Being Kind To Yourself And Embracing Failure

As it is mental health awareness week this week, I wanted to open up about failure. Not only when it comes to failure during training itself, but also when it comes to failure on missing out on sessions, so-called failure when it comes to dieting, failure during personal projects or failure to achieve something you were striving for.

Failure is important to help us grow and for us to learn to appreciate the journey. Failure is not only important for learning, but to help us refine our work and training practices, as well as discovering our limitations; which can help us to become more mentally, and physically resilient. 

I posted, only a couple of days ago, a workout on my Instagram, that I was really looking forward to filming and making a good go of it. However, I wasn’t feeling up to the challenge and I really struggled with camera angles, which was very frustrating given my past experience as a self employed filmmaker. But I made it anyway, and I realised this week was a perfect time to post it, and discuss it. So without that time spent “failing” I wouldn’t have had anything to post. Over my years of learning ups and downs, I’ve come to realise done is better than perfect. With hindsight, we can look back on the things we’ve done and learn from them, and use those end products to move on to bigger and better things.

However, with learning and evolving comes challenges. When something is worth doing, it never comes easily. But that extra investment and sacrifice always make that pay off so much more rewarding, and the pitfalls harder to come back from. I touched on this briefly in my previous article, about protein in our diet (see here) and how food psychology comes in to play. This a great example of managing those fine margins. With food psychology being what it is, dropping off a diet for one day, or not achieving your goals within a time frame can be a brutal assault emotionally and mentally, or it can make you feel like some sort of failure, which is simply not the case.

One day, does not a year make is a mantra that I feel is very appropriate in those types of situations. Everyone slips, it’s part of being human – it’s how we pick ourselves up and the context of that rise, that is the most important thing. Finding your personal balance, getting to truly know yourself and having forgiveness and compassion toward yourself are actually something we are all looking to achieve and it’s constant learning that never truly ends.

In terms of training, and how we can apply this knowledge to training, a good scientific foundation and healthy training practices, need at least a few weeks, if not months (certainly for aesthetic results) of work to be able to fully determine if they are successful or not. Starting a programme can be hard at first, but finding your routine, and building your strength will slowly make that routine easier. Also that routine will become more habitual, a regular fixture in your life. However, slipping on one day does not require self-flagellation as a response. It, again, needs compassion and an understanding of one’s own self to get back on the horse. Simply by minor adjustments, slight regressions or adjustments in any other facets of a programme (be it tempo, rest, rep range, etc) can be the way to go, or simply taking more rest and recovery time to go again for the next session can prepare you mentally and physically for the next stages. In terms of remedies of technique, you can always film yourself if you’re struggling. It’s a strange practice to start with, but once you get used to it, it becomes an invaluable tool for reflection and adjustment. Rinse, revise, repeat and learn.

If you are doing, or starting, a programme you want to make the most out of, you may be training to failure; i.e. the maximum amount of reps possible during a set with no RIR (reps in reserve). This can be very effective, however can lead to increased risk of not only fatigue, but also injury without proper due diligence. You could try using cluster sets in your program to make a slight change but keep the same amount of reps; here’s an example;

Let’s say I’m doing 4 sets of 12 push ups and 12 is my max rep range so I’m taking a 1 minute rest between sets. Using cluster sets I could break this down into 12 sets of 4 reps with micro rest breaks in between (say 10-15 seconds for the sake of argument). Not only does this reduce fatigue and is more time efficient, but you can also keep your form strong and stable and psychologically the barrier is much easier to manage AND you actually work for longer. Programming is an amazing thing to be able to get your head around, particularly when you find something that really works for you. Then you can scale that up or down as you wish, as you become more versed and practiced, you can add in some more complicated exercises for your programming if you like, or just use progressive overload to and/or decrease weight to keep it nice and simple. The options are endless. If you want some help with programming or want to get started on a program, please get in touch and I’m happy to help.

When applying any training program “to failure” just beware of fatigue and injury risks. If you feel on the verge of pushing yourself too far, always err on the side of caution and take a step back. It’s no reflection on you to do so. The downsides just aren’t worth it.

In summary of using failure to help benefit you, don’t let it get you down (easier said than done, I know) but be kind to yourself. Enjoy the process of achieving those things you want to, as it makes it all the sweeter at the end of that journey. Chat with friends, family, learn all you can, shadow who you can, use any resources you can to help you. So often things will open up just from a brief conversation. Make the most of any contact and opportunities to learn! Source learning and materials from things outside of your sphere for unique thinking and perspectives. And most of all be kind to yourself, and treat failure as you would a friend. Remember the risks training to failure can bring, try to switch up your program to make it more efficient and use different training methodologies to do so. Just remember some things need more time to test than others. And that there’s always more time, so don’t push yourself quite as far, to be able to push yourself further tomorrow.

Let’s all use this mental health week to remember to be kind, especially with what’s been going on this year, to ourselves and each other!

I hope this article helped you raise your game!