Why Suffering Is Good, But you Need to Rest.

"To Suffer" can have many connotations. The one connotation that I will be talking about is pushing your body to your limit. This can mean a few different things. It could mean that you road your bike for 300 miles straight, or it could mean that you physically collapsed on your trainer while trying to stay in the front group of a Zwift race, or even maxing out in the gym, which I have to do because I am not just a biker. When I do one of these activities that really pushes my body outside of "uncomfortable," and into extremely grueling, I get a lot of different responses. "You're a beast," "don't hurt yourself." These are all different responses from different people.

Lets Begin with, "you're a beast." I am not sure what the even means to be honest. I use this fraise when I talk about people like mathieu van der poel, or wout, but even I am confused on the meaning behind this. If you think about it, people tend to use this phrase when talking about someone who can push hard, and suffer even harder. the phrase doesn't necesarially have to do with being so much better then everyone else. Everyone is a beast. We are all human, which more or less is an ape decendent, and when ever you see an angery ape, you proably would consider that to be a beast. Beast mode made simple is tapping into primal instinct. your Pushing your body to the limit, so your doing everything you can so you dont collapse. This is why suffering is so good in this context. Your pushing your body into a primal state. Your no longer this man or woman you works a 9-5, and gets take out everynight. You are now this primal entity that can handle severe conditions that are being put on your body.

The next phrase is, "don't hurt yourself." I get this one a lot. If your like me, every time i attempt to do a recovery ride, I will get to my favorite climb, or favorite strava segment and just hammer out 700 watts for a minute. I like to suffer. Pushing my body to a new limit everytime a ride is something that is fun for me. My dad is also a prime example of this. He pushes his body so hard everytime, and afterwards coughs like their is no tomorrow. Now,, suffering is all good and fun, until your body physically cont take it anymore. Letting yourself, "take a chill pill," is a good thing here and there. Pro riders are a good example of this. During the off season, the training that pro teams do is extremely difficult. They will have weeks and weeks of extremely hard efforts. This is to build up there fitness for the race season. During the race season, most of their hard rides come from racing, and then do a lot of rest rides. This is so there muscles can fully recover, and be ready for there next hard interval. the goal is to maintain what they built in the pre-season, and not necesarily build more.

In conclusion. Suffer to an extent. It is good to push your body to the limit, because if you do, you wont be come some soft stomached wimp. If thats what you want to be, then go right ahead, no one cares if you don't care. However, if you do decided to take the suffer path of greatness, make sure to have ice cream here and there.