This is just an assertion from an analogy with sports, where even the analogy is false—elite athletes put themselves through a ridiculous amount of pain.
I’m not an expert on sport medicine, but my understanding is that elite athletes are often doing terribly wrong things to themselves.
They are overexerting to achieve top performance, and can manage to outdo others that stop first, but the price is generally high and catches up after a few years. The body machine has used too much resources and some part will have burned through most of the health reserves that were supposed to last for a lifetime.
I have done fencing for eleven years, I had got pretty good at it though I never tried to reach pro level, I had some periods where I’d overtrain due to low self esteem, managed to stop that and I think that gave me a good feeling of how hard I could push my body to have an edge on the others.
My eyebrows would shot up every time I read or heard people talking about what they were doing to reach pro-level in mine or other sports, because I had a clear feeling that there was no way that could possibly be healthy.
Also have a good deal of anecdotal evidence about it, though I think it would be best to look at medical research on the subject.
If most workouts are painful, then I agree you are probably overtraining. But if no workouts at all are painful, you’re probably missing opportunities to improve. And many workouts should at least be uncomfortable for parts of it. E.g. when lifting, for the last couple deadlift sets I often feel incredibly gassed and don’t feel like doing another one. But this can be true even when I’m far away from my limits (like, a month later I’ll be lifting 30 pounds more and feel about as tired, rather than failing to do the lift).
My guess is that on average 1-2 workouts a week should feel uncomfortable in some way, and 1-2 workouts a month should feel painful, if you’re training optimally. But it probably varies by sport (I’m mostly thinking sports like soccer or basketball that are high on quickness and lateral movement, but only moderate on endurance).
ETA: Regarding whether elite athletes are performing optimally, it’s going to depend on the sport, but in say basketball where players have 10+ years careers, teams generally have a lot of incentive to not destroy players’ bodies. Most of the wear and tear comes from games, while training outside of games is often preventing injuries by preparing the body for high and erratic levels of contact in games. (I could imagine that in say gymnastics, or maybe even American football, the training incentives are misaligned with long-term health, but I don’t know much about either.)
I’m not an expert on sport medicine, but my understanding is that elite athletes are often doing terribly wrong things to themselves.
They are overexerting to achieve top performance, and can manage to outdo others that stop first, but the price is generally high and catches up after a few years. The body machine has used too much resources and some part will have burned through most of the health reserves that were supposed to last for a lifetime.
I have done fencing for eleven years, I had got pretty good at it though I never tried to reach pro level, I had some periods where I’d overtrain due to low self esteem, managed to stop that and I think that gave me a good feeling of how hard I could push my body to have an edge on the others.
My eyebrows would shot up every time I read or heard people talking about what they were doing to reach pro-level in mine or other sports, because I had a clear feeling that there was no way that could possibly be healthy.
Also have a good deal of anecdotal evidence about it, though I think it would be best to look at medical research on the subject.
If most workouts are painful, then I agree you are probably overtraining. But if no workouts at all are painful, you’re probably missing opportunities to improve. And many workouts should at least be uncomfortable for parts of it. E.g. when lifting, for the last couple deadlift sets I often feel incredibly gassed and don’t feel like doing another one. But this can be true even when I’m far away from my limits (like, a month later I’ll be lifting 30 pounds more and feel about as tired, rather than failing to do the lift).
My guess is that on average 1-2 workouts a week should feel uncomfortable in some way, and 1-2 workouts a month should feel painful, if you’re training optimally. But it probably varies by sport (I’m mostly thinking sports like soccer or basketball that are high on quickness and lateral movement, but only moderate on endurance).
ETA: Regarding whether elite athletes are performing optimally, it’s going to depend on the sport, but in say basketball where players have 10+ years careers, teams generally have a lot of incentive to not destroy players’ bodies. Most of the wear and tear comes from games, while training outside of games is often preventing injuries by preparing the body for high and erratic levels of contact in games. (I could imagine that in say gymnastics, or maybe even American football, the training incentives are misaligned with long-term health, but I don’t know much about either.)