Can you train pain tolerance?

I have been recently playing around with HIT training Arthur Jones style to really good effect. In approximately 10 days, I have now noticed an ab vein to accompany my 1 ab from 14 mins of weight training 3-4 times a week. All fairly unflattering on me admittedly, but ho hum, this is bodybuilding.
Essentially the format I'm using is 1 set of 5-8 exercises performed to momentary muscular failure. The key is going to failure. I love that failure is a strategy for success in this case - a necessary requirement; this is a good lesson for life! As can be imagined, it is not a particularly pleasant place to be, but being an adventurer.....I like to walk the path less trodden - and sometimes, that means in your own head.

My last post explored the HIT method and the fact that not everybody can work to that intensity. This week I wanted to explore the idea of why not! Why is it so hard to work to that level of intensity. Can that psychology be trained?

The doubled edged sword of "hardness"

It really got me thinking about discomfort, pain and fatigue. As with all personality traits, pain tolerance exists on a spectrum. Can you train it? Can you change perception of pain?
And here in lies the double edged sword. There is a kudos surrounding things that are hard. Accomplishing difficult, challenging hard tasks are perceived as good; it gives one credibility and validity - a sort of virtuousness. There is therefore a benefit to an event or a training session being marketed as "hard" and many races like the Tough Guy take full advantage of this.

But I wonder if this expectation of something being hard can prevent fully embracing the experience?
The demographic of people that are going to voluntarily want to do hard training or a hard race are going to find the difficulty of a challenge, a motivator, but it places a "ceiling" on the effort if you have an expectation it will be hard. In actual fact there maybe plenty more effort in reserve.

My question is: If you remove the expectation, would the effort in an already motivated person be more or less? If you told that same person, the weight they were lifting was in fact heavier or lighter than perceived, would their perception of fatigue change and consequently repetitions of weight lifted (outcome).

A similar analogy might be going to the doctor for an injection. If you are told, it is going to hurt, no surprises for what the perceived pain is going to be.

I believe that embracing that "place" of discomfort relies on being fully present in the situation, as you have no judgement or expectation. It is what it is. Not resisting or avoiding and essentially.....wanting to be there. There are other schools of thought where, re-focusing anger or rage can accomplish the job but I can't help feeling that the outcome of this is a state which is way too emotional. In my experience, there is most definitely a negative correlation between the red mist, focus and performance.

Intensity creates focus

There is a level of exertion which creates focus, where distractibility is minimised. When perceived rate of exertion is low, you can get away with a bit of daydreaming or people watching but at around 70-80% perceived exertion things very much start to change. That moment, you realise that actually you need to concentrate on the task.
An interesting study performed by Professor Nilli Lavie, at UCL Psychology utilised a psychometric test to look at distractibility in 61 subjects. One finding was that all subjects, whether they are generally easily distracted or not - were far less distracted when performing a more difficult task. There was no extra brain capacity for processing distracting information. Although this was not a physical test, I believe that a level of challenge is required for focus and presence and in turn these qualities are good for effective training.

14 minutes 4 times a week

I'm embracing full on, balls out intensity - I'm also reaping the benefits very quickly, considering my total weight training is about 14 minutes 4 times a week now.

My personal motivation to want to go to this "place" of intensity is understanding it is part of the 2.5% effort that gets 95% of results! It is where improvement will happen. But I'm also hard wired to train like this. It suits my temperament. Everybody's unique psychology is very different and I'm fully aware this strategy doesn't work well for everybody. I'm in the the midst of reading the autobiography of Andre Agassi - "Open". The impressive thing about his story is not the titles and wins but the fact he hated Tennis. He always hated it from aged 7, but was made to do it by his father. So there is proof that, it is not a necessary requirement to love your sport. Indeed, you can still do something really well despite not having a natural predisposition for it. It can be trained.

I really do believe you can train pain tolerance, it's just knowing how to trigger the necessary response in the individual. What's going to make them want to do the things they "need" to do versus "want" to do to make them better. That is about understanding the psyche and motivation but where there is a will...there is a way.