You probably wouldn’t be reading this tip had I never heard of Mark Twight. Why? Because TNT and, by extension, these weekly tips might not exist without my having been exposed to his training ideas and other writings.
If you haven’t heard of him—I’d be surprised if you had—he’s a former professional rock climber who’s trained a variety of U.S. military personnel as well as some famous actors & actresses who starred in superhero movies (e.g. 300, Man of Steel, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Justice League).
Some of the workouts and training programs that he and his clients completed and which he posted online are where I first discovered kettlebells in late 2006. Although I don’t remember any specific mention of kettlebells in his other writings, some of them still contributed to the inspiration to train for and attend my first instructor certification. And at the risk of oversimplifying the 18 years prior to today, well, here we are.
While, to my awareness, most of those older writings don’t exist on the Internet anymore, I will always remember a specific line from one of them: “Opening oneself up to the real risk of failure beats flecks of gold from the dross that comprises modern man’s existence.”
With the risk of failure comes meaning
When I first read Twight’s statement I had to look up the definition of dross. To save you some effort if the same applies to you:
dross (noun): (1) the scum or unwanted material that forms on the surface of molten metal; (2) waste or foreign matter; (3) something that is base (lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit), trivial, or inferior
Now perhaps dross is a bit overdramatic or presumptive when describing what “comprises modern man’s existence”. Still, the statement is a decent metaphor for the idea that taking on challenges with a non-zero probability of failure is far better than our natural tendencies to play it safe. By “far better”, I mean more educational, exciting, fun, interesting, memorable, and meaningful.
Of course, failure is uncomfortable. Which is why we generally try to avoid experiencing it, typically by using one of three unhelpful strategies.
Unhelpful failure-avoidance strategies
The first is by simply avoiding situations in which we’ve previously failed or expect to fail. That’s fairly self-explanatory not only in terms of “not failing” but also in terms of “not growing”.
The second is by using soft language concerning our effort. “I was just playing” and “I’ll give it a try” are the most common in my observational (and personal) experiences. Using these phrases when we’re actually playing is totally fine (although unnecessary and therefore rare), and play is itself an important part of learning and growing.
But using them in relation to the effort we put into truly important-to-us endeavors is a trap. It sets us up for failure by relieving us of the need to give our best (so we often don’t) while convincing us that we didn’t really fail (thereby avoiding discomfort) even when we do. After all, it can’t really be failure if we didn’t really give our best, right?!?
The third way we try to avoid failure is by setting low targets/goals. That reduces the probability of failure to a negligible amount and can boost confidence by building a string of successes, all of which are helpful and motivating when we’re beginners. But never moving beyond this strategy as we develop makes continued progress extremely slow, which can have a negative impact on motivation and, obviously, long-term growth.
Alternatively, setting audacious goals means that we’re probably going to fail at some point, which will be uncomfortable. But that discomfort can serve as significant motivation to learn, grow, and succeed at another point afterward. For some confirmation by a couple other names you might recognize, see this short video (Jordan) and this one (Jobs).
Putting it into practice
I bring up all of this in order to tie back to your fitness goals.
Last week I offered Michael Gelb’s Da Vinci-inspired 100 Questions exercise to help cultivate your creativity en route to developing and committing to fitness goals that matter to you.
This week I encourage you to do last week’s exercise if you haven’t yet, review your current fitness goals, and, if appropriate, set a new one that’s important to you but also a little scary. (It’s probably too easy and has too little potential for failure if you’re not at least a little scared of it.)
Then go “all in” in an effort to achieve it. You might fail in the short term, or you might succeed. But whatever the outcome, the value you’ll gain from the experience will be worth it’s weight in gold.