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Pain is part of the journey

November 2, 2009 01:13 PM | Posted by   Matt Hallat  

There are many different kinds of pain associated with being a high performance athlete.

When you are in the gym lifting weights, the burn you feel in your legs on that last repetition is paralysing. When you finally lift the weight you nearly collapse, as your legs can no longer handle the pressure. Even though it is agonizing, this is a good pain and one that shows you are getting stronger.

There are many different kinds of pain associated with being a high performance athlete.

When you are in the gym lifting weights, the burn you feel in your legs on that last repetition is paralysing. When you finally lift the weight you nearly collapse, as your legs can no longer handle the pressure. Even though it is agonizing, this is a good pain and one that shows you are getting stronger.

When you are out on a long bike ride, your legs nearly go numb but somehow you manage to convince them to keep pedalling just a little longer. You keep pushing because you know the pain will pay off in the end.

If you ask some high performance athletes when they know they are in good shape, they might answer, “I’m in good shape when the pain feels good.”

Breaking in boots

Then there are those early season pains. Ask anybody who has ever skied and they will probably tell you how much a new pair of boots hurts for the first few days. Race boots fit so tight, but when they are right they are like a pair of slippers (OK, so they’re really cold, stiff, clunky slippers). Getting them to fit just right is a painful process.

Skiing and training for skiing has so many little (and big) pains associated with it that are truly endless. But as an athlete I put up with them because I know that they are paving the way to success.

Then there’s the pain that every ski racer fears, and every person cringes at when they see: the pain of a big crash.

These are inevitable in ski racing. When you choose a sport where you reach speeds of well over 100km/h on an icy, steep slope, and the only thing keeping you upright is a three-millimetre thick steel edge, it’s not surprising to think that once in a while you hit your head and every other part of your body.

It’s something that nobody likes to see.

Watching a big crash or worse, going through a big crash, puts many thoughts in your head that are counterproductive to what you are trying to accomplish. When you watch a teammate crash many thoughts run through your head: How did that happen? Did they hurt themselves? Did they break a bone? Did they hit their head? Are they going to be alright?

When you are the one who crashes the pain can take a minute to kick in as the adrenaline takes over. For some reason when you’ve come to a complete stop from 100km/h in about two seconds, possibly doing a few flips in the process, your first thought is rarely am I alright? It’s more like WHAT HAPPENED? The adrenaline is so high at that point that you rarely even feel the pain. Then gradually over the next few minutes the pains start to kick in as your heart rate slows down, you calm down and you realize what just happened.

Why go through it?

The question remains. If it hurts in your preparation, if it hurts in your training, if it hurts in racing, and if it hurts when you crash (which is inevitable), why on earth would you want to do it?

I think the biggest thing an athlete enjoys, and the one thing they miss the most when they leave the sport, is being in the zone on their given playing field. In day-to-day life we are always thinking about more than one thing at a time. They may be simple ideas like what am I going to eat for dinner or how am I going to finish this proposal or meet that deadline. These thoughts are endless. Athletes have the same thoughts, but when I step into my ski all those thoughts vanish and I’m able to completely focus on the one task ahead of me.

When I’m hanging on by a single edge at 100km/h – I’m not thinking about what I’m going to eat for dinner, I can’t, there isn’t enough time. It’s an incredible sense of freedom and one that only a skier can truly appreciate.

When I’m on the ski hill, the rest of the world seems to stop and wait for me. I am completely focused on the task at hand, and I love every minute of it. A crash puts the world back into perspective for a minute, and I need to battle those endless thoughts about safety. But there truly is only one way to get over those thoughts.

Get back in the start gate and do it again.

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