Most of us avoid failure as much as we avoid wearing pants, possibly more.
Failure sucks.
It’s painful and most of us avoid pain because duh, it doesn’t feel good.
Or does it?
Did we just make it up that failure doesn’t feel good?
Because we attached a bunch of meanings to what it means to fail.
But what if we redefine failure?
What if we choose different meanings?
And why would we want to? What’s so great about failure?
Lots of things.
The only way to ever truly become great at something, to really uplevel, to become fully who you are and what you are capable of, to reach your highest potential, you are gonna have to take risks.
And what does it mean to take risks?
You might fail.
But if you do fail, doesn’t that mean you were going for something? You were growing, striving, stretching?
Maybe when you fail, you are on the brink of greatness!
Maybe we should see failure for what it truly is . . .
A small but important step in a very full journey to becoming the greatest possible version of ourselves.
If you’re afraid of failure, you won’t try.
Without the freedom to try, we run the risk of settling for a life of mediocrity, never achieving our dreams.
Therefore, failure is just a fancy way of saying “opportunity.”
It’s an opportunity to grow. An opportunity to learn something. An opportunity to adapt.
And for your body, failure is the best possible goal during your workout.
What is muscle failure?
Well, according to Ken Hutchins, the revolutionary mind that developed slow training, muscle failure is “a level of fatigue that renders the musculature momentarily dysfunctional” and is the ultimate goal of exercise.
The harder your muscles work, the stronger they will become. When your muscles encounter failure, they come back super strong and in order to continually challenge them, you must continually increase your resistance.
Most people never work to muscle failure during their workouts because it’s painful. They set the weights down too soon. Before their muscles are challenged to adapt.
We grow when we are challenged. We grow outside of our comfort zone. We grow when we encounter, and eventually overcome, resistance.
I see it all the time.
People come into The Strength Shoppe for Slow Training because they want to become physically stronger.
And sure, they build muscle and bone tissue they can maintain over a lifetime.
But they get so much more.
Every week during their 20 minute workout, our clients reach muscle failure on every exercise.
Physically, their bodies become stronger. Emotionally, they redefine their relationship to failure.
When you understand (inside your body) that resistance won’t kill you but actually makes you stronger, you learn to see the opportunity in the struggles you encounter.
You learn that in order to grow, physically or as a person, you must be a little uncomfortable. You must constantly be meeting and using that resistance to become stronger and reach your new level.
You have the inner strength to turn any obstacle into an opportunity. And you start to crave that next challenge that will help you reach a new level in your development. Because you know how to use the resistance you encounter to your advantage, to reach your goals.
In and out of the gym.
Start your journey to inner and outer strength today.
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