No pain, lots of gain: Why relaxing can be the key to getting fitter - and happier

There's something about the ease of remembering motivational quotes like "no pain, no gain" that instinctively makes them feel right. That could be partly because, as at least one psychological study suggests, we believe things more easily when they rhyme. It also makes a kind of intuitive sense for those of us who, even though we exercise, aren't as fast, muscular, or lean as we'd like. There must be something we are wrong about; is it our unwillingness to endure pain, or the discomfort of extreme exertion? But how true is the adage, and is it possible to make gains without feeling the burn?

"In fitness, the answer is always:" It depends,' says Zack Cahill, senior trainer at Evolve Fitness in London. " What is the point ? What are you trying to accomplish in training? » For aerobic exercise such as longer runs, the slower and longer you go, the better. So if you're planning on tackling your first 5K - or even a marathon - it's fine to take your workouts at a modest pace at which you could still carry on a (slightly breathless) conversation. “Most training for endurance events should be done to build a strong aerobic motor, which means easy runs,” says strength and endurance trainer Beatrice Schaer.

Steve Magness, an elite runner coach and author of Do Hard Things, says, "The way I like to think about it is that for most fitness goals, you just need to embarrass your body lightly. In running, this means constant mild stress on your heart, lungs, etc., which occurs with an easy run. eventually plateau, so if we want to keep improving, says Magness: "We have to make it harder every once in a while - but where people get it wrong is that we want to show up for more stressful practices gradually Take the elite runners: even on their hard workouts, for the vast majority of them, they're hard but in control. These aren't the puking workouts you see on Instagram."

The good news is that long, slow efforts can make harder workouts less uncomfortable, too. A key distinction to understand is the difference between "aerobic" workouts, which are the long slow ones where your body can use its fat stores in conjunction with the oxygen you breathe, for fuel - and "anaerobic" workouts, where you simply don't take in enough oxygen on board to fuel your efforts rts faster, so your body needs to burn glycogen, which it gets by consuming carbs. According to research, the more efficient your aerobic system, the greater its contribution to the total energy expended during high-intensity anaerobic sessions, which reduces overall fatigue.