Failure
Browse through Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, or any other social media site. What do you see? Success. Lot's of success. You see ripped people, fit people, wealthy people, lucky people. What you don't see are the failures those people have had. It could be failures in the gym, failures in career, failures in anything.
Social media and the Internet in general skew towards success because people don't advertise their failures.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
The key to failures is to not repeat them over and over again. You see those successes so much on the Internet from those who failed before and learned from their failures. When we fail, we much assess why we failed, what we could have done differently, and then implement those changes. Don't do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.
For the prior three Sundays, I have failed miserably in the gym. The prior two Sundays were deadlift days, and I barely moved the bar at weights I should be able to do. The most current Sunday I barely worked out at all from feeling sick to my stomach.
I failed every Sunday. There is a common thread here. It's not that I am unable to do the lifts, it is that on this one day every week I simply can't do the lifts on that day. So I must determine how I came to this, and how to fix it. To do this, we'll turn to an old friend of mine known as DMAIC (pron. D' MA' IK). This is a business process for finding answers, but we really all do it by nature. We'll simply step through the steps to find out what's going on.
Define
Every Sunday I am unable to complete my workout properly and I am unable to lift the weights I expect to lift.
Measure
For the prior three Sundays I have failed to complete my proper workout.
So we've completed the first two steps. Next up, we begin to look at why this is occurring. The way we do this is to look at data so our analysis isn't subjective. Like any good nerd, even a gym addicted one, I have lots of data between Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, Waterlogged, Strava, and other apps.
Analyze
The following things are different on Sundays than in other days of the week:
- Saturdays I never drink my required water allotment.
- Saturdays I frequently forget to take my multi-vitamins and supplements.
- Saturdays my cardio is at 8 AM instead of 6 AM as normal.
- Saturday mornings I sleep in later than normal.
- Sunday mornings I sleep in later than normal.
- Meals on weekend are unplanned and irregular.
- Breakfast is eaten at least 3 hours later than normal on weekends.
- I don't hit my calorie requirements on weekends.
- My bedtime is not consistent on Friday & Saturday nights.
We've now identified many of the 'whys' of my performance issue. They seem to come from a common thread, which is consistency. Specifically, that I am not as consistent on the weekends as I am during the week. A later bedtime results in later waking time, which affects the normal rhythms of my body. A regular bedtime is shown to be extremely healthy, and should probably be maintained even during the weekends.
Proper nutrition planning is critical to a healthy body. Eating 'on the fly' results in erratic behavior and may cause over or under eating or poor macronutrient consumption. Consistent supplementation will aid the body in knowing when to expect certain multi-vitamins and supplements to help improve performance.
So we've identified where I am screwing up, so let's put together the plan to change it.
Improve
The following should be implemented next weekend as an effort to improve performance of Sunday lifts.
- Meal plans will be completed by Friday to include complete planning of weekend meals.
- Bedtimes will be observed as normal; if I am "in bed" (usually reading) by 9:15 PM, then I should be in the bed Friday & Saturday nights at the same time to optimize performance.
- Weekend hydration and supplementation will be observed the same as during the week.
So what we find from this plan is that while there were many "whys" of my performance gap, I only need to really implement three changes. By doing weekend meal planning, this will eliminate over and under eating, as well as poor macronutrients. By observing bedtime, I will get to sleep on time and wake up at normal hours and realign by body to their nature circadian rhythm. By observing my hydration and supplementation plan, I will ensure I am not dehydrated during my Sunday workout session, and will ensure that all my supplements are taken on time to be handled by my body.
There are things we can't control. We must accept those things we can not control, and only work to improve those things with which we can impact. For example, cardio is done at 8 AM on Saturdays instead of 6 AM as normal; this is simply what time cardio class occurs, and I can not control that. As a result, I will remove that as a candidate of the improvement plan.
The final stage of DMAIC is Control. This will come into play once the Improve plan has been successfully implemented. If the Improve plan fails, I will restart the process. Once I am successful, I will move to Control and determine the best way to stay consistent on the changes I am implementing.
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”
This exercise may seem very mechanical to move through. However, as individuals we are really doing this every time we assess our failures. Once we've failed, we correct and we succeed. Correction can be as simple as changing a motion during your second set, or as complex as making changes to your life as a whole.
To put it another way, about 8 months ago I made the decision I was failing at life. Physically & emotionally, I was a wreck. I determined changes I could begin implementing, and began to cease failing. I've improved my physical state, and continue to control that by further improving my body composition, and in turn my emotional state by changing my physical state.
Failure is one of the biggest drivers in our lives, as it dictates to us what we've done wrong so we can make it right again. People will always notice your failures more than your successes. This is why people post more success than failure. Maybe if we share failure a little more, those around us would feel a little less vulnerable and know we all fail at some level, it's just how we improve that determines how we are as individuals.
“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all .”
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