The goal of this module is to provide athletes with a reliable measuring device to assess their individual pain tolerance ability. Later, we will provide people with procedures whereby they can learn skills to overcome the sometimes debilitating effects of pain and actually increase performance in the presence of pain.

Measurement

As a starting point it is very useful to know the level of pain tolerance you possess. Not only is this of general importance, but it is useful in evaluating just how powerful the pain management techniques are that you will learn. This can be accomplished simply by comparing your initial results to results obtained by the exact pain tolerance test following the ability building program.

Everyone has a idea of how tough they are. Research has shown, however, that our self assessment often is very far from the truth and has little if any correlation with our abilities to use pain during training or competition to our benefit. There are many different ways to measure pain tolerance. The slow thinking "no pain, no gain" guys will be sorry to hear that throwing themselves off roofs or dropping 120 pound dumbbells on their toes are not included in intelligent scientific measurement. And to balance the scale, the super nerd computer assisted laboratory genius types will be sorry to hear that pain tolerance measurement doesn't need tens of thousands of dollars of computers, polygraphs and electrodes hooked up to the brain.

The simplest, most highly accurate measure of pain tolerance is called by science "The Cold Pressure Test."

Cold Pressure Test Set-Up and Directions:

1. Obtain a large vat and fill it halfway with cold water. A five gallon picnic cooler or plastic kitchen trash can will do nicely.
2. Buy a large bag of ice and add it to the cooler. The cooler should be thick with ice.
3. Remove your child's shirt and have him place his bare right arm into the cooler so that the ice completely covers his hand, forearm and elbow.
4. Using a stopwatch or a clock with a second hand, time the total number of seconds that he is able to keep his arm in the ice without removing it.
5. The total number of seconds he was able to withstand the universal pain of cold pressure will give you a very accurate measure of his general pain tolerance ability.
6. Instruct him to remove his arm when the pain gets too great or after two and one half minutes.
7. Record his score in the space provided on the Worksheet.

   Results:

   50 seconds or less: At this moment your child has poor pain tolerance. Despite his level of athletic achievement, he scores below average in handling pain. Improvements here will result in great future performance improvement.

   105 seconds: At this moment your child has an average pain tolerance. Improving this ability will improve his training and competitive performance for the future.

   140 seconds or better: If your child scored at this level he has an excellent pain tolerance ability. For athletes in this group, the pain barrier is not normally a limiting factor in their performance. It is not really necessary for this group to study the techniques for increasing pain tolerance, although it is good practice nonetheless.