To go long and hard, athletes need fresh muscles, says Greatist Expert John Mandrola: "Go hard on hard days; go easy on easy days; and never string hard days together without adequate rest".
Sacrificing for a Payoff If it is true that the system pushes athletes hard, many athletes are just as demanding of themselves.
No longer a two-season loop for die-hard athletes willing to twist an ankle, skin a knee or risk their mother's annoyance by ruining their running shoes on the sloppy lanes, the track is now a place for those who need to move their bodies in any way, at any hour.
We see this tendency, for instance, in Leslie Jamison's essay collection "The Empathy Exams," which interweaves accounts of her own abortion and heart surgery with essays about her attempts to comprehend the pain of people in drastically different circumstances, from long-time prisoners and die-hard athletes to patients suffering from psychosomatic pain.
"Psychologically, it's been very hard on athletes.
"But beneath it all she was the hardest, toughest athlete I ever met.
Lysacek, who fashions himself a hard-core athlete, has won the last two United States national titles.
Commentators often say that it's hard for athletes to "turn it off," whatever "it" is.
Yes, ergometers can provide workouts so hard that athletes are pushed to the absolute limits of their endurance.
Even during his rapping days, he had always been a good student and hard-working athlete, but at Troy he cut classes, skipped training, broke team rules.
