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Comment by Afton | Hacker News Reader

I can do 6 chinups right now (I happen to have tested last night of all things). If I tried to do 100 chinups, I would certainly be scheduling a Physical Therapy session tomorrow to deal with the pain in my elbow. Unless I was having surgery for a tear in my shoulder.

There is lots to recommend "don't give up". But it also has to be tempered with "Stop if it hurts". You'll get fit/strong/endurancy-faster if you can keep training tomorrow than if you have to spend three weeks icing your wrists and gobbling down NSAIDs.

EDIT: Leaving this up for posterity because why not. After re-reading your comment, I'm not convinced that we disagree. It's just that the whole thing becomes extremely nuanced once you start talking about things like: "I'm stopping doing e.g. chinups today so that I can do more tomorrow. I'm not giving up on my goal, I'm just altering the timeframe". Here it's not clear how you should interpret the "Don't give up" mantra.

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There is quite a difference between "this hurts because it is uncomfortable" and "this hurts because I am damaging my body." Most of the time you can tell the difference.

I've also heard it put this way: "If it hurts, it means you're doing it right. If you're in pain, stop."

Agreed. And when a person is new to training it's wisest to err on the side of caution because it takes time to learn how the body feels when it's uncomfortable vs when it's injured.

I should have been more clear in my response that when I say "don't fucking quit" that "...just because you're uncomfortable" is implied. The 100 chinups from the article is a pretty bad example, candidly, of something to be powering through, especially, if you're not already in decent condition and have that sense of hurt vs injury. The degree of discomfort could become so high that it masks the injury signals from the structure of the shoulder.

People assume they can tell the difference but the kind of chronic inflammation you get from overuse can sneak up on you. I saw a story about a concert pianist many years ago who was having trouble with his wrists. At the time his doctor or maybe it was teacher treated it like a muscular problem and told him to keep training so his wrists would get stronger. Eventually he built up so much scar tissue on his tendons that he was no longer a concert pianist...forever. WRT the article, sure you can run a marathon every day of the week. Impressive. I'd fear what that guy would be like after 40 years

>I'd fear what that guy would be like after 40 years

Curious, what you imply by that. I have read about the skin (mostly the face) of runners not so great, because of exposure to so much weather. Did you imply something along these lines or something else?

joints tendons and so forth. Pounding your knees that much without sufficient recovery could be bad. Not for everyone mind you. I've read that old age involves much more pain for retired pro athletes, for example

He did 100 chin ups one at a time. If you can do six in one go, you can probably do 100 over the course of 5 hours pretty easily and safely.

You said you can do 6 chinups right now, but if you tried to do 100, you'd be in physical therapy the next day. Trying to do 100 implies you're going to do as many as you can. Given that, are you scheduling a physical therapy session, since you did as many as you could last night (6)?

Most people would understand that the poster meant after 6 chinups the poster reaches muscle failure and stops trying to do more. The poster could continue to struggle against the muscle failure until (s)he eventually achieves 100 chinups, but that would result in physical injury to go along with the achievement.

Have you ever tried doing a chinup? There is NO WAY you're going to do 100 continuous chinups. I'd like someone to explain how you're going to hurt yourself by trying to do that. Forcing it just results in you hanging there in futility.

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