How can I push through the pain barrier?
Don’t let the voice in your head stop you from reaching your full potential
All cyclists have to endure pain but if you build a mental toolbox of pain-busting techniques, you can learn to push through the suffering and emerge a fitter, tougher rider. Six-time Olympic track cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy insists the secret is to reframe your mental response to pain.
“There were days when we were doing interval sessions and you knew it would hurt like hell,” reveals Hoy. “But I told myself that this session would push my threshold and bring me real improvements. Our brains are good at inhibiting anything that they think is damaging. It is a survival instinct. But you can teach your brain to ignore those signals and say, ‘Okay, I am not doing damage, this is just part of the exercise process and I can keep going.’”
In his book How To Ride a Bike: From Starting Out To Peak Performance, Hoy reveals that when the pain kicked in he would access positive mental imagery.
“If you think of your fitness as a table tennis ball and your training as some water, the lower you push the ball underwater, the higher the ball bounces back,” he explains. Rewiring your response to pain in this way – so you think of it as the natural by-product of increasing your strength and fitness – can help you to fight off the instinctive negativity that floods your mind when your legs start to hurt.
Hoy also recommends using visualisation techniques. “If I was doing 30-second efforts in the gym I used to visualise riding around the track, so I would hear the bell, go around the turn, finish down the back straight, then cross the line – basically, using the inspiration of a race to help me suffer through the pain.” Positive thinking is crucial if you’re going to fight through the suffering. “The more you practise these strategies, the more easily you can apply them. The pain never goes away – but you can learn to deal with it.”
OUR BRAINS ARE GOOD AT INHIBITING ANYTHING THAT THEY THINK IS DAMAGING. IT’S INSTINCT