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Improved Failure

                               Improved Failure

Im sure the term "Improved Failure" may sound weird to some people. It is a term I have been using a lot lately with some of my clients. Not only for training reasons but also for life lessons. Many of us tell people to "Fail Forward" and that is exactly what Improved Failure is all about. I recently spoke to a client about it. I think this story is the best way to describe the term. 


I have a client with a goal of being able to do 6 pull ups unassisted. On day one i tested her ability to do pull ups with a superband. She was unable to even hold her body steady on the bar. She was rocking back and forth and could not pull herself up. I have been working with her for a week and retested her ability to do a pull up with the superband. She was still not able to do one pull up. In her eyes she was still a failure, however she was able to hold her body steady. I explained to her that even tho she still failed, she had improved on her failure. Meaning she got better and not being able to do what she wanted to do. We trained a few more times and I retested again. This time she was able to do 4 pull ups with the superband. She was soooooo happy. It was great to see how excited she got. She still is not even close to her goal of doing 6 unassisted pull ups but she is continuing to improve on her failure and that is what it is all about. 


Think about how many of us can learn a lot from this story. How many times have you really tried to get what you want? Most of us try once or twice and then give up on it. If my client had given up on her second try, she would have never known what it felt like to get closer to her goal. Every time she trains, she improves on her failure. We all need to learn to keep pushing forward and keep getting better at failing. We put so much pressure on ourself to never fail, but failure is the only way we get better.  We need to begin to see the improvement in each failure.  Success will come, just keep failing and you will see. 

-FLO

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