FAILURE IS ANABOLIC

   

Title is clickbaity, because I’m not going to discuss training to failure, but instead failING and why that is anabolic.

This dude got pretty jacked from it

 

Actually, let me discuss training to failure for a second here, because I can’t believe I need to do this.  Folks: if you racked the weights when the set was over, you did NOT train to failure.  What does it mean to fail?  Hint: it’s NOT succeeding.  If you completed the rep, you did NOT fail.  To train to failure means, you attempt a rep…and DON’T do it.  You fail in the middle of it.  You trained TO failure.  This is why when kids tell me they train to failure one every set, I have my doubts.  I always ask this question “So when you do squats, ever single set, you let the bar crash into the power pins, unload the bar, rack it, re-load the bar, and then do your next set?”  Suddenly we start clarifying things from there.

 

Alright, I’ve already digressed from my intro.  Failure is anabolic.  What do I mean?  Well perhaps I’m actually meaning to discuss the opposite: that success is NOT anabolic.  Which isn’t to say catabolic, because something NOT being one thing does not necessarily make it the opposite of that thing (much like how something that isn’t hot sauce isn’t necessarily cold sauce), but that always succeeding can often result in something of a “softening” process.  Not necessarily physically (although it can absolutely be that), but moreso losing one’s “sharpness” as it relates to the pursuit of physical transformation and improvement.  When we keep winning, we settle into complacency and satisfaction and, in turn, become uninteresting.

 

In the absence of a world threat, there is no incentive for abs...how very "Will to Power"

And with that I’m going to be completely honest: what sparked this blog was me thinking about just how much coolers “second best” characters always are.  Vegeta is a billion times more interesting and captivating that happy-go-lucky Goku, Clubber Lang was SO much more fascinating than Rocky, Kuwabara to Yuske, Sagara to Kenshin (man my anime side is showing), T-800 to T-1000, the Spartans to the Persians, etc etc.  I’ve ALWAYS cheered for the second best character and never really cared for the “clear winner”.  It’s why, despite my absolute love for all things strength, I can’t STAND “The Hulk” and am a die-hard Juggernaut fan instead.  When you’re at the top, where can you climb?  But when you look up and see that there is SOMETHING there, you know you can dig deeper, train harder, and do better.

 

And when we watch these “second best” characters, it’s exactly what we see: SO much more effort being put in compared to those at the top.  Goku trained at 100 times gravity, so Vegeta went with 400 times.  Sagara was always wrapped in bandages from pushing himself too hard.  Clubber Lang was training in a dungeon of a gym while Rocky was snapping photos.  THIS is what I mean when I say that failure is anabolic: when we fail to be the best, we do SO much more in order to pursue closing that gap compared to when we sit comfortably at the top.

Although sometimes those at the top DO set some high standards...

 

This is worth exploring because so many trainees are absolutely petrified of ever failing at anything in their pursuit of physical transformation, so much so that they won’t even TRY.  Irony of ironies: failing to fail it failing harder than succeeding at failing.  Woah.  When you refuse to put yourself out there and just hide in your little bubble of security, you never grow.  When you dedicate yourself to 6 months of intense training, spend your time, money, give up on hanging out with your friends, yummy foods, comfort, etc etc…and still lose?  Can you imagine the fire that lights under you?  Winning a competition after training hard for it honestly brings about a crushing degree of ennui, but losing?  You’re planning the next training cycle on the ride home, you already know the name of 3 nutritionists that are going to get you where you need to go, you clicked “buy it now” on a reverse hyper on your phone and will figure out the finances later, you have a chore of clearing out the frozen pizzas in your freezer to make room for the 40lbs of piedmontese beef coming your way: YOU, my friend, are anabolic.

 

And comically enough, this speaks a bit to the benefit of NOT being optimal: it gives you something to chase after.  Imagine the dissatisfaction that comes with doing EVERYTHING right…and still not being awesome.  The only conclusion to draw from there is that it is YOU that sucks (cue the genetics crying).  But if there is SOMETHING left off the table, there’s still another gear that can be hit, another level things can be taken to, another extreme.  You get to have your training montage and come up from the plucky underdog status.  And this isn’t an argument for the OBTAINMENT of optimal but the benefit of it being out of reach.  Like a dog chasing a car: what are you going to do when you GET optimal?  But just imagine the transformation you undergo as you try your damndest to ascend from second best to the top? 

You might even try some REAL silly ideas along the way

 

You could hope for no better gift than the gift of failure.  All the books (hah!  Who reads anymore anyway?), podcasts, videos, seminars, 1 on 1 consultations, etc etc, in the world won’t teach you as much as dedicating yourself for months to something only to have it blow up in your face will.  Nothing will make you grow faster, bigger and stronger than royally screwing up and not being able to rise to the top spot.  To always have it hovering over you, looming, taunting, THAT is what triggers anabolic, whole body, unstoppable growth. Avoiding failure is avoiding growth, denying that there is someone simply greater than you (by attributing it to genetics, drugs, money, luck, etc) is denying your growth potential.  Secure yourself squarely in second place and let the view of the lead dog compel you to work harder, push further, and become better.