Failure

It's not a word we like to connect ourselves with.  How did you feel if you received an "F" on an assignment in school?  Deflated. Frustrated. Demoralized. Not exactly ready to face the world with confidence, that's for sure! One of my clients came in this week and as she reluctantly handed me her food and exercise log, she exclaimed, "I get a big ol' F for the week."  She had taken her son on a college visitation out of town and hadn't completed any of the assignments I had given her.  So, on the one hand, she was right. If we looked only at that week, she did fail.  But wait. Even though my studio is called The Conditioning Classroom, it's not a traditional school and we actually encourage failure!  Well, a certain kind of failure, anyway.  In resistance training, we have a term called "momentary muscle failure."  MMF.  It's what happens when you can't possibly do another bicep curl . . . or shoulder press . . . or squat.  Your muscles "fail" because they have exhausted the energy available to them.  But notice the first word in MMF is "momentary."  It's not actually failure - or at least not what we assign to the word failure.  We tend to think of failure as final.  In MMF, it's momentary, because your body responds and creates the energy necessary to do another set.  But more importantly, MMF sends a very clear signal to your body that it needs to change and create more muscle mass so that "failure" doesn't happen so fast the next time you challenge it. It makes itself better because of failure. We encourage our clients to experience MMF so their bodies respond by increasing lean muscle mass and thereby igniting their metabolism. Ladies, take note:  This is why you will never significantly change your figure for the better using your plastic coated, pink 3# dumbbells! You need to actually challenge your muscles enough to experience failure . . . the MMF kind.
But back to my client and her "F" for the week.  After a very satisfying and exhausting workout, I explained the concept of MMF to her. And I told her that yes, she deserved an "F" for the week, but in The Conditioning Classroom, it's not Final.  It's Momentary. And it will make her stronger. She now has a more focused approach to reach her goal of wearing something "form fitting" for her family Christmas picture. So the next time you experience failure in your job, or in your pursuit of health, remember that if the failure is Momentary, you will actually become stronger. Don't let failure be final. It's really only a stepping stone to your next success!