The other night I was working with a client in the gym and I was reminded of something very important that I don’t know that I have specifically written about before. First a little bit of background so this makes more sense:

Biofeedback testing is by far the most useful “tool” I’ve ever found for training. In sort of economic terms it allows you to get more and better results at a lower cost and lower risk. Over the long term, like compounding interest, it adds up to a lot more progress because you’re not giving up training days to recovering from injuries.

Even knowing this, there are times when you might not actually need to use the testing as much. When you’re totally healthy, everything is working well, and you have a really wide range of function and the ability to push those to the limit you might not need to test often, or at all. You can coast on your intuition that has been honed by time spent actually testing. If you’re really healthy, you can get away with not testing at all, at least for a while.

But, the scenario is exactly reversed when you’re not totally healthy – especially when you’re dealing with a chronic pain situation. To be perfectly clear here, I’m not talking about sudden acute pains or any kind of pain that hasn’t been cleared by a competent medical professional. I’ve heard enough horror stories of someone just working around pain that didn’t get better only to find out that it was something incredibly serious that needed to be addressed medically. I’m talking about chronic movement-associated pain that doesn’t have a clear explanation or source and you’re trying to work around it in the gym.

In those cases you have to test everything. And I truly mean everything. Test the exercises or drills your PT gave you. Test the stretches that have felt good in the past. Test variations of every movement to see if you can find something better. Test every set, even if it tested well to begin with.

The most succinct and simple explanation that I can give for this, synthesizing everything I know about movement and the current state of pain science goes something like this: Chronic pain in the body appears to be at least somewhat related to a loss (or perceived loss) of function somewhere in the body. When a function is lost it can be extraordinarily stressful when you have to keep doing that function. To make a very rudimentary example, let’s say there’s a loss of function in your shoulder that causes you to be “forcing” a movement that isn’t there just to put your arm overhead. Now every time you reach for something on a high shelf, or put a shirt on, you’re dipping into that excess stress bucket to get away with it. The pain is signaling you to do something about it. But the more you keep doing the things that are stressful, the worse everything gets.

I see this every day with clients who are in pain. They may test well for a movement, but after a single set it doesn’t test well anymore. We make a small change and suddenly it tests well again. After a set it’s gone. Repeat over and over again. This is a fundamental difference between someone who’s healthy and can push the same function over and over again, like a powerlifter training the same squat week in and week out, and someone trying to resolve chronic pain issues who has to test a variety of different movements just to stay in the same vein of doing a squat.

I can not stress this enough: When you’re hurting, test everything.

Yeah, it’s kind of annoying to have to test so much and it’s probably even more annoying not to be able to just do the lifts you want to do. On the other hand though, I have not found and don’t know of a more effective way to get people out of pain than the combination of restoring function through things that test well, and reducing or eliminating distress by doing the things that test well.

By the way, Dellanavich (I) did a pretty funny video on this topic a few years ago.

I sort of touched on this in my recent article, whether training has to be fun or not, but it comes up enough that I want to address it on its own.

People often ask me what I think of this boxing gym, or that Zumba class, or insert whatever latest fitness-esque trend is happening at the moment.

I know that a lot of folks in the industry take the position that something is better than nothing and as long as people are moving that’s a good thing.

I don’t hold that belief.

Yes, the human body needs movement. But movement, especially in the sense of any kind of strenuous exercise, is a stressor. If you’ve been reading my work for any length of time you’ll know that stress can only be judged by the response, not by the stressor. Most people’s lives are already chronically distressful in the sense that they’re not responding well to the current stressors in their life. Taking a “boxing” class as a way to exercise is very often a good way to pile on stress they can’t actually handle as opposed to stressors that are specifically being chosen and targeted because they respond well to them – which is why we use biofeedback to guide our training towards the positive.

When is something worse than nothing? When the something is actually net harmful as opposed to simply maintaining the status quo.

Yes, of course less-than-ideal fitness classes can be gateways and lead to seeking better. And of course in some cases it’s not actually net harmful and just getting moving is better than nothing.

But one of my guiding principles is the pursuit of better, and there is much, much better than most of the fitness-adjacent entertainment programs that people and businesses pass off as ways to fulfill that human need to move and be physically challenged.

If you have cancer, you’re going to want to see an oncologist – not a physical therapist or a general practitioner. Sure, I suppose that seeing a physical therapist would be better than doing nothing at all, and it might lead you to seeing an oncologist, but would anyone ever recommend that someone’s course of action be seeing a PT? I hope not.

So no, I don’t think much of the latest and greatest ZuluX-Fit classes as it pertains to making you and your body better. But if you just want to kill an hour sweating go for it I guess. I can think of other ways to get sweaty.

Something that seems to be coming up a lot lately is the question of whether or not training or working out has to be fun.

Obviously, it makes it a lot easier to keep your workout routine if you enjoy every minute of it. Who wouldn’t prefer loving their workout and thinking it’s fun all the time?

There are certainly lots of activities and ways to move your body that are also enjoyable. Just to name a few off the top of my head hiking, climbing, team sports, kayaking, biking, and running are things that people think are fun but are also ways to get the heart pumping and stress your muscles.

Except, it’s not the same.

The gym and what I think of when I speak of training in general, is kind of like a mechanic shop for the human body where necessary repairs and preventative maintenance can be performed. The entire environment you live in is extremely obesogenic and harmful. Nothing about waking up to an alarm, driving to an office, sitting in a chair under neon lights all day doing work you hate, driving home and watching TV or using the computer with artificial lights on until you go to bed around midnight is good for you. In fact it is probably very literally killing you.

So it presents a need for counteracting all of this harm in very specific ways. The only way to be able to specifically address these things is by specifically addressing them – not just being generally active and hoping the base gets covered.

And it’s not always fun. My friend Maggie recently pointed out that brushing your teeth isn’t especially fun but you do it because you know it’s necessary. I love this analogy. Training isn’t always going to be fun but it’s absolutely necessary – if you want your body to keep working well and be ready and able when you want to use it to do things that ARE fun.

For sure you should line up as many things as possible to make things that make you better easier and more fun. If you absolutely hate your gym environment, then find one you like. If you hate all gyms period then suck it up and do the work. If you hate your workout program or what you’re doing, then find one you can get excited about. But if you switch from progressive resistance training that targets specific needs you have to pilates or whatever-the-fuck-bar-method is remember that you’re not longer brushing your teeth – you’re just doing an activity that is fun but probably doesn’t clean your teeth.

I can tell you from my personally experience, and I think most people would find this hard to believe, but I mostly hate training. Very rarely do I enjoy the actual process of lifting. Maybe when it’s going really well or I’m knocking down a PR. But most of it is just work that needs to get done because I like looking the way I do when I lift, I like maintaining the decade-plus investment in my physique and health, and most importantly I like the way my body functions as a result. I’m capable of throwing a fifty pound pack on my back and hiking up a mountain at 10,000 feet to chase elk on a whim with no specific preparation. At an age when most guys are declining in various functions, I’m not. That’s worth doing the work that isn’t fun.

Sometimes training is going to be fun, sometimes it’s not. You can either accept this and do what is necessary, or you can keep chasing entertainment.