It’s All In Your Head
It’s Monday morning, around 7:30. I am in the weight room of the Athletic Complex, sitting at the leg press machine. I glance down at the pad of paper on which I record my progress, and see the number 16. “Okay,” I think to myself. “I did 16 reps on Friday, so today, I should be able to do 17.” And I begin. As usual, the first several reps are easy, but it doesn’t take long… 11… 12… 13… “This is starting to hurt, but I can’t give up yet!” 14… 15… 16… 17! “Whew! I made it!” That’s when I look at my notepad to jot the number, and am shocked by a realization. I didn’t do 16 leg presses on Friday (I must have been looking at a different exercise); I did only 12.
My exercise program, inspired by the Colorado Experiment, consists of several different exercises, one set each, completed to failure (i.e. when I physically cannot do any more repetitions). After hitting 20 reps, I increase the weight. Under this program, an increase of five reps between sessions is pretty significant.
But I didn’t think I was going far until the set was done. I was only trying for a small goal… and immediately quit as soon as I’d met it. I don’t know for sure that I could have done any more reps, but I almost didn’t even try after #17. I wonder how much more effort I truly could have put into my workout this morning.
Society teaches us to set goals and strive to meet them. There’s nothing wrong with that, inherently; but what happens after we meet our goals? Sometimes we’re tempted to stop there, or “take a break” even if we decide to set a higher goal and press on. Or sometimes we fail to meet our goals, and immediately conclude that they were too lofty. I, however, advocate a different approach: Failure? What’s that? 
It just seems like yet another excuse for apathy.
Does my exercise anecdote sound familiar? You can probably think of a situation in your own life that parallels it. The moral of the story is the same: Failure is all in your head.
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