I've Failed And The Lesson I'm Learning From It

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life...And that is why I succeed."- Michael Jordan

Failing is a powerful teacher that comes often in our lives. I've failed to do 100 Burpees in a row, I've failed to keep a program going for more than 6 weeks and most importantly, I've failed myself for believing that certain things whether from a fitness standpoint or personally would make me happier or fall in love with because others have told me to. One of the biggest things I've ever had to deal with in my life was letting others down because I didn't live up to the hype or the expectations. Most of the time, very few people give a shit what you do and the rest just don't care but want to spew how much of a failure you are. 

I've said it over and over again that when I talk about what I'm going to do or what my goals are and end up failing because I've talked about it just puts me in a dark state yet I've repeated it time and time again. Many get it, but many also just want to tear you a part for it because you're not what you're expected to be. I'm no fitness god or some perfect specimen, I'm just a guy, one of 7 1/2 billion on this planet who's had some success but plenty of failures like anybody else. Just a speck in the universe. If you don't like what I write or have an issue with what I say, than walk away. Don't read my stuff, no need to make asshole comments just so you can be noticed, the more you hassle somebody because you can't stand them, the more it says about you than the person writing. 

That's easier said than done because I've gotten caught up in the web of making snarky and negative comments towards people and have failed over and over to just walk away. I need to take my own advice on many things and learn to take things for what they are and pay attention more to who I really trust in this world. Very few in my life I trust and one of them isn't here anymore that I can talk to. I understand this article comes off as a pity party and I'm just begging for attention when the truth is; this is just me being human and sharing with you a side of me that is about as real as you can get until you've actually been around me and not just go by what I've written.

There is this fear people have of being open about their failures. I'm no exception but I also know who will tell me the truth, the real truth because they know me best. If you don't know me outside of the web, you have no reason to tell me the truth or have the faintest idea of what the truth is with me. So if you plan on making any comments good or bad, think twice about what you plan on saying.

Being happy in reality, is a mindset. I know this and it's a constant learning thing for me. Exercise and fitness makes me happy but very few methods I'm in love with. The type of love for exercise where I know regardless of how I do it, I never will have a movie star body or have heads turn from every other person walking down the street but I will bust my ass for the thing that I love and gives me joy. There's always going to be someone stronger, faster and far better looking than I'll ever be but that's ok. My expectations are from myself, not from somebody else and how I do things is not perfect, never will be and the way I train is what makes me happy. 

You'll never see me do the best looking pullup or the most awesome pushup, I don't have the patience to do 1000 or even 500 Squats anymore, I don't have a great looking set of Core Muscles but I know how strong they are, I move weird in certain animal exercises but that's what the universe gave me. I know what I can do and constantly learning what I'm capable of. What I can do has kept me strong and durable for the longest time, what I can do, helps others and what I can do, inspires a lot. I've also failed at doing things that weren't meant for me in the first place and tried to live up to others' ideas. 

I'm not meant to do someone else's program to the "T", I wasn't meant to live up to those who don't really matter and I'm damn sure I wasn't meant to be affiliated with a company that by all accounts, has a guy who thinks he's hot shit and acts like he's god's gift to fitness when he looks like Twiggy and can't properly set up a camera to get a good angle for exercises. If you feel the need to film yourself being in a dark ass room and nobody can see you but you want everyone to listen to you, you might want to just put out an audio. Anyway, the real lesson here is, failure is a part of life, the real success is how we break through it and keep fighting to get what makes us successful. 

Why I Don't Train To Failure

In the past, I have pushed myself in gym sessions and even during certain bodyweight training sessions to the point where I couldn't move anymore in a particular exercise so in other words trained to the brink of failure. I looked at that as a sign of knowing what it's like to have that warrior mentality and pushing through pain and giving it all I got. All it really got me was in fact pain, not sore muscles but actual pain and still feeling the effects of some of those sessions to this very day in places like my right shoulder, ankles & even my elbows.

Going to failure basically means you do so much until you can't move anymore in an exercise like the bench press, deadlift, push-ups, squats or whatever. You keep going until that last rep is so freaking tough, ever inch hurts and its the ultimate struggle. Many take this as a sign that it means you'll get stronger next time around. Don't get me wrong this is true to a degree but for overall development from my own experiences and being around others who've done it, it can actually weaken you because when you go that hard, you're not just stressing the muscles, you're also putting even more stress on the joints and ligaments and the chances of anything tearing are greater when you do go to failure workouts.

Going to failure depletes your energy both mentally and physically afterwards or even during on some occasions and when your energy is depleted, this can lead to a series of problems and can take you out for often times weeks for complete recovery. The type of training ought to be giving you or help conserve energy regardless of how strong you are. This mentality for going to failure is usually by hardcore fanatics either in sports or the gym or whatever it is they're training for. Me personally I can't afford to get injured or something worse because I do have a job, a house I take care of and need to pay for things to help stay afloat when its needed. When you're injured, you can't do the things you want to do, recovering from injuries can be unpredictable and if you have a job where if you're injured and can't do the tasks, you're not getting paid.

I don't train to failure because I need the energy to stay focused in what I need to do. I hate not being able to train and when you don't have the energy to play with your kids, can't squat without feeling some form of pain, not move with efficiency; it'll make you miserable. You need that energy from beginning to end so the very things that are important in your are possible to accomplish.

There is a fine line between a few aches but severe pain is a miserable thing to have. Training to failure breaks down the muscles way too much and the recovery time can take longer than you'd like it to be. I play with exercises every single day and have for nearly 12 years ranging from 5 min. to well over an hour and still have energy to do things with the people I care about. Be smart when you train and train to conserve energy whether you're a beginner or advanced do what's best for you and make the most of it without suffering the consequences of overtraining and putting your body at risk. The body can only take so much regardless of how you set your mind to. The idea is be as pain-free as possible and have strength during and after your playouts.

Playout, Don't Workout.

Growing From Within

          Our past is a beginning but it’s not the end. The experiences we face as children into adulthood is massive but the simple way to make it is; we are born, we begin to walk and talk at a certain age, we play, we go to school, graduate, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, grow old and die. Whatever happens in between all of those is only experienced by us. What a crock. We’re all different and these don’t happen for everyone. We learn from our past experiences to bring us what can make us successful in our future, not everybody makes that jump or knows how to take the opportunity. Don’t let your past define who you are, let your past be history and develop your future tomorrow while staying in the present because it’s a gift you're still here.

            Every one of us has a purpose in life. Some of us find what we want to do, others have a purpose of not working at all and even some feel there is no choice but to sacrifice your purpose in life for something else. We all have dreams as kids of what we want to do. We imagine making building, carving things with our bare hands, some of us wanted to be a sports star, others a cop or fireman. The majority never make that dream a reality because to them it’s just a phase and then we move on with life. I believe if you truly went after what you wanted to be that had a major impact and it gave you happiness, love, prosperity and a future that had you pay the bills and give your children a future, you would be one crazy son of a bitch to make it happen. Develop your sense of purpose by finding what drives you, makes sense to you and makes you happy.

            Going through triumphs and failures is a natural part of our existence, where there’s triumph in one area, there’s failure in another there’s no debating that. Some look at failure as a sign of weakness but in truth, failure is another lesson we learn to find what we can accomplish and overcome. Triumph is not always being a hero but something you wanted to overcome over a period of time where you achieve goals and make something of yourself and trampled over things you thought were impossible at one point. Failure is just another test where if you fall, you learn to pick yourself back up and come back stronger than ever. Strength comes from the heart and how you use your mind, it’s not always muscle or as Yoda would say “Not this crude matter” it’s about the strength you have to keep driving and making yourself a better person even in the mist of failure.

            Not everything comes from a DVD, CD, seminar, book, or a retreat for that matter. Everything comes from self-discovery, having influences that help keep that drive but it’s really what you find within yourself that makes all the difference. Sure something you watch or read or listen to can be an influence but you made that choice because some how you wanted to. How you live your life is your choice. Make that connection to discover what makes you who you are and don’t let anyone tell you different.

            Certain people in your life will want you to fail because they want you to suffer like they have. They will try to break you, tear you down and will say things like “you should do this instead”, “It’s a hobby, not a career”, “you can’t do that it’s impossible”, “I don’t think you’re cut out for this.” Don’t look at those things as a sign to doubt yourself, what do they know, they don’t have your ambitions or imagination or even the guts to challenge your goals, that’s your job. At the heart of your potential it all boils down to what you believe and what you want to happen. We all have great potential for great things, we’re not born with a college degree or just happen to be natural at something. We never start out great; it’s the effort we put in that will make us great.

            Learn to discover who you are from within. Never give up on yourself and find your true calling. I believe in you but don’t take m word for it, the only person you should believe in, is you. 

Fitness Russian Roulette

Ever heard of that ultimate and ruthless gamble? You have one bullet in a gun and you never know which part of the barrel it’s in. It’s a matter of life and death and you never know how long you’ll live until BANG!!! You’re dead.

 In the fitness world this type of gamble happens more often then you might think. You have that one chance to find the results you want, you keep trying this or that but in the end, that one bullet will come up on you and because of your stressful efforts you failed and bit that bullet. People gamble so much for their bodies that the odds of them succeeding are 100-1 in my opinion. Very rarely that bullet of failure falls out of that metaphorical gun and you just happen to accomplish a goal and you felt awesome about it.

 What about the game of Chicken? You know that gamble like in jousting where one guy lives and the other might not and one chickens out and turns the other way? Throughout the years this game has had cars to “toy with” and it doesn’t turn into a game anymore, again it becomes a matter of who might live or might die. This is where exercise and the person training can become very dangerous either physically or mentally. You’re scared that you’re not going to beat that exercise whether its weights or not and there is that piece of you that just gets so frustrated that instead of confronting it, you turn around to save your own ass.

 If you want to beat the game of chicken and Russian Roulette then the one thing you must develop to stop having that one bullet come up and hit you right through that thick skull of yours is to learn the love of enthusiasm. Learning this trait can bring you beyond the peak of turning dead end results into a consistent state of not only making your results possible but learning to keep them. It’s very important that you love and believe what you do and use your love for finding what works and keeping it a challenge.

 There are two sides to every coin like ying and yang. One cannot coexist without the other. In order to build a solid foundation of both positive and negative sides to the coin you keep flipping over and over, you have to watch how your enthusiasm takes hold. If you have trouble finding what works and don’t know if anything is going to work, that’s the negative side of the coin. Now if you’re successful and know what works for you how do you kill two birds with one stone? Simple really, learn to smile when things don’t always go your way but one way or another you will be successful.

 One of my key successes in having a solid foundation in a fitness program is to learn what you’re getting into without knowing what you’ll get out of it. What I mean by that is you learn certain exercises or many of them and you know which one’s work and which don’t so you challenge yourself to see what results you will get from them. Many people fill out the sets and reps schemes and work the same reps in the same set. You do this for strength and that for endurance. For me, I gamble my exercises. In almost every workout, I never know what numbers are going to come up and when they do sometimes I’ll keep them as they are or double even triple them but I can always change course at the blink of an eye and make it an adventure instead of it being generic and dull. That’s what you want to make your exercise program, an adventure. You never know what’s going to happen but you damn sure want to find out. It’s like walking into the jungle, you never know what’s in it but you’re going to have the ride of your life whether you like it or not.

 There’s also another metaphorical gun you should avoid that has not just one bullet but beyond the loaded rounds and that’s the verbal gun. The majority of people will tell you that you can’t achieve something great and you won’t make something happen because you’re no good. This type of Russian Roulette is far more dangerous then being scared of being a failure. To avoid that stress and anxiety picture all those people that tell you that you can’t be successful. Picture them as if they were bullets in a loaded gun and if you even attempt one shot, most likely it will hit you hard. What you do is in your mind is think of taking that gun out into the ocean where no one will find it. Take it as far out as you can where no one can hear them or see them. Take out all the bullets and throw that bitch in the ocean and let it sleep with the fishes. You are a wonderful person who should succeed and if you want it bad enough you’ll go get it and not let one negative person stand in your way. Don’t pull the trigger.