Pain and Cyborgs

When the pain of Lynda's German Volume Training was nearly killing her we had this whole weird conversation about pain and cyborgs. I'm to lazy to rephrase it all, so I'll just paste.

Yes, I was a total workout wuss before Evil Trainer came along. One of the
(evil) things he did was raise my pain tolerance. I didn't have a pain tolerance
before I met him. If it hurt, I stopped. His thoughts are that if it feels like
somebody poured gasoline all over your muscle and struck a match, it's just
getting good. If you feel like you're going to puke and faint, you keep going
until you do one or the other. It really took a long time to get my head around
that. A good workout is intensely uncomfortable.

Wow, that was a great response. He even reiterated the importance of raising
your pain threshold. Doesn't that suck? LOL :-) I thought Evil Trainer was
trying to kill me just for fun. Turns out it's a valid approach though. After 2
1/2 years with him, I don't flinch at stuff that makes other people puke.

Ha!!! If I were writing a BFL essay, I'd have to list that as one of my
improvements. "I lost two dress sizes, and I don't flinch at stuff that makes
other people puke." :-)

Visualization is a big part of it. I once saw a tiny woman at the gym doing 160
lb leg extensions. I told Evil Trainer that she must have a steel endoskeleton.
Later on when I was working to match that (because I have to be the strongest
woman in the club!), I would visualize my legs as blue and silver metallic robot
legs, bulging metal quads and the whole bit. Because in my mind, my wobbly legs
wouldn't do 160 for reps, but for these wicked cyborg legs, that was EASY!
Somehow when you change the way you think about it, you're able to do it.

Another good one is to picture yourself as somebody else, or as how you imagine
yourself to be. You know, the alternate reality where you're an elite secret
agent, a commando, the bionic woman, or Ms. Olympia. Take yourself out of the
"poor little me, this is hard" frame of mind, and put yourself into the "I'm the
most beautiful, powerful creature on earth and I can do anything" frame of mind.

Renee