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Lumifer comments on Group rationality diary, May 5th - 23rd - Less Wrong Discussion
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I just started Kung Fu this past Monday. The training is very very painful. The horse stance in particular. To give an idea of the pain, my legs were legitimately shaking and giving out about 20 minutes into the session yesterday, but I persisted for about an hour and a half. I much rather would have sprained my knee or something than gone through this (I haven't experienced many other injuries to compare to this).
They teach that you can choose/learn to ignore the pain. The purpose of the past session seems to be for me to learn "mind over matter" and ignore the pain.
Anyway, I'm hoping that the "mind over matter" skill will translate to other areas of my life (they say it will). Maybe it'll help me to not procrastinate. To have the strength to make uncomfortable decisions (although I'm already pretty good at that). To ignore the things that make me unhappy.
Don't overdo the "ignore the pain" part. Pain is functionally useful and ignoring it makes it likely you'll break something in your body. Yes, you'll need to cross the lactic acid threshold, but be smart about it.
Some martial arts schools (and Crossfit studios) have a very macho "do or die" attitude -- make sure you don't go down the second path X-)
I'll try :)
That's something I had been struggling with - by ignoring pain I may be ignoring a useful signal. And to be honest my body really was feeling like it was starting to fail. But the instructor assured me that I was fine and that he was monitoring me, and he knows the signs and stuff, so I sort of decided to trust him... but I have a hard time fully trusting anyone.
You need to get a bit more sophisticated about pain and learn to distinguish different kinds of it. Some pain you can or should just power through, and some you can't or shouldn't.
For example, the "overexerted muscle pain" (aka hitting the lactic acid threshold) is easy to recognize and is pretty harmless most of the time. But a sharp pain in your joint (e.g. a knee) is an excellent reason to immediately stop whatever you are doing and figure out what's wrong.
Except for the motivation-sapping "aargh fsck everything about this" part that makes people never go to the gym a month after their New Years Eve promise :) Better to stay inside the comfort zone until you are fully committed / made it into a habit so unlikely to chicken out and then gradually expand it.