WOD

“Failure is an option?”

Failure is often given a bad name, but when it comes to training, failure can be a good thing. I should clear up what I am saying. Your training shouldn’t be a failure, but you should push to failure every once and awhile. 

Now the hard parts are how to fail safely, and how often. I often use this example when explaining how to progress to new clients. In this example we will use push ups. Let’s say your comfort zone is doing sets of 10. You can do multiple sets of 10 and they all feel pretty good. This is your comfort zone. This is where you often go, but the problem is, the more you spend in that zone, you are not stepping outside your comfort zone. So you are not creating the stimulus for adaptation. Every once in a while you need to be doing something like sets of 15, and failing on the final reps, absolutely grinding out those last couple push ups. You need to reach that point of stressing your system out. 

Now, you want to choose exercises that are safe to fail at. I wouldn’t suggest using highly complex movements where the form would break down and could lead to injury, or worse, something where you could injure yourself with the weights overhead. This is where activities involving the sled and the sandbag are much safer to fail. There is no real risk of muscle tearing as there is not eccentric portion to the exercise. They are very low skill. When you fail, you pretty much quit, so it’s obvious when you push to that point. 

Now failure is good, but not all the time. If you ran into every class attacking each workout like your life depended on it, people would think you have gone crazy, and you will eventually burn out or injure yourself. It’s about learning to listen to your body. The day you come in and the body feels good and you feel driven and motivated to push hard. Do it that day. 

Let the wheels fall off every once and awhile, get outside your comfort zone. The bad news is that the more time you are outside your comfort zone, the bigger that comfort zone gets. It’s called adaptation, so you end up having to push harder. 

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Just a reminder but you can sit down for a FREE goal setting session with me to help go over a plan to help you reach your goals. If you don’t have any goals, we can also work on that to help give you some motivation and better directions. http://goals.bytown.fit