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Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. -- Lance Armstrong

In my last post, we looked at the first 5 of 12 ways that competitive cyclists use to cope with pain. Keep in mind that we are talking about exertion pain, not injury. If you are injured, seek appropriate medical care. When your leg is fractured, all the positive self-talk in the world is no replacement for a cast.

Here are 7 more strategies that cyclists in the study used:

(1) They mentally rehearse the course and the possible feelings that they might experience during the race. Here’s how one rider described it: “I would visualize riding up the hill and saying to myself, ‘Hey, it’s going to be really hard right now. I’m going to be suffering right now and this is the part of the ride that is going to be painful. When I get to the crest of the hill when it flattens out or goes downhill there will be less pain.’ Knowing what to expect when you are going to suffer allows me to deal with the pain better.

(2) The use positive self-talk. Here are some of the things they told themselves: Hey, I’ve trained for this. I’ve prepared myself. I can get through this. It will get easier soon. Everybody else is suffering too. If I’m suffering, everybody else must be suffering worse. This is what I’m supposed to be feeling right now. Nothing is going wrong and this is a correct response to work.

(3) They display a hopeful or cheerful view of the painful experience and expect a good outcome from it. Really, is there anything more to say here?

(4) They are confident that they can be competitive with the other racers and therefore endure the pain. As one cyclist stated, “… You mentally say, ‘Hey, I’m supposed to beat this guy. I can beat him!’ You block out the pain until the second it is over, and then you know it hurt. The same thing in cycling, if you have the perception, ‘Hey, I’m supposed to beat this guy,’ then you can push harder because of confidence.

(5) They focus on the positive results of pain – winning a race, having the satisfaction of accomplishment, the satisfaction of knowing someone else was hurting as a result of their effort.

(6) They accept pain as a part of the sport – something to be attended to, not feared, run away or hidden from. One cyclist put it this way: “It’s part of it. It’s just something that is unwritten that you learn to deal with. It’s indescribable and you just learn to deal with it.”

(7) They attempt to be in a position of control as opposed to a position of being controlled. Here’s how a cyclist in the study described it: “A lot of it comes down to controlling it, the pain, the pace, or the threshold you are set at….If you get on the front I think to some degree you feel like you are in control and you are making them suffer and so you get a little bit of a lift from that as well as just knowing that you are at the front. “

What over arching conclusions we can draw from this study?

Pain is about choice.

We can keep in mind that the experience of pain is voluntary. What we do – particularly those of us competing at the amateur level – is by choice. If we can accept that our choice to compete is also a choice to feel pain, we can then employ one of the 12 coping strategies.

How we perceive pain is a choice. We can choose the level of intensity of pain we experience. As, the study's authors note, William Shakespeare wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Pain is temporary.

It always ends – often in a relatively short amount of time.

Employing mental skills helps.

Knowing how to and remembering to relax when experiencing pain is crucial. If you’re tense you are likely to experience more pain not less.

Breathe.

Controlled breathing not only induces relaxation but also facilitates performance by increasing the amount of oxygen in the blood.

Goal setting is crucial.

Goal setting keeps focused on the task at hand, not the pain. Entering a race without a focus allows outside distractions such as pain to interfere with our performance.

Maintain the mindset of control.

Use positive self-talk. Turn negative self-talk into something positive. You may not be able to control what your competitors do, or the pain that a particular course “dishes out,” but you can always control your own thoughts.

While this study examined the experiences of high level competitive cyclists most, if not all of the findings, apply to any sport in which we feel the pain of exertion whether we’re running, swimming, race-walking, skiing or engaging in any other painful activity.

If you’re like me, you’ll spend the next two weeks watching TV as the Tour de France continues up the Pyrenees and through the Alps. You’ll see the riders push through incredible pain on their way to the finish in Paris. And you’ll know how they do it. The same way you, with practice, can do it at your next race.

Comments? Be my guest!


Reference:

Kress, J. L. & Statler, T. (2008). A naturalistic investigation of former Olympic cyclists’ cognitive strategies for coping with exertion pain during performance. Journal of Sport Behavior, 30, 428-452.