Where Your Limits Actually Are
The work you do in training reveals a lot more than fatigue
Most people assume they’ve hit their limit the moment something starts to feel like a struggle.
The pressure rises as the effort climbs, things get more uncomfortable—and your brain fires off the same message it sends every time: “this is as far as I can go.”
It feels true, so you ease up. You pull back. You stay in the familiar.
But what if that signal isn’t the real line? What if it’s just your brain trying to keep you safe?
I learned that the hard way. Years ago, I started training because pain had become my baseline, and I was tired of waking up stiff. Tired of being winded from a flight of stairs. Tired of feeling exhausted before the day even started. I didn’t care about pace, or weights, or perfect form — I just wanted to stop feeling trapped in my own body.
And like most people, I expected my limits to show up fast. I figured I’d hit the wall, confirm it, and either give up or stay stuck.
But the more I trained, the more I realized there were layers between what I felt and what was actually true. Some of those layers were fear. Some were habit. Some were my brain trying to protect me from anything uncomfortable.
That’s the real story behind limits: what you first feel isn’t the whole picture. There’s a gap between the signal and the truth — and learning how to read that gap is one of the most useful skills you can build in training.
"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." — Seneca
If you’re ready to train past the limits your mind keeps throwing at you, Book your FREE Discovery Call. We’ll look at where you are, what’s been holding you back, and see if coaching is the right fit to help you build real strength that lasts
Understanding the Line
Real limits and limiting beliefs get mixed up so easily that most people treat them like the same thing. But they’re not even close.
A real limit is something your body can’t push through without breaking down. It’s physical, biological. It’s measurable. It shows up in things like strength, range of motion, cardio conditioning, and fatigue.
If you’re missing sleep, dehydrated, under-fueled, or pushing intensity way past what you’re ready for, your body will hit a point where it’s done, despite your will.
A limiting belief, on the other hand, is the story you tell yourself about what you think you can handle. It shows up in thoughts like “I can’t hold this,” “I can’t push any harder,” “I can’t finish this set,” “I can’t add more weight,” or “I can’t make it to the next marker.”
It feels just as strong and real, but it’s built on fear, habit, old experiences, or the way you’ve been taught to protect yourself from discomfort. Your will is done, despite your body.
Because the mind acts first, most people run into their limiting beliefs long before they ever get close to a real limit. The first wall you feel is almost always the brain’s quick reaction to stress — not the body’s actual capacity.
The Impact of Knowing It
It’s normal to hit a limiting belief long before reaching your real limits.
Our brain is designed to keep us safe above all else. It reacts fast, makes quick judgments based on patterns, fills in gaps with fear and hesitation, and tries to pull you away from anything that feels even slightly risky.
Past failures stick longer than past wins. If something hurt once, your brain remembers and tries to avoid repeating it.
Comfort becomes a pattern. Your body adapts to whatever you practice most often — even caution and holding back.
We’re wired to avoid risk. Your brain would rather pull you away from anything uncomfortable than let you risk testing what’s actually possible.
Fatigue feels emotional before it’s physical. Your mind reacts to rising effort faster than your muscles do, so the story hits before the truth does.
When you feel that first wall coming on, you’re usually not hitting a real limit. You’re hitting the mind’s early alarm, not the body’s actual breaking point.
And that matters, because if you don’t know the difference, you end up training inside a box that’s much smaller than your potential. You slow down before you need to. You cut reps you could have finished. You stop exploring the edge where real progress actually happens.
Knowing the difference between a reaction and a limit is what frees you to train honestly — and once you learn that, everything changes.
"Most people hit a wall and quit. If they pushed just a little further, they’d see that wall was only 40% of what they’re capable of." — David Goggins
Training Your Edge on Purpose
Once you understand the difference between a real limit and a limiting belief, the next step is learning how to work just past the point where your mind normally shuts things down
You’re not constantly testing your max. You’re simply taking small steps beyond the story that says “I can’t.”
Start by noticing your first pullback. Every session has that moment where effort bumps up and your mind tries to end it early. You don’t need to judge it — just catch it. That awareness alone shows you where your limiting beliefs show up.
Then move a little past it. Run to the next marker instead of the one you aimed for. Finish the full set instead of cutting it short. Add one steady breath before dropping out. These small extensions teach your mind that discomfort doesn’t always equal danger.
Build on the easy wins. A minute longer than you planned. One more rep you would’ve skipped. Finishing a workout you normally talk yourself out of. These are the reps that reshape the “I can’t” story, with evidence that you can. Over time, your brain stops sounding the alarm so early because you’ve shown it you’re safe.
And when you meet your real limit, honor it. When your body is clearly telling you it needs rest, fuel, or recovery — listen. Honoring that limit means stopping without guilt, adjusting the plan, and protecting tomorrow’s training instead of trying to force today. That’s how you stay healthy long enough to grow.
When you train this way, the mental line moves. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. And you start to see that you’ve had more room than you thought before hitting your real limits.
You just needed the chance to step into it.
The more time you spend training, the clearer it gets that most of the walls you run into aren’t your body shutting down — they’re the stories your mind makes up early. Once you learn to see that difference, training starts to feel a lot less like guessing and a lot more like exploring what you’re actually capable of.
I’ve seen that in my own training. I started with basic goals — just trying to move without pain — and years later I’m running marathons and taking on half-Ironman races. Not because I’ve pushed recklessly, but because I’ve kept testing that mental line in steady, measured ways. Every new challenge shows me there’s still room to grow, and I’m still learning where my real limits sit.
Real limits don’t change, but your path to them does. When you stop reacting to the first hard moment, you reach your true edge with a clearer sense of what your body can actually handle. You meet that limit steady, not panicked, because you’re no longer fighting the fear signal on the way there.
Where in your training have you been stopping at the first signal instead of challenging the real limit?