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In Building Your Body and Soul, No Pain Means No Gain
You’ve gotta be torn down before you’re built back up
Growing pain’s a necessary evil
Difficult to go through, yes, but beneficial
Some would say having a mental breakdown is a negative thing
Which on one hand, I agree with
On the other hand, it was the push I needed
— NF, Hope
Hypertrophy is when a muscle grows due to an outside stimulus forcing it to work harder. The muscle fibers are damaged and have to rebuild themselves stronger than before to handle the new workload. Every time you exercise hard, you’re tearing yourself down.
That’s why it’s so tough to work out. Grinding yourself into chopped meat only to nurse yourself back to health seems masochistic, but it’s the only way to make gains. No one ever grew while being comfortable.
And no one ever evolved while afraid to break out of their shell. Pushing ourselves is imperative if we want to continue to go past our current incarnation. At the gym, that means going harder and training smarter — focusing on the goal and putting up with the temporary pain for future gains. It’s delayed gratification.
That’s not easy for everyone. We want everything now, hence the popularity of plastic surgeons and dangerous diet pills over hard workouts. The rewards of exercise…
