Lately I've been mulling over a couple
of related blog posts. In the first, Justin Roth muses on the "too
cool to care" attitude, where people, - although he is
specifically referring to climbers the notion could extended to any
athletes - "closet train", and make little of their
achievements because it is uncool to care. In the second, Bill
Ramsey explicates his philosophical view on what he dubs "the
pain box" and the "pleasure box."
To me, the key concept that both blog
posts share is the idea that to improve at your sport you need to
make some deposits into the pain box - train hard, forgo social
occasions, watch your diet, scare yourself silly, push hard - in
order to withdraw some pleasure - sense of mastery, achievement,
satisfaction - from the pleasure box.
In an ironic twist, I think I've got
the pain and pleasure boxes transposed. I love training and have
serious withdrawal symptoms if I go more than a day without a "beat
down" workout. Training hard, theoretically, should be making
deposits into the pain box, so that later, I can go out climbing,
climb well and make a withdrawal from the pleasure box. But, as I'm
discovering, if you make too many deposits to the pain box, in the
form of too many hard workouts (particularly without adequate
refueling and rest), you're so burned out and fatigued that, when you
do go out climbing, your performance is actually worse.
To get strong, as the trainers
repeatedly tell us, you must rest. Theoretically, rest should be
neutral, neither a deposit nor a withdrawal. For confirmed exercise
junkies, however, rest most assuredly is a heavy deposit to the pain
box.
After climbing this 8 pitch route, I went into the gym
for a workout. Smart, no, addicted, yes
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