We aim to advance the mechanistic understanding of pain anticipation by investigating how the human cortical motor system learns to prepare for aversive somatosensory events. In this study, we tracked how neural oscillations and corticospinal excitability reflect the acquisition and reversal of pain expectations. Using a Pavlovian conditioning task, participants learned to anticipate the occurrence of lateralized aversive shocks. Specifically, during acquisition neutral visual stimuli predicted shocks to either the left (CS+L) or right (CS+R) arm, while another stimulus (CS-) never predicted shock. Then, during reversal the CSs+ associations were switched. Electroencephalography, motor-evoked potentials (MEP) and electrodermal activity (EDA) were co-registered during the task. Results showed a suppression of somatomotor alpha power and a reduction of MEPs’ amplitude during acquisition and reversal, which were lateralized relative to the arm where the shock was expected. In contrast, an increase in frontocentral theta power and EDA was observed for CSs+ relative to CS-, which did not encode shock laterality. Our results highlight the existence of multiple, dissociable learning systems mediating pain anticipation and show the motor system’s involvement in the acquisition and reversal of embodied pain expectations. Including such motor representations of pain expectations in models of pain may bring a new understanding of and treatments for pain-related disorders.