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By
Phil Stevens |
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Failure as an athlete or trainee
is such a multi-faceted beast. At many times it’s our
worst enemy and at other times our best friend. In this article
I will try and give just a few examples and some of my thoughts
on failure...show how
it can be a one of the most perplexing issues a trainee or
strength athlete has to face, and how it can either wreak
havoc, or breed progress, depending on the situation or the
individual.
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Failure refers to the state or condition
of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed
as the opposite of success.
Training to failure is training to fail.
One thing I preach to my clients that
is opposite of popular teaching from most so-called personal trainers
and professional coaches is, We NEVER, EVER go to the gym with the
attitude of I’m going to exercise and kick my own ass today.
I am going to kill myself to the point I limp and drag myself out
of the gym. NO! By doing this you have already failed. You are seeking,
and walking into the session EXPECTING failure.
Rather, we step into the gym confident.
We walk in thinking the opposite of failure. We attack the gym and
train with the goal in mind that we are going to kick the gym’s
ass, kick the ass of the task at hand on that day and do everything
in our power to not let it kick ours.
Furthermore, this applies to our progression.
A client doesn’t move up in load, reps, sets etc. when the
old prescribed load or rep scheme no longer kicks their ass. NO!
You earn the right to a new load, to progress. You get the joy of
kicking a new tasks ass when you make that old task your bitch.
Sure at times we get our butts kicked. You work damn hard, but that
happens by default from your putting forth enough effort, drive,
and passion to joyfully kick the gym’s ass. If you walk out
fresh as a daisy but have beat your old performance GREAT!!!! Mission
accomplished. You made a once tough task easy and have progressed.
You train to succeed.
Every rep, of every set, you make
them perfect and as effortless as possible. Each and every day you
move up through your warm ups by making the previous load easy.
You ingrain 100% success in your lifts. If a certain load is hard
on any given day then you stay there until you either prove you
can beat that ands make it easy, or you just stay there that for
that session. There is no point in pushing yourself past the constructive
straining point into probable failure as something, body and/or
mind, are just not in it that day.
What this does is mentally breed 100%
success. You make lifts and that’s what you do. In time that’s
all you know. You approach a PR and the load does NOT! matter. In
your head you are going to lift it because with this load and this
move that’s all you know. You don’t know failing. All
that has been put in your vocabulary and set in your mind like stone
is, hundreds and thousands of successful reps.
For example, I have had a two plus
year run now on the dead lift. A two plus year run that has seen
my meet dead lift go from just over 600 to a very solid 700, and
ready to pull more. In that two years I have missed one, yes, one
single rep on one single attempt, on a full pull.
I missed it on a day I felt like crap.
It was not a meet and I let my stupidity get a hold of me and tried
a lift I was mentally doubting before I tried it. That set me back
a few months even just bouncing back from that miss of 680 for my
first time.
What did I do? I went back and made
every single lift since.
I take a lot of heavy lifts, many
small PR’s spaced weeks or months apart, and then at critical
planned times (meets) I make Big shots at large PR’s (or when
I hit small ones and they were just too damn easy - strike when
the iron is HOT).
What this has done is, every time
I come to a bar, EVERY SINGLE PR attempt, whether it’s my second,
which is generally a 5 lb PR, or a third that is usually a 20lb
or more PR, I KNOW, I have no inkling of a doubt that I am going
to make the lift. Not making it doesn’t bother me as it’s
not in my vocabulary. I am a firm believer that the mind is the
most powerful tool we have as a person, and yes as a lifter. We
strengthen that mind by repetition and hard work (straining, learning
how to Fight and Win), ingraining the habit we want to achieve.
How Failure breeds
Success.
I’ve said it time and time again,
and it seemly directly contradicts my preaching to athletes to NEVER
fail at their sport, that we learn three fold more from any failure
that we learn from any success.
This can be seen in training, life,
love and of course business. As Coke’s Chairman and CEO E.
Neville Isdell told investors at an annual meeting. "You will
see some failures, As we take more risks, this is something we must
accept as part of the regeneration process.”
So one might ask then, why do we not
try and fail more often in order to make even greater progress?
The difference is clear in my eyes. We learn, grow, and progress
from failure. From it we learn our limitations, our weak points,
what we need to work on, and how to FIGHT when things get tough.
If you never, like Isdell said, “take more risks”, or
push yourself beyond your means to a new height and at times fail,
then you simply aren’t trying hard enough. The difference in
failure and success is we don’t EVER make it a goal.
Failure happens, much like sh*t, but
we don’t strive, or search for it as we do success and perfection.
We don’t make it a habit like we do success. We react to it
when it does happen. We know, and learn to love, the fact that failure
and imperfection is out there, and that means we can still grow,
progress and get better. If we didn’t have the chance of failing
we would not have the drive to push hard, to reach for ever new
heights.
Chance of failure is what makes us
strive to go ever harder, do more than others have ever done and
yes, it happens. When we fail, we evaluate why it happens and then
fix those things so it doesn’t happen again. We should not
FEAR it, but we should never seek it.
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Again, failure
happens, but don’t search for it. However, you won’t
know your breaking point, if you never reach for and test
it, and learn to become not only physically, but more importantly,
mentally strong. This is more so for the beginner who actually
fails at perceived failure, when things get a bit hard. It
is not real failure, they are physically, neurologically,
and mentally weak or inefficient which causes premature failure
prior to ever getting near their physical capacity.
As you progress
and get stronger in body and mind, failure should be avoided
at all cost. AT ALL COSTS! Once you do have the mental capacity
to FIGHT to the point of literally breaking, at this point
the actual cost of failure outweighs the benefit and should
be left for testing in an extreme or meet situation only.
As you see failure
is a doubled edged sword. Failure happens, and even at times
I could make a strong argument it is needed and can be beneficial
to the right trainee in the right situation. The trick is
to learn and recognize these points and to whom they fit,
if and when each individual can use a big dose of each. No
matter what, however, I urge you to always keep a positive
and successful outlook in which you are striving to kick ass
- to impart pain, not evoke pain, on oneself.
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About The Author
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Coach Phil Stevens is an accomplished
strength athlete with considerable experience in both powerlifting
and strongman competition. Phil is the 2007 APA World Champion
in the 242-pound class (total). He currently holds the APF
275-pound class raw National bench, squat, deadlift, and total
records. Phil’s marquis lift was his 700-pound raw deadlift,
performed on February 14, 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Phil has been ranked in the
“Top 10” in the deadlift Nationally across all powerlifting
federations, and in addition to his coaching duties at Staley
Training Systems, he also serves as the Arizona State Chair
for the North American Highlander Association, as well as
the founder of Lift For Hope, an annual strength-competition
with proceeds donated to Charity (www.Lift4Hope.org).
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