Characters in fighting, sports, and other My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours series have a tendency to go to extremes when doing their training. Whether it's a regimen concocted by a harsh (or just sadistic) mentor, or self-inflicted, expect to see our heroes go through training that would incapacitate or even kill an ordinary human. When played straight it's always worth it.
The consequence is usually Charles Atlas Superpower.
Hey, no pain, no gain. Ergo, according to this trope, a lot of pain, a lot of gain.
Frequently occurs in a Deadly Training Area. For Training From Hell for a whole army, see The Spartan Way. For the parental or parental figure version see Tough Love. May result in Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training if done from childhood. See also Improvised Training, when they have no equipment or money with which to train. See Look What I Can Do Now for the aftermath.
Currently used in a series of commercials for an auto parts store in the US. Ads so far have included employees changing a battery in a car while in freefall; and running through the savannah carrying a muffler, with raw meat tied to them and lions chasing them.
Comic Books
Martial arts training in comics, particularly from Lady Shiva, often seems to consist of brutally attacking someone with negligible experience until this somehow causes them to develop proper form and build. In reality of course, being beaten up by an immensely more skilled opponent is not a very good way to learn to fight.
Justified when she trained Batman in Knightsend, but only because he was an already experienced fighter trying to recover his abilities after months out of commission. Robin, when he trained briefly under Shiva, didn't get as much out of it.
Batgirl III (Cassandra Cain) was brought up under Training From Hell so over-the-top it entered the realm of self-parody at times. Her workout program was said to have killed or driven insane all others who tried it. Of course since it included never learning to read or speak and only having contact with one person, social maladjustment at the very least would be expected.
When Cass trained Stephanie Brown in turn, the training mostly consisted of her being knocked down with one punch, over and over again, although this may be because at the time Cass was more interested in moping than sparring.
Similiar to Cassandra Cain, X-23 was brought up under Training From Hell for the purpose of becoming an assassin for hire. Unlike Cassandra she was given an extensive education, although only because her handlers wanted her to be able to blend in with "normal" people to carry out missions.
Deconstructed in Wanted. The main character's inital training consists of being tied to a chair and having a guy twice his size pummel him for a few hours every day. It turns out the point was not to make him able to fight but willing to kill someone.
This has some basis in Real Life military training programs; primarily it builds up a person's ability to handle pain and exhaustion, but it also builds up a lot of repressed anger.
The Danger Room from the various incarnations of X-Men.
Empowered goes through a workout session at the hands of her friend Ninjette that involves tree-hopping, swimming across a shark-infested bay, and shooting toys out of the air.
Fairly subverted in The Middleman when Wendy begins her training with Sensei Ping. After a long sequence with Ida and The Middleman telling her how strict and ruthless a teacher Sensei Ping is and how unlikely she is to survive the first day, she bounces out of the training room, out of breath but mostly unhurt, yelling, "That was AWESOME!"
In Bowling King, this sort of training is somehow necessary to be a successful bowler; Details aren't exactly forthcoming as to, like, why (other than bowling being seriously Serious Business), but on his first day of training Shautieh is forced to run for over three hours straight as a warmup. Later, he's made to mime sitting down while playing mahjong with ugly women, with the stipulation that if he loses or falls down they get to kiss him.
Very controversial example in the current Dark Horse Conan the Barbarian comic series, which introduced a female warrior called Janissa whose "training" by her female Evil Mentor involved being repeatedly thrown into a pit full of demons and gang-raped by them until she learned to fight back.
During Dark ReignNorman Osborn ordered Ares, Greek god of war, to train a special squad of soldiers. The speech Ares gave potential members of his team had him mentioning the possiblity they can end as "bags of broken bones and blood" and that he will choose those who are worthy...or those he just wants to see in pain. Later he proved he wasn't kidding — his first lesson was "I will be shooting at you from a BFG, try to survive."
Justified in the French comic series Requiem Vampire Knight. The training to become a Vampire Knight is hellish, and conveniently located in Hell. Of course, you will be fighting hellcreatures in Hell so...
G.I. Joe, of course. This applies both to the Joes and Cobra. Most of this is merely hinted at in the character profiles, but one issue of the Marvel comic focused entirely on the training of new Joes. In addition to some grueling-but-expected training, it included having to watch a horribly boring training video about traffic safety for several hours without falling asleep.
The Cobra file cards especially go into the horrible stuff you have to do to become an Eel or one of the the various types of Viper. In most elite Viper programs, surviving training is how you graduate. One might think that Larry Hama was exorcising some demons from his own time in the military...
The Valiant one-shot Ultimate Warrior's Workout featured the titular wrestler revealing how he maintains maximum Destrucity. His regimen consists of lifting a giant statue, flinging cinderblocks in a stadium with enough force to wreck the place, dodging logs rolling down a steep hill, withstanding the waves of a stormy sea, and finally lifting a table covered in junk which he adds something to every time so it's heaver with every lift.
Fan Works
In the Harry PotterAUThe Darkness Series Harry gets dueling lessons from Voldemort at the end of which he frequently has to work on reattaching limbs.
Manhwa
In Witch Hunter, Ryuhwan takes Tasha under his wing to help him complete the training he should have received from their master before she died. He promises Tasha that he will make Tasha as strong as him in one month. How does he do this? By transporting them and their partners into a sentient pocket dimension which can memorize the physical state of objects and reset them to the state they were when they entered it. Ryuhwan demonstrates this by shooting Tasha in the gut three times. When Tasha is immediately healed, Ryuhwan explains that he is going to fight Tasha to the death over and over again until Tasha's combat skills reach his level.
What Shane puts Vince through to prepare for the Royal Rumble
This is basically a fraction of what the Iron Sheik's AWA training camp was like, according to both Ricky Steamboat and Buck Zumhofe.
Music
Back stage footage of Gackt and his band preparing for concert is nothing but this. Gackt and his back up dancers "training" includes lifting each other as weights and taking turns punching and kicking each other in the stomach over extended periods of time.
Classical musicians sometimes go through this, especially at the famous schools like Juilliard. Overuse injuries are very common, and nervous breakdowns aren't exactly unheard of.
This is an unusual example, in that most people going through the training wouldn't complain at all. They're all passionately in love with music, which is why they're studying music instead of something that pays better.
Tabletop Games
In Cthulhu Tech this is how Tagers are prepared to bind with their symbiont. First, they're practically tortured and emotionally manipulated by their instructors for at least six months, in order to learn how to maintain complete control over their bodies and minds. Then, they undergo the Rite of the Sacred Union, a three-day ritual in which they can't eat, drink, or sleep, having to remain focused the entire time. If everything goes correctly, they permanently fuse witha monster from beyond space and time. If something goes wrong, well...
The Space Marines from Warhammer 40000 are the masters of military Training From Hell. A typical recruit is about 10 years old when he endures his first trial. These trials are various but always potentially lethal: on a Feral World, the recruit could need to hunt and slay the fiercest predator on the planet, or survive in the outlands for an extended period; he could find himself in a duel with a real battle brother (a hulking monstrosity, eight feet and 800 lbs of carbon hardened bones and pure muscle mass); or the psykers of the Chapter could simply decide to Mind Rape him and see if he survives. If the young boy passes the trial, for years he will be gruelingly trained, cut open and stuffed with additional organs (some Chapters shun painkillers and assistance; if he dies from the wounds, he's not a good Neophyte), pumped full of drugs and conditioned by the Chapter Librarian. If he survives since his 18th birthday, he will become a full fledged Space Marine. Most of the recruits die; the unlucky ones are crippled for life, their mind is shattered and their planet will look at them as the living epithome of failure. The real unlucky ones are stripped of their free will and become Servitors to the Chapter officers: Fate Worse Than Death, indeed...
In case of Abyssals or Infernals, it's Training in Hell or Training by Hell. These are not for the faint of the heart. A certain Infernal-only Martial Arts can be taught faster through nightmares.
Since charms learned by an Infernal is also learned by her Yozi master, this can potentially results in a Training for Hell. Insert Soviet reversal here.
Mage The Ascension features the Golden Chalice, a sub-faction of the Euthanatos that is effectively a fate-bending special operations group. Their training is said to be 24 hours a day for two weeks straight, with only the bare essentials of magic to keep contenders from dying.
Visual Novels
Subverted in Fate/stay night. Shirou goes through training every night in magic that nearly kills him and terrifies anyone who sees it. This is, in fact, because he is really bad at practicing. It does essentially nothing for him. Another subversion comes in his sparring with Saber, where she points out that there's no way he can really hope to learn anything in such a short time so she'll just teach him to sense killing intent and get used to battle so he reacts better.
Played straight, though, with our favorite Badass G Randpa Zelretch. He's notorious for periodically showing up at the Clock Tower and choosing out a few trainees. On the one hand, training under one of the few living practitioners of true magic, the man who killed an Eldritch Abomination bare handed? Sounds great! On the other hand, well, pretty much everyone he's ever chosen is currently either dead or insane.
In Yo Jin Bo, Tatsunami Ittosai eventually reveals that as a child he was put through Training from Hell by his father, who believed that A Real Man Is a Killer. Ittosai is the only one of the guys who is completely unfazed when Kasumimaru uses a ninja technique to blind him, commenting that his father used to blindfold him and attack him until he learned to defend himself without being able to see.
His current pupil, an alumnus from another such school, asks for more: When he learns the girls are in danger, he asks Sherbert to crank it Up to Eleven so he can quickly graduate and rush to their help. Even Sherbert is surprised.
"So the death thing this is supposed to prevent… why is it bad?"
In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Gordito and Sean are forced to train to fight against 21 different spells within 24 hours. Their training includes being attacked with a flamethrower and having swarms of insects and snakes unleashed on them [1].
This trope is basically the entire ninja method of child-rearing.
In Misfile, Ash basically flat-out told Emily she would be put through this in preparation for her first race.
Errant Story characters Chris and Sara both get a dose of this en route to becoming Ensigerum monks, but the circumstances aren't exactly the same: the Powers That Be are trying to bring Sara to the usual Ensigerum time-ninja status, but they're just hoping the training kills the other guy. Remarkably, it doesn't.
Marena and Ten Winds from Keychain of Creation start putting Secret through this when they discover how low her Stamina score is.
Ten: You'll run or we can do the bee training again!
The T-Girls of Jet Dream undergo extensive training in "Combat Femininity," with the purpose of acclimating themselves to their new bodies and defyingDifferent for Girls with extreme prejudice.
Collar 6. Mistress Sixx whips Laura severely to train her for pain tolerance.
Subverted in Fite, where Gorgado's harsh training seems to make Lucco weaker rather than stronger, and is more like a strange form of torture.
In Demon Eater, the main character Saturno is going through this at the hands of the members of the Human Club.
Homestuck has Dave's Bro, who quite frequently accosts his younger brother and beats his ass (Although Domestic Battles referred to as strife seem to be the norm in the Homestuck verse) in a total Curb-Stomp Battle simply to toughen him up (or maybe just for laughs). His Alpha Universe counterpart, Dirk Strider, isn't much better — he sends his friend Jake battlebots that utterly destroy himon their easiest setting in order to prepare him for Sburb.
There are a fair number of distinct parallels between Bro's relationship with Dave and Jake's interaction with the "Brobot;" In both cases, Bro/Brobot present a seemingly impossible standard for Dave and Jake to live up to, because Bro/Dirk honestly believes that's what they need to suceed. However, both Brobot and Dave's Bro also serve as protectors to their charge, dealing with threats that pose a genuine threat to Dave or Jake's safety, and it's worth noting that Dirk holds himself to the same standards; he constructed Sawtooth to present a similar challenge to himself.
The Avatar in Fire Emblem New Mystery trains obsessively; most of their supports involve people variously expressing shock at how hard they're working or completely failing to keep up with them in sparring. Apparently this was started by the Avatar's grandfather, who was of the opinion that the correct solution to fatigue was to extend the training session.
Sharon Kulikov from Survival of the Fittest was apparently put through this — by her own father, no less. Ironically the training doesn't help much when she gets into a confrontation and takes an axe to the back of the head, though her training didn't really involve combat techniques. Barry Coleson High's baseball and football teams also apparently went through an extremely rigorous training regime — described as military-esque — that would've cost their coach his job if it weren't for the fact that they're very highly skilled teams because of said training. The baseball team's practices apparently involve three miles' worth of laps around the entire campus at the start, hundreds of the same drills over and over, physical workouts, and being forced to do eighty pushups every time the player makes a mistake.
YouTube's Billy MC went through this when his very first LP was Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels. It took him a year in real time to beat it. However, he's since proven to be very good at easier — still fairly difficult — Mario games, like Super Mario Bros 3.
He's also proven to be very good at games mostly considered Nintendo Hard since, having beaten The Karate Kid in only two Let's Play videos, Castlevania in four, and Ninja Gaiden in just five videos .
In season 2 of Stupid Mario Brothers, Link trains the Mario Bros. to prepare for thir fight against Nox Decious. It is however subverted when the training turns out to be a round of Super Smash Bros which the Mario Bros. take seriously.
Agents of the Organization from LIS_DEAD are put through extreme training pretty much from birth
Western Animation
In Avatar The Last Airbender, Toph psychologically trains Aang to Earthbend by doing things such as verbally abusing him, stealing his nuts and staff (literally his staff and bag of nuts), and not helping him protect his friend. Her physical training involves such tasks as running an obstacle course while carrying a boulder on his back, jabbing his hands through solid stone, and sending a giant boulder crashing towards him while blindfolded.
In The Legend of Korra, Tarrlok and Noatak are subjected to horrifying bloodbending, now illegal, training by Yakone, their father and the first known bloodbender capable of bloodbending without the help of a full moon. This training includes bloodbending one another as children.
The cartoon version of G.I. Joe isn't as intense. However, in the multi-part series where Sergeant Slaughter first appeared, the Joes almost suffered a big setback after letting themselves get overconfident, so Gen. Hawk asked Slaughter to take over their training routines personally. Long story short, it was a good idea.
In a later series, Slaughter is put in charge of an elite force called the Renegades, who he trains even harder. (The Renegades are a group of mostly-reformed thugs who need serious discipline to work with the Joes.)
Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego had an episode that showed what went on in a V.I.L.E training program, which includes rappelling up the side of a life-sized mockup of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (or perhaps the real deal — Carmen did like to steal oddball stuff like national monuments).
In an episode of The Fairly Oddparents, Cosmo and Wanda retreat to Fairy World to renew their fairy licenses; Jorgen von Strangle sets up a hellish training regimen as part of the renewal process, which includes doing 10 million push-ups.
Some parts of Mulan's training montage qualify as Training From Hell — particularly climbing the pole to retrieve the arrow, cutting through concrete with their heads, and hopping across several poles planted above a river.
Turned on its head for Disney's Hercules where the training is more of an antagonizing experience for the trainer rather than the trainee. For instance;
Phil: (whilst standing next to a bullseye) Rule number 95 kid; concentrate!
(Hercules throws several knives which all very nearly impale Phil in the next shot)
Phil: Rule number 96; AIM!!
In Boondocks, Colonel Stinkmeaner goes through a literal version of this after Granddad accidentally kills him, and Stinkmeaner's taught kung fu by the devil himself so he can return to Earth and have his revenge.
Stinkmeaner apparently doesn't think its so bad as he claims he's having the time of his life. He also called the devil a "B&%$h ass N&#%a!" to his face
Providence recruits go through 'Pain Week' during basic training — five days, one-hundred and twenty hours, of solid drills and exercises, with no breaks to eat or sleep. The trainer outright says that the goal of Pain Week is to force any recruit who couldn't handle fighting deadly monsters on a regular basis to quit early ... then walk down the long stairs from Providence's apparantly cliff-top base and somehow get across a freaking desert to the nearest city. That's right, even the washouts get a little extra hell.
This becomes an unintended case in the episode "Failsafe" of Young Justice when Miss Martian was overwhelmed by Artemis's "death" and her telepathic powers overroded hers and the rest of the team's conscious knowledge that the scenerio was fake.
Interviewer: "Which animation show was the most rewarding and why?"
Chris Reccardi: "I would have to say Ren and Stimpy. But rewarding like getting ten root canals, and then growing new super-teeth later."
When Samurai Jack asked to be taught to "jump good", the tribe of ape-people he'd befriended tied rocks to all his limbs and a giant boulder to his back, then ran him around the forest performing chores and surmounting obstacles. When he started, he could barely move under the weight; when he finished his training, the stones' removal left him feeling so much lighter that he virtually floated away with the smallest of efforts.
Dragons Riders Of Berk: Gobber claims that his father taught him to swim by threatening to kill him.
