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When conducting a personal training session, one of the worst things to hear from my client is, “this hurts!” After all, I am there to help them, not to mess them up!

However, a lot of the time when a client complains that something “hurts,” what’s really happened is that they’ve confused pain and discomfort. Pain is something to avoid; discomfort, on the other hand, is something to accept. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.

Experiencing a burning sensation in your muscles (and/or lungs) during exercise is common, and should not be mistaken for pain. Once you can accept this and get on with what you need to do, you can really start to get somewhere. A common characteristic amongst great athletes is a high tolerance for physical discomfort.

Soreness following a workout – even extreme soreness – can be unpleasant, but it doesn’t mean that you are injured or over-training. When people experience the severe soreness that results from doing a serious leg workout for the first time, it’s not uncommon to be concerned that something has gone wrong. Rest assured this is not pain, just discomfort.

Real pain, if you are ever unlucky enough to experience it, doesn’t leave any vagueness as to its nature. True, you’ll hear the occasional story of the guy (or girl) who walks around on a broken foot for 3 weeks without realizing it, but those stories are exceptional because when bones break and muscle tears happen, it’s usually painfully clear what has occurred.

While over-training can be a real concern to elite athletes in competition training, it is rarely, if ever, something that is experienced by the average Joe. Yet I hear this concern brought up in the gym surprisingly often.

Being sore doesn’t mean you’re over-training. Doing two workouts a day doesn’t mean you’re over-training. The problem is that most people are under-trained!

While you should generally avoid doing heavy weight training on the same body part every day, you simply have to get yourself conditioned to exercise - your body will adapt. If your workouts are so intense that you actually manage to cross the threshold into over-training territory, you won’t have to ponder it – you’ll know it.

Whether we’re talking about a boxer getting conditioned to taking a punch or an ultra-marathoner building the endurance to run all day without resting, we humans have an uncanny ability to adapt.

While the idea of daily workouts might seem overwhelming to most people, an individual who builds up their strength and endurance gradually should have no problem working out for an hour every day. It’s okay to take it easy on some days (active recovery workouts have long been a part of my regimen), but don’t let fear or laziness stand in the way of getting fit. They are the two biggest obstacles to achieving any goal, be it in fitness or life, and it is up to you to overcome them.

Al Kavadlo, CSCS is a personal trainer, group exercise instructor and author of the book, We're Working Out! A Zen Approach to Everyday Fitness. To find out more about Al, visit AlKavadlo.com.