Neils Law of Reciprocal Pain

The only thing as certain as death and taxes is pain. You're going to have it. From a health and fitness stand point, you only have about TWO choices for how you will receive your pain. You can take it in small increments on a nearly constant basis (as in exercise, soreness and small injuries), or you can put it off and take it all at once (as in a debilitating disease or heart attack or stroke, etc). I call this, "The Law of Reciprocal Pain."

Pain comes around. It's like clockwork. You can try to put it off, but doing so just guarantees more of it. "MORE" probably isn't accurate. In truth, you really won't get MORE. You'll just get what's been coming to you - the stuff you have been putting off - all at once.

I find that people who are pursuing pain free fitness are only pursuing a (another) lesson in disappointment and/or futility. Pain free fitness results - DO NOT EXIST.

If you understand that pain and injuries are part of the process of fitness and better health, you are better off. In fact, YOU are probably the person who is more likely to succeed at actually getting fit and healthy, because you have not limited yourself to the impossible.

Fitness is about overload. You must overload your body to make it become more fit. If you simply give your body work that is "quite manageable" - it will not change. It doesn't have to. It had plenty of reserve to complete the work you were asking it to do.

To understand how fitness works you have to understand how your body responds to exercise in terms of survival. Exercise temporarily weakens your body. This is an emergency situation for your body as your body hates to be weakened. God designed it to think that if you are weak (like you are after you exercise) - it lowers your resistance to injury, disease and illness. Your bodies' response to this is to build you back up to full strength as soon as possible.

If you temporarily weaken your body and do this consistently, as in exercise, your body will build resistance up. It will become stronger so that when you weaken yourself later, you will still have enough energy left over to fight off a thousand philistines or disease. THIS IS FITNESS!

People who are "out of shape" don't need much in terms of exercise or intensity to see progress. Exercise for these folks doesn't need to be overly vigorous. It is therefore, inherently safer. Problem is, to get more fit you have to steadily increase overload. At some point, "just doing anything" isn't going to cut it. Eventually, you'll have to push the limits of your endurance, strength, power, speed, agility and stamina. Question is - how far should you push it? This is impossible to know and it is different for everybody. This leaves you with: 1) push too little and get nothing, or 2) push too hard and get some pain. At some point you will understand how much you can push, but until then - You'll have to push your limits!

Neil's Law of Reciprocal Pain states: You can have a little pain - under your immediate and direct control - more often throughout your life, or you can wait and have a very large amount of pain equal to the cumulative amount that you have avoided - at a later date. This "later date" is not under your direct control.

I'm a control freak. If I got to have pain anyway (it's inevitable) - I'll take it on MY OWN terms, thank you.