If pain is a mechanism to know when to avoid a behavior/ when something is wrong, why does exercising hurt?
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Because for the vast, vast majority of human existence (and the totality of that of basically all other animals) the problem was not having enough food rather than having too much.
Exerting lots of physical effort is strenuous and unpleasant because it encourages us to conserve energy. In the modern era, where food is plentiful, this instinct serves us poorly.
I’ve always assumed the soreness after exercise had the advantage of encouraging you to rest so that muscles and tissue could be repaired.
It’s rare to be in so much pain that you couldn’t still run from a predator if necessary.
exercising is “what does not kill you, makes you stronger”, but applied to your bones and muscles.
Exercise does damage your body. Normal exercise keeps this damage mild, so your body can heal it in a few days, and that healing process makes the healed parts stronger.
Overdoing the exercise can cause damage that can take weeks or months to heal, and while the healed part will be stornger, the rest of your body will be weaker from lack of exercise and diverting resources to healing the injury.
Also, lack of exercise means that your body will divert resources away from the unused muscles, so they will grow weaker.
So what you need to be healthy is moderate exercise.
Because if it didn’t hurt it could dangerous for us. Our body have a limit on what it’s able to do and the pain tell us when we are getting closer to that limit.
If we couldn’t feel the pain we could for example : Try to lift something too heavy, which could injure our muscle or we could run for too long until our muscle fatigue too much and we collapse.
The way we know we are getting closer to our limit is by the pain, and we can then decide if the pain is worth it or not.
Exercise doesn’t hurt. Excessive (by your muscle’s standards, not actual health standards) exercise does due to the potential for injury. It’s a way for your body to say “Slow down there, hoss. You’re gonna hurt yourself. We ain’t ready for this much work”. Exceeding what your body is currently capable of is going to send warnings (pain).
Again, this is based on your body’s internal “limiter”, not what your body can do and recover from in reality
Excessive exercise damages the muscles and the general body, so other than in times of dire need pain is a mechanism to stop you damaging your body.
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