropping out at that point is ridiculous.
Like the author said, having the mental fortitude to tough it out when the going gets tough is what separates athletes from wannabes -- and knowing the difference between "this is just a training run" and "this is the event I've been preparing for over the last 12 months" is key.
The three Ts is a training prescription not a performance one. Doing the AT or running a 5K are not training. If you don’t feel acute pain during. 5K it simply means you could have run faster. Your body might not be against you but it wants to keep you well away from the outer limits of your capabilities. Which is a bit antithetical to sports
Being in the backcountry has an advantage/disadvantage: when you're days from the nearest trailhead you have little choice but to continue.* When you are, say, in a PhD program, every day you have the option of throwing in the towel. I feel like sticking through the latter is psychologically more difficult.
* I've only had to set a broken limb (arm) once in the backcountry. In that case we distributed that person's gear and spent three days getting out. On a different trip: very painful/bloody feet; luckily we were only about five miles from our destination so we took turns helping the victim walk out under his own power.
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[ 8.2 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] thread> When we each learned to suffer, we also learned that the suffering eventually ends
Oh that that were true!
I think it's a bit naive to call endurance suffering. I get that it might be nice to be able to experience endurance in a pure/controlled enough form where it can be retroactively framed as a positive experience / accepted as a nurturing challenge, but...
There may be a difference in kind between sport and what I deal with but I gotta tell ya, I’ve yet to see anyone who can actually see the difference.
"We're lucky to be able to electively suffer like this"
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri4CbP_E7oo
First heard about types of fun from an article posted here - I think it was this one https://www.tetongravity.com/story/culture/the-three-and-a-h...
Edit: put type 3 at first but on second thought it’s type 2
It’s a useful heuristic.
"fun" (Noun, uncountable):
- amusement, enjoyment or pleasure
- playful, often noisy, activity.
Nevertheless, I think there's another dimension to the ability to endure. 2 summers ago, I hiked the 230 mile Cape Wrath Trail in the Scottish Highlands with my brother. I didn't have any of the physical issues that the author described (despite almost endless wet conditions underfoot and frequently from above too). I had trained for and finished an extremely hard 50km trail race in the Colorado Rockies 2 weeks before the hike started, and was in excellent shape even before we started.
Nevertheless, it was only my brother's inability to even imagine quitting that got me to the end. I was variously bored, confused about the why, and/or simply willing to call it quits. I wasn't in pain, I didn't dislike walking all day with an insanely heavy pack on, I hadn't even minded a 30' fall down a mountain. But it still took everything I had, plus more from my brother, to get me to want to keep going.
People who can do that easily have my respect, admiration and envy (like ... my wife!)
Everyone has bad days in a Grand Tour stage race.
They have to hide that from each other and themselves or their rivals will try to turn the screw just a bit further whilst pretending they have loads left in the tank.
It seems crazy to me, to push through pain so bad it "makes you chest constrict", likely coming from bone as opposed to soft tissue, and in an area (foot) where long term damage would be very bad. I've pushed through minor cases of shin splints and tendonitis but what the author describes sounds irresponsible to me?
So I'm wondering if I'm too wimpy or if the author is irresponsible?
I've run ultras before and not long ago crossed the Alps on foot with nothing but a tent and good cheer.
The thing that would always make me stop is issues with slow-tissue (bones, joints etc). Not because "I feel this is the right think to do", but my body isn't leaving me any other choice. Ofc assuming the decision to stop or keep going isn't influenced by peer pressure.
I've once come home with bleeding nipples (chafed by a new white Asics running top) so badly that it looked like I had been shot on the trail and the bleeding wouldn't even stop in the shower. It was pain far worse than a sprained ankle or broken leg.
In your analogy I'd consider a sprained ankle "bad" pain while the chafed nips "good pain". Severity of pain might not be the most reliable indicator in mid-range pain levels. But it's always reliable when it dominates over a strong will. Basically you always know when you're _done_. Peer pressure is a dangerous cloud in judgement here which is why I hate doing these things competitively or with friends (one always ends up the sparing partner of the other).
Also "the wall" just means you didn't fuel correctly and now feel really tired/weak/etc. It completely sucks to be sure, but it's a "body" feeling, and not a "knee" or "hamstring" feeling at a specific part of your body.
Both may be true, but pushing though because it feels ok in the morning ala the author is crazy
"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."
one interesting thing i've found is that the higher the suffering, the more fondly i look back at the event/time period and overcoming it. the inverse also seems weakly true - i'm not very proud of periods i've spent coasting in life.
second, it seems to create a fraternizing effect - i seem to also recall fondly the people with whom i shared the suffering. perhaps this explains some of the military people reflecting back fondly on times of truly intense suffering.
For example, the 24 hour flight to your holiday destination will compress into a very short unimportant memory where the holiday itself will recall as if it were a much longer period of time than it was.
But for most of us suffering is not planned/predictable; it comes suddenly, unplanned and often is cyclic/wave-like pattern. For the case of cyclic pattern, telling oneself "suffering will eventually end" doesn't help that much because around the corner when it ends, looms the next batch of suffering again.
This is why "suffering will eventually end" sounds like a nice comforting advice to new parents/student/employee but is a terrible advice to someone that is going in-and-out of depression, in a life crisis, etc.
But another mechanism is meta. One of the worst elements of depression is the belief, "I feel terrible all the time for no reason (or for big intractable reasons), and I always will." This probably isn't true. You feel terrible sometimes, for specific reasons you can identify and work on. You also feel okay sometimes. The trick is to notice this. CBT putting it in your face on a regular basis can force an update to your model of feeling. Then when a negative emotion comes, it doesn't have a big powerful story about helplessness and permanence to interact with. The story was responsible for most of the suffering. Without it, the emotion passes in less time and with less intensity.
The waves roll in and then collapse. Tides change, moon phase changes, weather changes, seasons change. You don't have to believe the whole thing is going to stop to appreciate that conditions will be favorable again.
I'm wondering if I should "tough it out" and suffer through the pain until the molar completely dies and crumbles away? The process has already started and the tooth is a jagged mess. Will the pain then stop or will my mouth become infected?
I work at a homeless shelter and they suffer through toothaches, often without medication of any kind. At least I can take ibuprofen when the pain gets too much.
Is suffering the dentist of the homeless?
Update: Thanks for the comments, they are helpful. I will make a dentist appointment in the morning.
The infection can cause sepsis. You could lose a chunk of your jaw. You can literally die from dental infections.
Don't be like me. My wisdom teeth pushed my teeth totally out of alignment. The headaches have been unbearable at times. I've had infections come and go.
It's been 15 years. I could have spent $3k 15 years ago to enjoy the following 15 years a lot more. What the hell was I thinking?
Well, I was thinking sort of like you are now. If you can afford to fix it, it's worth every penny.
Anecdote: when I was a kid, I used to visit a dentist who would always "find" 5-6 cavities every year. After a few years my parents took me for a second opinion elsewhere, and it turned out those cavities weren't really there. Ever since then, I've somewhat distrusted dentists... When I was in my early teens, I was told I needed braces. I declined, and two decades later, my teeth look straight and are fine. In my late teens I was told I needed my wisdom teeth extracted... I declined, and same as before, my teeth are fine now almost 20 years later.
My personal stance now is: avoid processed sugar (for teeth and health in general), brush your teeth, and go to the dentist if something hurts and don't go away within a few weeks. Otherwise dentistry is pretty scammy as a whole.
Sadly yes, dentistry has extremely poor, or rather non existant oversight. The answer however is to extremely carefully select your dentist, and get second opinions. Not to ignore dentistry.
Suffering, in and of itself, isn't a skill. You will endure iff you want to endure. That is, if the perceived benefits of enduring outweigh the pain.
I've suffered through multi-week hikes with blisters and a too-heavy pack because I loved the views, the remoteness, the self-reliance and asceticism. And also because there were no good alternatives, because bailing midway would have been a different kind of emotional and logistical pain.
I've also bailed on things. Not a ton of them but always with good reason. I quit a job I hated after trying to suck it up for too long. I quit my college sports team after barely getting played for two years. I left a long-term relationship when I realized my partner wasn't treating me well.
I don't think of those bails as failures. They just didn't work out, and I'm happier without those things in my life. In fact I'm proud of myself for putting aside my pride and fear of being a 'quitter' in order to pull the plug on them. The hikes I suffered through aren't successes, either. With experience I've gotten better at preparing and packing, so even longer and more challenging hikes are easier for me now. Better views and more comfort is where it's at. No need to suffer just for the sake of suffering.
This is what gets me through marathons. You hit the real hard part around mile 20 and fuck it, running another 6 is easier than going back the other way. Faster you run faster you’re done.
I agree that suffering for its own sake probably isn’t worth it, but if you want to run faster/farther, getting used to suffering will let you improve.
Don’t over train, but don’t always listen when your body wants to stop, unless it’s joint pain :)
For people who enjoy the suffering itself; well that’s a different hobby than running, and I won’t judge.
I liked the original quote up top:
> That is, if the perceived benefits of enduring outweigh the pain.
Then again, I just looked up the actual definition for "suffering" and it's much less dramatic then what I associate with suffering. Simply "to submit to or be forced to endure" which, in that sense, I'd agree.
To be pedantic, you get faster by running more volume. To do that, you have to make most of it easy. Even when I'm hammering out 50+ miles and 2+ quality runs in the weeks before a race, I'm only truly suffering for about 30 minutes each week. Even threshold work rarely crosses the line into real suffering.
I don't buy the narrative that ultra endurance running is some kind of noble self inflicted torture. Most of the experience is just plain fun. That's why I do it.
So, is there a skill behind it? Sort of.
- mental fortitude and awareness to squeeze the juice when you are absolutely exhausted are skills. I realized this when I was winded, my muscles were sore, and I could feel the minute shifts in load on my back during forced marches. I learned to listen to my body and beg the question, "Am I fooling myself into being done, or am I hurt?" One time I answered that question with the latter, the rest of the time I would stare ahead, hum (or sing) something, mind my posture, snack, and sip water. Before I knew it, my time would slip by. This skill progressed over time.
- commitment and planning are skills and one precipitates the other. Some folks wanted to do the bare minimum and expected maximal results. I was not an infantryman, but I snagged someone who had been on more deployments than I had (that was an infantryman) and said, "Show me". He showed me how to align weight distribution for different terrain, what kinds of socks to wear when, how to dress for hikes, what to look for in boots, where to store snacks, how to walk, how to configure my plate carrier, how much water to carry per mile, etc... When I attempted to pass this knowledge on, some listened and some didn't.
Is there a manual?
As to why it's here, HN readers seem to like topics related to stoicism and perseverance.
The hike that the author discusses is just a nature walk with poor footwear. I did St. Olav's way back in 2019. There is no sanctity in hiking. It's just a walk and you either are prepared or aren't.
The idea that hiking is "just walking" because for you it was, is similarly absurd. With elevation changes, gear on your back (10-40lbs depending on how lightweight you go, easier to be lighter than when I started with metal-framed packs), significant distances per day, potential time constraints requiring longer daily distances, you have similar "heavy stressors" in hiking.
Pain should be a signal to consider carefully what you are doing.
I consider myself reasonably fit, but I’m not sure any of the activities I do strictly require physical pain. Soreness? Fatigue? Sure. But rarely pain, unless I’ve made a mistake.
A big part of this is that people inexperienced with pushing themselves will mistake the soreness and fatigue for pain and quit. It's easy for you to say this because you claim to be "fairly fit". You have experience beyond average (at least in the US).
Also, if you are overweight, did not exercised for long, but are ambitious, that is the prime situation where it is easy to cause yourself an injury. Fairly fit means that your body is adjusted exercise at least somewhat and joints and such can withstand.
Fitness is a slow process anyways, why artificially increase it by spreading FUD about bodies? bodies get sore and fatigued. it's normal. When you think soreness and fatigue are pain, and for some reason you're ALWAYS in pain when you exercise, you're never going to do it.
I still have that pain almost a year later, multiple MRIs and orthopedics have been unsuccessful in finding out what it is. I'm only now able to run very short (2.5km) distances. Pushing yourself to ignore pain is very possible and can be very dangerous.
When I realized how stupid the mindset is and how deep in me that mindset was, it was too late.
Somewhat related, but my view of suffering really changed after reading "Man's Search for Meaning".
I agree with your point of view on hikes. It's a mind game.
But that's not the whole story. For some people, pain doesn't end. Pain is every day, and you get nothing in exchange. No trees, no fresh air, just pain.
I could go on, lay out the difference between pain and the resulting mental suffering. While you can't always avoid the former, the latter is up to you. But that's a whole other story.
Congrats on your achievements. Man, I wish I could go back hiking. You learned how to conquer your pain, may it be inconsequential and temporary. Bear in mind that, sometimes, it has long term (everlasting?) consequences. And that makes it completely different.
Avoid consequences. Really, do.
I had a friend that was going through painful knee surgery, and he was very optimistic. "Im good at enduring hard times" he said. I warned him to prepare for the worst, to be ready to reach out to friends if depression hits. He shook it of. But just a few months later, there he was. For the first time in his life, he was depressed. He could endure terrible pain for several hours. But when the pain just never ever goes away, when you get zero time to recover, it grinds you down.
Never ever risk permanent pain. It is a worse hell than you can imagine, if you've never been there.
The imagery includes stories of Hinault riding through a snow-storm with frostbite.
Or Pantani fighting his inner daemons (a battle he sadly later lost) to summit a mountain with his arms held wide like “Christ on the cross”.
The great Irish rider Sean Kelly once pulled down his shorts to show a journalist a saddle sore the size of an egg when asked why he wasn’t as good as expected.
I often speculated if it’s a coincidence that Cycling as a sport is traditionally most popular in catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, France and Belgium.
For Joe Simpson, or say Earnest Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic, these are stories where something went wrong and they were able to show heroic Endurance* just to survives.
In professional Cycling, it's slightly different, temptation is a factor.
You can stop at any time and you'll be picked up by the warm Broom Wagon or team cars that follows the race.
It would be so easy to give in to the devil on your shoulder offering you the easy way out...
Even giving in to that weakness is venerated by numerous photographs of weeping riders by the side of the road. Cycling fans seem to respond to a loser's suffering, as we recognise shared weakness.
That story of temptation seems to chime with stories of martyrs and saints.
Who knows though, like I said it's just a hypothesis.
* Sorry, terrible pun.
The issue is when it becomes addictive and it is not good suffering anymore, but rather deliberate destruction of body with long term consequences.
Get some proper hiking boots!
When it comes to exercise avoid the three Ts. Too much, Too soon, Too fast.
> I’d have stopped if I felt like I was truly injured
I think what the author is talking about is that we start as children from a position of trusting discomfort unconditionally. It distresses us, and we avoid it. Through experience, we learn that that the distress that many types of discomfort causes us is disproportionate, and we start to react to it differently. We even learn to associate certain types of discomfort with the reward of hard work. If life doesn't force these experiences upon us, we have to get them by choice, or else our lives can end up overly constrained by discomfort that we never learned to put into context.
But you're right as well. In the gym, people first learn what their bodies can do when they use emotion and bravado to unlock levels of effort and discomfort they had never experienced before. As they gain that ability, they also learn to moderate it, to use it wisely in the context of how their body responds to what they're doing with it. The first without the second is dangerous, and the second without the first is constricting.
Learning to manage it is truly an art. If you're too conservative you leave a lot on the table. Being too aggressive absolutely will get you injured.
The one consistent thing though that research shows is that if you are considtently doing workouts that you would rate as a 10/10 on your own internal uncalibrated scale, you are at much higher risk for injury.
The art of knowing how hard to push yourself isn't something that people just intuitively know. It takes experience of failing in both directions to nail the sweet spot. It's not impossible to learn, but I agree that most athletes don't even have it nailed. Thats one of the things a good coach is for.
As a former college athlete I can't agree with you. It's nearly impossible to tell when you are pushing yourself too hard and when you are just pushing yourself.
The first workout of the year feels like you will die. A few weeks later that same workout feels like a warm up. Pain is always involved.
Either way, there's no need to skip training for a year and then hit the gym in one go (too much, too soon)
I know plenty of people who I have tried to train and work with who would give up on the first bead of sweat.
In training, absolutely. If something doesn't feel right, back off, let your body recover.
But during events? Whether it's the big through-hike or that marathon or the ironman, you need the ability to push past the pain and suffering, and learn that your body is better than you think at fixing itself. It's effectively impossible to injure yourself in a permanent way, I promise you.
Few marathon runners will run a full marathon during training, even at slower paces. Before I ran my first one, the longest training run I ever did was about 35km, with most runs below 25 (for comparison, a marathon is 42.2km). The sheer amount of suffering you'll endure during those last 7.2km is probably the worst you'll ever feel in your life, but slowing to a walk or dropping out at that point is ridiculous.
Like the author said, having the mental fortitude to tough it out when the going gets tough is what separates athletes from wannabes -- and knowing the difference between "this is just a training run" and "this is the event I've been preparing for over the last 12 months" is key.
This is nothing special, however. Every student learns how to suffer too.
* I've only had to set a broken limb (arm) once in the backcountry. In that case we distributed that person's gear and spent three days getting out. On a different trip: very painful/bloody feet; luckily we were only about five miles from our destination so we took turns helping the victim walk out under his own power.