There’s a old skiing expression that goes “If you don’t fall down at least once, you need a bigger mountain” (or words to that affect).
The point, of course, is that a lack of ‘failure’ shows you aren’t challenging yourself.
Tis the same with your workouts.
If you’re not failing to complete an exercise, you need a harder one.
If you’re supposed to be doing 30 seconds of something and you stop when you could have done 40 seconds, you’re missing out on the best bit – the 10 seconds that will really make the magic happen.
If you stop at, say, 10 reps, when you could’ve done 15, then you might as well have staid in bed (an exaggeration of course, but not much).
If you do something with a 4kilo dumbbell when you could’ve used a 5 (or maybe an 8 or 10), you won’t be getting much from it.
You need to fail.
Failure is good in this context.
Failure shows you are challenging yourself.
And only with failure comes progress.
We’d much rather you had to stop a few seconds or reps shorts because you couldn’t do anymore then stopping when you could.
So, next time you are exercising, ask yourself if you could have done any more.
Sounds mental, but imagine someone with a gun to your (or even a loved one’s) head.
Telling you to do more or a harder version, or they’ll pull the trigger.
If you genuinely couldn’t, then that’s cool.
But if you could, then make sure you do next time.
Remember – you have to fail to succeed.
Much love,
Jon ‘Fails daily’ Hall and Matt ‘Nearly back to failing daily’ Nicholson
