Becoming Obsessed with Exercise to Own Your Pain Cave

Training your mind to enjoy exercise isn’t an easy task. It’s challenging, time-consuming, and happens differently for everyone. How long until you can see results depends on the person, the activities they’re doing, and many, many other variables. 

Someone keeping up an exercise routine might find themselves becoming obsessed with exercise after two weeks. Others might not feel that obsession for months, or even a year. It’s a unique process for each and every individual. The key is understanding how to create a fitness plan that works for you and your body.

Arguably, the hardest part of working out is the pain and soreness. When you’re really pushing yourself and your muscles start to scream in protest, what you’re going to want to do more than anything else is stop, hang up the weights or turn off the treadmill, and be done for the day. Everything in your body will be screaming at you to do this - your muscles on fire, your heart pounding like crazy, but what’s really telling you to give up is your mind. 

Your body isn’t what’s to blame. Your brain is the center of it all, pushing you to give up and back down from the challenge. In order to keep going, you have to overcome and override those messages from your mind. 

Stay in it by redirecting that feeling of pain into something positive. For example, think of the goal you’re working toward. Picture it and make it real. Consider how the work you’re doing is bringing you closer and closer to the goal, bit by bit. 

If you’re more of a competitive type, imagine the ‘other guy.’ Imagine him getting soft and lazy while you’re growing stronger with every rep, every lap. 

Becoming Obsessed with Exercise

Eventually, you’ll even grow to crave the feeling of hitting that first wall. This space, this mind-screaming, fire-muscle, heart-pounding space, commonly known as the pain cave, is where gains are made. 

Becoming obsessed with exercise hinges on whether or not you know how to create a fitness plan that works for you. How to start a workout routine is centered around things you can do, and things you enjoy doing. 

If you’re a beginner, it’s imperative that you not bite off more than you can chew. If you enter the pain cave right off the bat, that voice in your mind will undoubtedly be too powerful for you to drown out, even with motivation. 

The key is to start small and gradually add more and more as your body becomes stronger and gets acclimated to the exercises it’s being introduced to. That way, you’ll be equipped with the right physical and mental power to not only overcome your pain cave, but to relish the time that you spend inside it. 

*These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. Protekt products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.