Are Pain and Suffering Needed to Reach Your Fitness Goals?

The post yesterday got about half great reviews and about half  horrible reviews.  I got some really good hate mail for that one.  Here is a  tip, if you are not happy, please tell me how to fix it or atleast WHY.  Telling  me I am a jackass is not helpful.   I want to know WHY I am a jackass!

Interestingly enough I got some similar not-so-happy emails about 4 weeks ago  when I ran a post on a powerlifter lifting monster weights.

For some reason, a few people did not find the post motivational.   I got notes saying that I was encouraging people to hurt themselves by showing that.  Pleeeezzzee.

It should  be noted that 99.9% of you that read this blog has been nothing but exceptional  and I have learned a ton from all of your questions and interactions.  Seriously, I really do appreciate it more than you will ever know.

The post yesterday had references to “pain and suffering” and implied that it  was needed to reach you goals.

Is it?

This got me thinking.

For those who have read this blog, you know that I am not a fan of creating pain in the gym.    I am not a fan of hopping on the spiky foam roller or trying to  hump a baseball on the floor for “deep tissue work” before a lifting session.

If you want to create some pain before lifting, call me up and I will kick you  in the nuts really hard.  At least that is fun for ME!  Hahaa.

This never gets old to watch “The Nutty Buddy”

The Science Behind The Nutty Buddy

Now I am not exempt from this type of behaviour in the past and I have paid  large sums of money to trainers, guurs, coaches and massage therapists to create  pain FOR me.   I don’t fault them at all, I did if of my own free will with my  own hard earned money.

Do I recommend you do that? No.  Save your money for my upcoming serminar on  Metabolic Flexibility

instead (shameless I know, but hey, I pay the bills to keep the lights on around here).

This bring us ot the questions “Are their times in your life where pain and  suffering are neeeded?”

I think of them as side effects to certain goals.

Drugs

Let’s look at drugs for a second.

No, not those kinds of drugs you hippie!

Drugs, like pharmaceuticals.

In pharmacology, the term used is “therapeutic window.”

While I did a minor in Chemistry and took some high level pharmacokinetics  classes a few years ago again, I am not an expert; but here are the basics  (trust me, this will be short, so no drueling on your keyboard).

From Webster’s it states   (source therapeutic window)

1 : the range of dosage of a drug or of its concentration in a bodily system  that provides safe effective therapy <the narrow therapeutic window…the effect  may go from therapeutic to toxic with an increase of just 10 micrograms per  milliliter [in] blood concentration—Lisa Davis>

Many times this is also referred to as the Therapeutic Index.

“The therapeutic index (also known as therapeutic ratio), is a comparison of the  amount of a therapeutic agent that causes the therapeutic effect to the amount  that causes death.

Quantitatively, it is the ratio given by the lethal dose divided by the  therapeutic dose. A therapeutic index is the lethal dose of a drug for 50% of  the population (LD50) divided by the minimum effective dose for 50% of the  population (ED50).

A high therapeutic index is preferable to a low one: this corresponds to a  situation in which one would have to take a much higher dose of a drug to reach  the lethal threshold than the dose taken to elicit the therapeutic effect.”

Source Wikipedia : Therapeutic_index

For those that scrolled past all that chemistry crap, here is the recap

LD50 (lethal dose 50)  in addition to being the title of a CD by the band  Mudvyane is the lethal dose to kill 50%.   ED 50 (effective dose 50) is the effective dose for 50%

We want as much separation between these two as possible–a smaller ED and a  high LD.

Some drugs that have a very narrow window (or index) and are not very “user  friendly.”

TNT Time!

DNP (2,4-Dinitrophenol ) is one that comes to mind where some nutty bodybuilders  have used it to cut body fat in a short period of time.  It basically interrups  (uncouples) the cell’s ability to produce ATP (energy).

While is does not do this completely, it does it enough so that extra energy is  produced as heat, thus more calories are literally “burned off”.   Many years  ago it was used as a weight loss drug, but had some very bad side effects like cooking yoursel from the inside out.

While case studies are rare, there was one reported recently (Barlett et al, 2010)  that stated

“A 46-year-old man took a lethal dose of an agent called dinitrophenol (DNP). He  presented 11 h after ingestion with loin pain, diarrhoea and vomiting. He  rapidly deteriorated with profound hyperthermia, acute renal failure,  hyperkalaemia, metabolic acidosis and eventually haemodynamic instability.  Despite aggressive supportive measures and rapid sequence induction, he  deteriorated and died 21 h after ingestion.”

So, my point on this is that DNP has a very narrow therapeutic window.   A little bit may help you drop some pounds (although long term effects are unknown), just  a bit too much and you are dead.   Your arre more than playing with fire as  instead of getting burned you could end up dead.  Did I emphasize that point  enough yet?

Back To the Real World

Ok, so I think all decisions have a therepeutic window or a risk/reward to them.

I could lift this weight, but my low back is really hurting bad.

In my case last night, I could do some heavy band deaflifts, but the callous on my  left hand near my pink was not happy. I ended up not doing it past a few sets as  I felt like I was going to rip it open at any point.  The risk of ripping it off  was much higher than not doing the lift on that day.

Every decision have a risk/reward.

Lifting in pain has a high long term risk and in my opinion is not needed for  gains.

What About Life?

It has been said that only when you know the rules can you break the rules.

I try to follow the same rules in life that I do in the gym.   The goal is  performance, not how you “feel” afterwards.   I know Charles Staley has been  saying this for years.

“It’s better to use your performance as a gauge of what you’ve accomplished than  how much you hurt the next day. Numbers don’t lie; if your numbers are going up,  so is your progress. The reverse is not true however. I trashed my back a few  years ago doing something really stupid, and trust me, the fact that I couldn’t  tie my shoes for a while wasn’t a sign of progress!”

source Tmuscle: Pain Not Performance

I would agree.

Life can throw you curve ball though.

As you know, I’ve been in college going on about 16 years now.   No, that is not  a typo where I inadverntently slipped in a 1 in front of the 6.    I started in  1992 and did 7.5 years full time completing a BA, 2 years of post grad work and  a MS in Mechanical Engineering (Biomechanics), took about 1.5 years off where I  swore I was never going back and then was back in college again.    Even the  thought of it caused shivers up my spine and nauseau.

Fast forward to today where I am in the process of writing up 3 studies and a  literature review for my final defense to finish off my PhD.    Pretty much  every day I have thought of quitting.  Many days I did not want to look at  another research study or revision number 31 (not joking on that) of my study  that I am trying to submit, only to most likely get it rejected by the journal  since they like to publish high rejection rate to make themselves look good.

I had others that told me it would be a long road.  I figured that much.   I  planned on 5 years of full time work.  Wow, I never thought it would be this  long though.   Ugh.

The point of this is not a “poor me” story and “look at how much I struggle.” or  “hey, look at all this effort.”    I made the decision to do it.  Nobody put a  gun to my head and said “do a PhD crazy man or die.”    I made the decision and  therefor I also made the decision to accept any and all “side effects” that come  with it, just like the drug example above  You decide to take statins, you  accept both the benefit and the side effects.

All About Control

I can quit at any time.  That will make it all go away.  I have thought about it  many times.   I had times where I kept telling myself that I could “quit  tomorrow, but not today.”   I worked to find more efficient ways (read, less side effects) to get it done.   I soon learned that there are no shortcuts, not  even things that helped a bit.  Such is the windy path I have chosen.

The key turning point came when I was talking to a colleague and I asked him  “How did you make it out?”

His answer was, “I made the decision that I was going to finish it, no matter  how long it took, and that they were not going to break me in the process.”

I wanted to find a short cut or some better advice, but I soon realized this was  great advice and one that I adopted.   I took pride that in TIME, I would  graudate.   I had tried all other avenues and the only one left was to go  straight ahead and survive the process.

If that meant I had to scrap 11 months of work and start over, if that was the  only option, then so be it.   If I have to rewrite a paper 41 times and that is  the only way, then I will do it.

I can quit at any time, but I must accept the side effects too.  If I have to  accept them, I will do what I can to minimize their effects.   So if you are  taking statins, talk to your doc about taking ubiquinol which is the reduced and active form of Coenzyme Q10 (statins mess up this pathway and deplete your body  of it) to minmize the side effects or work to get of them entirely (Mabuchi H,et al.).

What have I become?
Thoughts like shadows swelling through my mind
What have I become?
Something else inside

-Demon Hunter

As I Lay Dying “Through Struggle” Video

only through struggle have i found rest
with a piece of me taken away
i begin to understand
hollow out this machine like chest
with its gears that turn to make me feel
and assembled thoughts that fade away

only through struggle have i found rest

-As I Lay Dying

Summary

Some times pain and suffer are the side effects we must endure to achieve our  goals.

If we want a certain goal, we must be prepared to endure everythign that comes  along with it.   We can stil work to reduce these side effects to as low as  possible however.

Comments

What do you think?  What times in your life have you accepted the risks/side  effects?   Let me know in the comments

Rock on

Mike T Nelson

REFERENCES

Tainter ML, Stockton AB, Cutting WC (1933). “Use of dinitrophenol in obesity and  related conditions: a progress report”. J Am Med Assoc 101: 1472–1475.

Bartlett J, Brunner M, Gough K (February 2010). “Deliberate poisoning with  dinitrophenol (DNP): an unlicensed weight loss pill”. Emerg Med J 27 (2): 159–60

Mabuchi H, Higashikata T, Kawashiri M, Katsuda S, Mizuno M, Nohara A, Inazu A,  Koizumi J, Kobayashi J. “Reduction of serum ubiquinol-10 and ubiquinone-10  levels by atorvastatin in hypercholesterolemic patients”. J Atheroscler Thromb.  2005;12(2):111-9.

Charles Staley,  Pain and Performance, Tmuscle, PUBLISHED 05-24-07 10:09  Accessed July 19,2010 source  Pain and Performance