There is one major difference between athletes (people who exercise as a lifestyle and sometimes to meet goals) and people who will forever struggle to stay in shape.
Of course, a person can become relatively healthy by informing themselves and making the right food decisions every day (and a few other good decisions you can see in this post: Health By My Rules). But without regular exercise, no person will ever be at their peak fitness. AND it will be harder to maintain any health they do gain.
The difference between an athlete and a couch potato , the key element, is the ability to recognize and push through their pain threshold. Exercise hurts. Muscles burn, body parts stop working like they’re supposed to, blood pounds through your head, and everything inside of you tells you to stop. I am not talking about joint paint or pulled/torn muscles, I’m talking about when you find the right kind of exercise for your body and you stop as soon as you start to hurt.
Everyone has a threshold. I believe it feels different for every person. I know it’s harder for older people to recognize it while avoiding real, long-term issues. But if you can recognize your true exercise threshold, it will give you great power to learn to push through.
So start to test your body. Understand it. Exercise it in lots of different ways and figure out what your pain threshold feels like. And finally, once you understand your point, push past it! Get to the other side of that muscle pain threshold and you will know the incredible feeling of being a true athlete. Your body (yes YOURS) is probably capable of much more than you think.
A Happy Lass 
I agree! I realized on my own that it helps to coax your mind in taking small increments when it comes to the workout or activity that you’ll have for the day. Like when on the treadmill, I look forward to seeing 10mins. on the digital display, then 20 and so forth.
Very true. It’s much easier to do this when you’re doing a short interval workout like I post on Wednesday’s though. It’s over before you know it. I like that much better 🙂
Great perspective!
Thanks 🙂 It’s been hard earned.
I love this post! I try to find a new pain threshold every day. I think it really helps to work out with other people. For example, when I’m biking with a group I desperately don’t want to get dropped (I know you can relate to this!) so I go harder than I think I can just to hang on, but if I am alone, sometimes it doesn’t seem necessary to go that hard. When you do reach a new level, it can be really challenging to stick with it, so you have to make sure you are mentally tough enough to push through. This is something that I struggle with sometimes. That’s my two cents 🙂
I love your two cents. Thanks Carolyn. I totally agree, much easier to get past the threshold when someone else is dragging you over it. Lol.
And yes, when you finally begin to push your threshold further and further, how do you keep it at that point? Lots of training I guess.
Hope your summer training is going well. 🙂
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