the_mary•20h agoProlific Poster

Overheard a guy at the gym say "no pain no gain" is outdated, I disagree

I was spotting someone on bench press this morning and this kid next to me told his friend that pushing through discomfort is a myth. He said you should stop at the first sign of struggle and just scale back instead. But isn't there a difference between good pain from muscle fatigue and bad pain from injury, and isn't learning that the whole point of training?

2 comments

2 Comments

rubyk2614h ago

That kid's going to learn the hard way when he hits a real plateau and has no idea how to push past it. Coming from someone who's done strength training for years, backing off at the first sign of struggle just keeps you stuck where you are. Real progress happens in that uncomfortable zone where your muscles are screaming but you know it's not an injury.

emmaclark10h ago

That kid has a point about one thing though, you should stop if something feels like an actual injury. But muscle fatigue and discomfort from pushing volume or weight is totally different from sharp pain or joint tweaks. Learning that difference is literally what training is about, not just quitting at every sign of struggle. Plateaus happen exactly because people never get comfortable being uncomfortable, and then they wonder why they stop making gains. Better to learn how to read your body's signals than to just bail out at the first grunt.