No Pain All Gain Conditioning

Unless you're in sports, training for a mud run or spartan race or try to one up your boy, going all hard till you drop isn't what it's all cracked up to be. Training till failure can be dangerous on your body especially on the central nervous system where you go crazy and all of a sudden your body shuts down and you're out for some time. Been there, done that and you know what? It can be a royal pain in the ass trying to recover fast enough to your next psychotic workout. I believe in challenging yourself but never to the degree where injuries are more than likely to occur.

There are people out there that think they have something humongous to prove to themselves that they're in better shape than somebody else. Crossfitters fit right into this category; don't get me wrong those guys and girls are tough bastards and some can go extremely hard but like the old saying goes "Everything comes with a price" and they pay for it sooner than later in major injuries, paralysis and possibly death. There was a time where the big fitness rage was "No pain, no gain", this was made by bodybuilders who "taught" people that by building muscle, you have this mind boggling element of pushing through pain in an exercise in order to make a muscle grow. Yes that is one way to do it but there are healthier ways to build muscle than the go big or go home bullshit.

As we get older, our bodies begin to change once again but this time, it's a drop in hormone production and our bones become frail little by little. I know deep down I'm not going to have the same level of conditioning and strength/flexibility in my 50's as oppose to my 20's and 30's yet by adjusting and tweaking things using wisdom and knowledge, I plan on being in crazy shape still in my later years than my peers because unlike many people in the world, I'm not just going to stop training just because I'm this old and that form of state. I first learned the term All Gain, No Pain from my mentor John Peterson of Transformetrics; call him a quack, call him a genius, call him an egomaniac I don't care; I just take bits and pieces of little advice and put it to use on my own terms.

Gaining health and strength without the pain is a great treasure to learn and anybody can do it if they learn to listen to how their body really responds. I'm still a young guy according to those 20 years older than me hell even 10-15 years older than me but at my age, I see those in their late teens and early-mid 20's just getting the crap beat out of them in the gym and doing these crazy things that will in no way, shape or form is going to help them later in life than most likely kill their bodies from the inside. At 33, I'm now old enough to be some trainee who's just starting out at 11-12-13 years old's dad, that scares me sometimes and I worry often for these kids that are pushed so hard that they don't understand what they're doing to themselves or what a parent is doing to them. There are some kids out there that are phenomenal at what they do and some rarely get injured and have a great level of discipline plus being able to defend themselves which I greatly admire but also hope that they don't go down that path where things will bite them in the ass later in life.

No pain and all gain conditioning is a system where you do exercises to the degree that you can keep going without fatiguing and you're not overexerting your CNS. They can be calisthenics, kettlebells, cables, dumbbells or machines but you never push past to the point of failure and you're safely strengthening the tendons and ligaments. I understand the need to push beyond limits and I've done my fair share to the point of collapsing and passing out, getting dizzy and even be so stiff that in the morning every move hurt so bad it feels like a crowbar is hitting you all the time. Pain may tell you you're still alive but it's also torturous and can threaten your very sanity as a human being.

Be aware of how you train and come out strong at the end feeling like you could do a little more but you're reserving that for the next session and recover well. When you train All Pain and No Gain, you'll recover faster and operate with highly oxygenated blood in your system that keeps your lung capacity at a great level and you will last longer in your sessions plus you'll have better reserves for higher volume if you choose to go that route.