It's important to celebrate your successes. But remember that they are rooted in your failures.
Failure As a Training Partner
There are some assumptions about training and life that I had, which you might carry as well. I assumed training would improve steadily and, for me, it did the first year I began lifting weights. I believed that life rewarded effort and that experience equaled wisdom. I soon learned that progress is uneven; setbacks are inevitable; and some lessons arrive only through loss. I began to understand that failure wasn’t an interruption to my training-it became one of my most consistent teachers.
Early Training Wins/Early Blind Spots
I mentioned in my last blog that I gained 20 pounds of lean body mass during my first year of training. This led to confidence gained and an identity formed around strength. But this same success also masked imbalances, leading to overconfidence and mistaking appearance for capability. What felt like mastery was actually the beginning of misunderstanding.
When the Body Pushes Back
My first training injury was to my lower back. I was in my 30s, strength training regularly, and running a community fitness center. One summer day, I was home doing yard work. As I swung a pickaxe over my head and into a tree stump, I fell to my knees in pain. I was later diagnosed with 2 herniated discs. I had dealt with back pain since being a teen and had added to my woes with poor squatting form as I tried to lift more weight. I endured a year of sciatic pain, which resulted in both size and strength loss in my left leg. This was my first lesson in payback for denying what my body was telling me.
Instead of listening to what my body was telling me, I had tried to work through the pain.
I’d like to tell you that I began to train smarter, but that wouldn’t be true. I continued to push through my shoulder pain when pressing. In my early 50s I continued to perform Olympic Hang Cleans with my college athletes when they returned to the prep school where they had first trained with me. I ended up with excruciating neck pain and an appointment with a neurosurgeon. When I demonstrated the Hang Clean to him in his office, he asked me why anyone my age would do that exercise. The wiseass in me wanted to say, “because I can.” But I realized that if that were true, I wouldn’t be in his office with this problem. My pride was the answer and as the Bible teaches, “Pride goes before the fall.”
I was beginning to understand that the body keeps score, and that ignoring feedback doesn’t make it disappear-it compounds it.
Failure Beyond the Gym
By 30, my marriage had ended, I was sharing custody of my daughter, teaching PE, and coaching high school basketball. The self-doubt I’d felt as a teenager now followed me into fatherhood, teaching, and coaching. Despite those doubts, I threw myself into those roles. I was taking care of business, but limited my relationships to my work and training environments. I began to question whether a single man and his daughter made up a “real family.” My personal expectations for love, family, and work had all taken a hit.
A familiar theme emerged. I assumed that I was in control, but outcomes proved otherwise. I eventually learned that physical training failures prepared me, however imperfectly, for life failures.
In my next blog, I’ll explore those lessons of failure and how they led to faith.