Pump Sets

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey Scott,
That was a great question and got me thinking, so i waited till after i trained again to reply. The answer, its the pain and discomfort becoming intolerable, i was just telling myself it was boring but really its because i get to a point where it starts to burn and hurt and i just stop. My wife always says my pain tolerance is low, guess she was right "again"
Is there any suggestions from you if one has a low pain tolerance?
Thank you.

Well, I'm no expert here, but pain tolerance is a function of exposure to pain, to some degree, so you can get better at it over time.

If you were to imagine yourself - use visual imagery - before you do the pump sets, feeling the pain that you will feel, in every detail including your desire to avoid the pain and stop the set shy of muscular failure, this can be a way to move through the pain more successfully during the set itself.

Literally, you'll be practicing (mentally) the set beforehand where you successfully navigate the pain and don't give in to the pain, so that you have a better ability to do so when doing the actual training.

There are also different cognitive strategies that can be put into place. (This is something I picked up from an old friend who is a exercise psychologist who focused on pain during exercise and I've kind of developing my own thoughts on these strategies.)

You can:

• Focus on and go into the pain, taking it on and literally trying to drive the pain upward (without it being an obviously injurious kind of pain that's sharply focused like you're tearing a musculoskeletal structure like a muscle, tendon, joint cartilage, etc.). You're looking at using the "normal" muscle pain of exercise as a gauge for how well you're stressing the muscle and welcoming this as a an actual goal of the exercise.

• Put the pain to the side and disconnect from it psychologically in some way, ignoring it and making it a non-issue in your mind as far as something that dictates when you'll end the set. In this case the pain is "along for the ride" and you're keeping the weight moving and focusing on continuous repetitions, with the pain there as something you notice but does not dictate the set per se. In this case, you can use the pain as an "external" indicator of how well you're performing the set, but it's not the main focus / driver of your efforts.

-S