https://youtu.be/gUF2ptVA-eE

Eric Heiden was a gold medal Olympic speed skater and later became a medical doctor, MD.  See you tube video of his skating above.  Speed skaters have to be pain merchants, in other words they deal with the pain/discomfort of exercise.  So who would be better than Heiden to discuss the adaption of the body to the discomfort of exercise.  Exercise discomfort is a topic seldom addressed in the exercise motivation literature, but is a demotivating factor for beginners, as well as experienced fitness individuals.  In his book (see cover above) Faster Better Stronger, Heiden writes, “Continuing to exercise will actually immunize you against the discomfort you feel when you first start out….as you grow fitter all your systems get better at delivering what you need.  Your lungs, heart, and blood have ramped up; your brain and muscles have synchronized and become more efficient; your mitochondria have increased in size and number to dish out more energy; and your body has learned to better utilize that energy, better triage your blood flow, and better store glucose”.   Heiden writes that once you get in shape your body craves use and striving for more will feel healthy and exhilarating.  Just starting out Heiden recommends we learn to monitor what is going on with communication between our body and mind.  What seems sheer exhaustion or significant pain for one person may not register on the radar of another person.  He asks, are you the knight in Monty Python who gets his arm torn off and says it is just a flesh wound?  Or are you Henny Penny that gets hit in the head with a seed and cries the sky is falling?  One of the factors in dealing with the stress or pain of exercise that can be helpful is dissociation, which is discussed in another post.