No pain no gain! Another set! Push harder! Go to failure! “If it hurts, that must mean it’s working.”

Do any of those phrases sound familiar?

Maybe you grew up in sports where your coaches voice was basically a second blood stream...
"another lap!"
"don't be soft"
"drop and give me 20 pushups!"
...even when your body is already screaming in protest.

You learned to override yourself long before you realized there was another option.

Perhaps you've found yourself involved in the quiet Olympics known as "competitive Yoga" 😳 That moment where you pushed yourself into a deeper stretch than your body wanted, not because it felt good… but because someone might be watching. (I can feel myself blushing as I remember this one)

But the real trap shows up in the ordinary moments.
Walking up a simple flight of stairs and feeling your thighs light up in a way you hope nobody notices.
Carrying groceries and your arms start burning faster than you think they “should.”

And instantly the inner coach kicks in:
“You’re weak.”
“Push harder.”
“You shouldn’t be struggling.”

Or the embarrassment of trying to keep up on a hike.
Your knee starts protesting, and you’re silently panicking because everyone else looks fine — so surely you must be the problem.

But here’s the strange thing:
If effort is the answer… why does more effort so often make things worse?

What if effort is just what we do when we don’t yet know how?

And on top of that, what if more effort is actively interfering with improvement?

In Feldenkrais work, strength and competence doesn't come from effort. It comes from skill and self-organization.

If You Knew How, It Would be Easy

If you've ever learned how to play an instrument, you'll be familiar with how effort cannot make up for lack of skill.

If I am playing a riff on the guitar and I'm not very skilled at it yet, then I have to go slowly. The moment I use more effort, push, or speed up - I lose the coordination and it sounds terrible. The timing wobbles, the strings buzz and I get lost.

The only way through this is by first finding the flow of the movement while going slowly. At this speed you can put all the required pieces together.
Timing.
Pressure of fingers.
Hand and finger positions.
Strumming patterns.
Etc.

Once the flow is established at slow speeds, I can get faster without losing fluidity.

You can do hard things without effort, but it means you really need to not rush through the foundational steps. Watch Estas Tonne play one of his incredible guitar pieces and you'll see the guy isn't efforting his way through - he's using skill.

How is Skill Developed?

I have a man lying down on the table. He gets a sharp stabbing pain every time he moves his left hip. Why? Because he's done what all of us have done at some point in our lives. We've pushed through when we don't know how.

But in his case, "pushing through" has become so habitual, the slightest movement triggers intense pain. His body had been whispering for years. He just didn’t know how to listen. So the whispers had to become shouts.

We explore his head and neck movements for 10 minutes or so, then we come back to his hip. Now, when he moves his hip, something is softer. His range has increased before the pain switches on.

What has happened? This man had actually become more skillful at his movement. He started to include his head in the picture of how he was moving. This greater coordination meant that he didn't have to push harder to achieve his aim anymore. He was more efficient.

Skill Comes From Awareness

If you don't know how you're doing what you do, you can't do anything differently.

Try this...lift your arm in the air above your head as though you were reaching for something up high. Then put it down again.

Do you know what happened in other parts of yourself?

• How did you breathe? Inhale? Exhale? Did your breath catch?
• Did you shift onto 1 sit-bone?
• How did your shoulder blade move?
• What did your ribcage do?

If you didn't know, don't worry - it's totally normal that you didn't.

Most of the time, we aren't aware of how we do what we do.

Our movement wasn't consciously chosen. It just happened.

But the moment you are aware is the moment you have choice.

If you'd like, give it another go reaching your arm and see if you can answer those questions.

Now you are aware, it gives you freedom to do something different - experiment. Does it help if you inhale? Is it easier to shift to the left sit bone or the right? Is there a way you could use your ribcage to make it easier to reach the arm higher?

Once you feel these things for yourself, you are building skill. You are making distinctions which your brain uses to improve the way you move.

Effort Actually Gets In The Way of Improvement

The inner coach sadly does the opposite of what it intends. It prevents improvement.

Sure, it can get you through when you need it. But to develop true movement skill, you need awareness of how you do what you're doing.

The micro moments:
The timing of the breath.
The orientation of your hand.
The position of your hip joint and the precise part of your foot to push with.
The direction and focal distance of your eyes.

These are all pieces of sensory information which help build movement skill.

But as you probably know, when your muscles are burning, or you're in pain, or you've gone to the end of your range... that's all you can pay attention to.

Burning.
Aching.
Stretching.
Efforting.
Straining.
Shaking.

These are all "loud" sensations which drown out the quieter and more useful ones.

Loud sensations maintain the status quo.
Quiet sensations create conditions for evolution.

Loud sensations create disharmony, turbulence and chaos.
Quiet sensations build coherence and integrity.

When you stop pushing through, your life changes

If we continually follow the voice of the inner coach and crack the whip to force ourselves forward - we end up getting worse over time - not better.

I'm not saying there's no place for the inner coach. It has served a useful function in your life. Maybe it kept you safe when you were younger, or allowed you to belong...

What I'm inviting now is a deeper, more mature relationship with yourself. A nurturing of trust, respect and listening.

What if a moment of confusion or difficulty was a signal to become curious instead of pushing through.

What if you could listen to the quiet signals of your body as an invitation into deeper connection.

What might it be like to thank that inner coach for what is has given you in your life, but to take it out of the drivers seat?

Notice what softens in you when effort isn’t the only way forward.

What happens when you come into direct contact with the greatest teacher there is - your own experience.

How do you think that might change your world?

Many report more ease, softness, pleasure, joy and inner authority.

Are you willing to find out?