How to Get Tough
Get-Fit Guy has tips on how to make yourself tough – tough enough to handle not only hard workouts, but also other painful experience life might throw at you, like hot water, cold water, needles, car crashes, emotional stress, or even chronic pain.
Ben Greenfield
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How to Get Tough
We’ve all heard it before: “no pain, no gain.”
I must admit, unless my muscles are burning or my lungs are heaving during a workout, I feel like I’m shorting myself from getting a good fitness response. There is certainly truth to the idea that if you want to burn fat faster, build or tone muscle, or expand your cardiovascular capacity, your workouts need to take you a little outside your comfort zone..
So in this episode, you’re going to discover a new study that highlights how to make yourself more tough – tough enough to handle not only hard workouts, but also other painful experiences that life might throw at you, such as hot water, cold water, needles, car crashes, emotional stress, or even chronic pain.
I must admit, as an Ironman triathlete, I am extremely excited about this study. You’ll be understand why when you see the title: “Triathletes Feel Less Pain”
Triathletes Feel Less Pain
In the study researchers compared non-athletes with seasoned triathletes. The non-athletes did non-competitive exercise at a lower level, such as swimming, jogging, and aerobics, while the triathletes did their usual routine of high intensity intervals, competition, and racing.
Then, both groups underwent tests that measured pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain intensity, and also completed questionnaires about their attitude to pain, such as fear and amount of perceived stress.
The results showed that the triathletes and non-athletes could both identify pain just fine, but the triathletes perceived the pain as less intense, and could stand the pain for longer. The triathletes also rated any pain as less painful than their non-athlete counterparts, and they had lower fear of pain and lower perceived mental stress.
The researchers summed up the results quite well:
“The results suggest that triathletes exhibit greater pain tolerance and more efficient pain modulation than controls, which may underlie their perseverance in extreme physical efforts and pain during training/competitions. This capability may be enhanced or mediated by psychological factors, enabling better coping with fear of pain and mental stress.”
What Does This Mean for You?
So what does this mean for you?
It means that even though you don’t need to drop everything you’re doing and go register for an Ironman triathlon, but if you could figure out how to train like a triathlete, you might give yourself a big advantage when it comes to feeling less pain and getting more tough!
Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that as a triathlete, I may be a bit jaded. I’ll wager that athletes from other sports could get similar “toughness” scores – such as Crossfitters, soccer players, or track-and-field athletes. But then again, there is indeed a special “battle-hardened” mental advantage you gain when you line up to compete in a triathlon.
Here are two workouts that will make you tough like a triathlete (no open water swimming required).
How to Train Like a Triathlete
So you want to train like a triathlete, but don’t necessarily want to go jump into a lake, buy a fancy triathlon bike, go running, or squeeze oodles of swimming, biking, and running into your week? No worries!
Here’s a simple I-can’t-swim-won’t-bike-and-don’t-like-running triathlon workout:
- Warm up for 5-10 minutes. I’d recommend beginning with a quick dynamic stretching protocol.
- Next, head to the lat pulldown machine, where you’re going to replicate the upper back and arm burn of a swim. Do 15-20 lat pulldowns with a wide front grip (fingernails facing away from you), then 15-20 lat pulldowns with a more narrow reverse grip (fingernails facing you). If lat pulldowns are too easy for you, do pull-ups.
- Next, with minimal rest, head to the leg press machine, and do 10 leg presses in a very slow controlled motion with about 10 seconds forward and 10 seconds back. This will burn quite a bit, but the slow, controlled movement will create a lactic acid burn in the legs very similar to riding a bicycle very hard. If leg presses are too easy for you, do squats.
- Finally, grab a jump rope and jump as hard as you can for 2 minutes. If you don’t have a jump rope or can’t jump rope, just do jumping jacks or step-ups instead. Alternatively, if you feel like running, hop on a treadmill for 2 minutes.
Your goal is to get through that entire routine 3 times, with minimal rest. Throw this workout into your routine once a week, and you’ll form well-defined lats and legs, you’ll burn a lot of calories in the process, and you’ll definitely make yourself more tough.
Want something a bit more challenging and even more cardiovascular? Then try this workout, which is not necessarily for the faint-hearted, but will definitely leave you huffing and puffing just as if you’ve completed a triathlon:
- Station 1: 500 meters (0.3 miles) rowing machine (*Bonus – complete in under 2 minutes)
- Station 2: 20 reps Front Squat to Press
- Station 3: 0.75 mile bicycle ride (*Bonus – complete in under 3 minutes)
- Station 4: 20 Romanian Deadlifts
- Station 5: 0.3 mile run (*Bonus – complete in under 2.5 minutes)
- Station 6: 20 Pull-ups
A challenging time limit goal for one round of this routine is 11 minutes. Think you can do it? Try it and let me know just how tough you really are! Post your experiences at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy, where you can also ask any other questions about how to get more tough or feel less pain.
And who knows? Maybe you’ll get inspired to line up on the starting line of a triathlon with me!
Triathletes biking and tough guy images courtesy of Shutterstock; triathletes swimming image courtesy of ARZTSAMUI/Shutterstock.com.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.