Wanting to "make optimal development" is just one of possible motivations for exercising and not everyone who does it is interested in that. Maintaining good health and generally wanting to feel better across the day are also perfectly valid reasons to exercise.

You gotta give yourself a bit more slack. We all deserve to rest and go slow now and then. What's the point of living if you can't take a break?

We are chaotic and beautiful bundles of dozens of trillions of cells that evolved over 4 billion years. We breath. We feel. We are alive. We aren't math problems that need to be "solved" or "optimized".

> Which, to me, makes sense because you’re supposed to always be pushing yourself. You’re not supposed to ever feel comfortable or feel better from it. You should always feel shitty because if it doesn’t hurt then you’re probably not making optimal development.

You are way too demanding of yourself my friend :(

> if it doesn't hurt then you're not making optimal development

this is almost certainly wrong - 100% balls to wall training will surely be suboptimal (on avg) to achieving most fitness goals - eg within a running training block there will generally be recovery and "general aerobic" runs which are easy in effort relative to the harder work in the block. These easy efforts are necessary to optimally achieve the desired physiological adaptations acquired through increased volume and "nailing" the hard workouts. The easier runs enable this by getting volume at lower risk of injury + conserving energy/will for the key workouts.

This also doesn't consider how important recovery is to optimal results (as in sleep, rest, self-care etc).

Exercising is doing some activity that is good for your health. You’ve reduced this to some narrow set of activities that presumably make you stronger, faster, or better at some other easy to measure metric. I assure you it’s easy to enjoy exercising if your incentive is longevity and simply healthy living by a more subjective metric

I finally started getting stronger in the gym when I stopped going to failure on everything. I got in the best endurance shape by going on a steady comfortable pace for progressively longer periods of time.

Harder is not always better.

I'd point out that at least in aerobic exercies (ie running and biking) its generally recommended that you shouldn't be pushing too hard for most of your workouts. If you're going out four days a week it's only on one or two of them that you're generally supposed to push yourself. The others should be at an easier pace. Which I tend to find more enjoyable.

There's also something to be said for seasons of maintaining a level of fitness rather than pushing for the next level!

https://stories.strava.com/articles/a-productive-weekly-trai...

It seems very likely to me that the sensations experienced during exercise are highly variable among individuals.

I say this because my experience is very different from yours: I get a very perceptible "high" once I get into the rhythm of a good workout. Think mild euphoria, mood lift, and general feeling of "rightness" in my body once it's been well wrung.

This only happens if I'm in decent shape, though. If I've fallen out of shape it's a slog.

Edit: I can't remember the podcast, but I recall some discussion of emerging clinical evidence in exercise response variability along many dimensions that may help explain the disconnect.

I love working out and have for over 25 years. You should never be in real pain or feel 'shitty'. It should be challenging of course and part of that challenge is being uncomfortable. Learning to embrace being uncomfortable, IMO, is one of the super powers of being a person that translate to all other areas of life. Once a person learns to embrace uncomfortable moments, everything else just becomes...easier.

Exercise can become a form of self harm. It did for me.

But you have ability to suffer painful for a long time.