No Pain Means No Gain

By

As a runner, there is so much emphasis placed on balancing hard and easy
workouts. You can’t recover if you don’t take recovery days often, and you can’t
build up if you don’t have the hard days. Personally, that’s always been one of the hardest things for me to understand. There are stretches where I just want to run long and fast and lift every day and then my body breaks down because I didn’t give it enough rest, and then I spend too many days cross training and losing out on the balance of hard and easy.

It’s always been hard for me to understand the concept of taking the hard days hard and the easy days easy.

Because I recognize that struggle, I made it a focus for myself this summer. Let me say, not only did this training process really work well, but it carries over
into so many aspects of life. It’s our hardest days, our hardest situations, our hardest emotions that build us. There really is no gain without pain, but there’s also no gain without patience and balance.

The toughest situations in life tear our fibers apart, but we always build back up.
Some things just take longer to rebuild from, just like some workouts take longer to recover from. It’s so important to recognize that and listen to your body, listen to the situation and know that patience is a virtue.

I could go through all the cliché sayings that ultimately tell us that we cannot see a rainbow unless we go through the rainstorm, but I’ll spare you. There really is no gain without pain, and that’s just a fact of life.

Once we learn to accept that, the pain becomes less. Just like in a workout, when you accept that some days will hurt, it becomes a bit more bearable. As hard as it is to believe and as easy as it is to say, some things just take time. Healing from a breakup just takes time, getting through a bout of anxiety just takes time and moving on from the pain of the past just takes time.

Time is painful but time is also a wizard, slipping away from us like sand through our fingertips. When we dwell over the pain and the process of getting through the pain, we lose track of the time that is whizzing by us, disappearing before our very eyes.

Before you know it, you’re ten years down the road still holding on to something that is preventing the gains because you’re holding on to the pain without even realizing it.

Pain is necessary but so is the knowledge of when to let go. Grow from the hard times, learn from the hard times, embrace the hard times and experience the hard times. Let them come to you and welcome them with open arms, understanding that the lessons learned will propel you forward beyond your wildest dreams.

Just be patient with the process, don’t hold on to the pain for too long, and when your body is ready to build back up, let go and let it. Let it be strong, let it feel the gains, let it learn, let it go and let it be.