Crossing Boundaries: Getting Better or Risking Setbacks?

Defining Boundaries

Athletes have three types of boundaries: psychological, physical, and genetic. Psychological boundaries encompass the athlete’s mental abilities to engage in an exercise, coordinate externally and internally, and push consistently hard enough to create meaningful changes or results. For instance, an athlete’s mindset often determines their ability to overcome challenges, manage stress, and maintain focus. Confidence can amplify performance, while fear or doubt may hinder it. Intrinsic motivation is key to getting into the gym/field/court to start the process. These must be built past a certain point to create the desired changes and improvements.

Physical boundaries are the level of force that the body can generate at a muscular level. This dictates the body’s capabilities, including strength, speed, endurance, mobility, and recovery capacity. These boundaries are often more adaptable than genetic ones, as targeted training can expand those physical qualities over time. They reflect what the athlete can do now.

Athletes’ bodies can learn and adapt to create more force over time until a certain point called the genetic boundary or limit. This refers to the genetic ceiling you can aspire to get to maximally through consistent hard training, nutrition, and other lifestyle factors. This boundary is less modifiable and establishes the foundational framework of an athlete’s potential.

Defining Improvement

If you read this, you are probably looking to improve your fitness. Improvement is the act of getting a little further than where you were before. While there are many ways to improve, this is an objective measure, meaning there must be a known current capacity or baseline. Regardless, by that simple definition, improvement involves surpassing said baselines and the boundaries described above. This means that at a certain point in your training, you have to get to a point that you have never been before to improve, where stress exceeds KNOWN capacity: trying more weight on the bar than before, running a faster time (more forcefully), pushing closer to failure, running longer than before, etc.

Improvement in the weight room, especially for beginners, follows a similar path every time. It begins with psychological effort, or the willingness to push hard enough to create meaningful physical stress. When this stress is consistent and targeted, it drives physical change. Over time, as the body adapts and current physical boundaries expand, the athlete moves closer to realizing their genetic potential. In summary, mental effort fuels physical adaptation, and those adaptations reinforce the athlete’s confidence to push further.

Possible Setbacks

A lot of training injuries occur when stress on the body exceeds capacity. It could be an imbalance between training and rest, like pushing too hard for too long without adequate rest. These can wear down the body’s systems, leaving it vulnerable to strain or breakdown. Similarly, a sudden spike in training intensity or volume, without giving the body time to adapt, can lead to injuries or acute strains. Beyond physical factors, setbacks can arise from neglecting other socio-psychological factors, including inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, adverse events happening in your life, or a negative social life. Each of these elements is involved in the delicate balance between pushing for progress and allowing the body to rebuild. When that balance is disrupted, setbacks become more likely. Understanding these common triggers helps create a foundation for consistent, less injurious performance.

Worth It?

Both cases sound pretty similar, don’t they? In both, at one point, we end up at a stress level (load, volume, speed…, etc.) higher than our capacity at one point. So, how is crossing that line worth it? Well, it is a matter of perspective and preparation. The key distinction lies in the difference between known capacity and unknown capacity. To drive adaptation, you must cross the line of your current capacity—but in a way that acknowledges your preparation to get there. The difference between adaptation and injury often comes down to whether you have the capacity, even if you do not know it yet.

When you train consistently and progressively, you build capacity incrementally, pushing the body to adapt. Eventually, you must move beyond your previous achievements to stimulate further growth. This is where unknown capacity comes into play. The act of lifting more weight, running faster, or pushing closer to failure tests whether you have developed the ability to handle it. If the preparation has been sufficient, you will adapt. If it has not, you risk injury.

The line between injury and adaptation often lies in knowing versus not knowing the capacity you have built. Efficient training ensures that you have prepared the body to meet these demands, even if the moment of testing feels uncertain. Training creates a foundation of readiness, so when you cross the line, you do so confidently in your preparation.

In this sense, crossing the line is not a leap of blind faith; it is a calculated step forward based on the work you have put in to ensure your body is ready. That makes it worth it, the deliberate effort to test and expand your capacity, transforming the unknown into the known and turning the potential for injury into the reality of progress.