“Practice…ugh, it’s so boring,
it’s the same thing over and over.”
Practicing at times can be the most painful thing you will ever have to
do. Repetition after repetition, no
matter the task, tests you both physically and mentally. It needs to push you to your outer limits of your
current capabilities. Without that push
to the edge you have no chance to get better.
Without that desire to walk up to that edge and jump off you’ll never
make it beyond where you are right now.
People tend to misunderstand practicing as a necessary evil that if done
long enough you will improve. However it
is not that easy. It takes countless
repetitions in a quest for perfection.
It takes a person who is willing to be able to leave their ego on the
sideline, in the locker room and be willing to be critiqued on their form,
technique, and ability, whatever it may be.
Coach me coach.
I’m not just talking about practicing
for sport here. Everyone in life has
practiced something. Cooking, welding,
taping ankles, playing the guitar, painting, it doesn’t matter. The one commonality between all successful
people is failure. And with the failure
came a renewed vigor to get back to practicing their craft. To roll the sleeves back up, take a look at
what went wrong, have someone tell them what went wrong, where they were
lacking, why it was a miss, and get back at practicing to get better. It’s a frustrating road, an aggravating road
of loneliness at times. A journey
through self-doubt. A road littered with
failure stacked upon failure. But those
are the moments that make you, those are the moments that harden you, that
steel your reserve. Those are the
moments that should exhilarate you because now the journey starts all over
again, except this time, this time you have the upper hand, you learned, you
grew, your wise now. Game on.
Practicing exposes your
weakness’ and forces you to take that hard look deep inside of you to measure
your level of commitment and desire to succeed.
Rep after rep, day after day. If
you’re willing to work hard, make the necessary sacrifices, you can be good,
hell great even at your thing.
Practicing can be the most powerful tool you have at your disposal. But it only works if you use it. Are you going to fail? Yes, I have hundreds of times, shit probably
thousands of times. Failure is the point
of all this, how else do you grow? How
else do you know what your worth?
This past weekend I competed in
my first Weightlifting competition. I
had three goals going into Saturday. 1.
Have fun 2. Learn 3. At minimum make 5 of my 6 lifts. Those of you that might not know the format, the
competition has two total lifts, you start with the Snatch, you get 3 attempts
to hit as heavy a weight as you’d like, then you have another 3 attempts with
the Clean & Jerk. There is a large
amount of strategy that can go into picking your opening weight and how to go
up from there and all of the little nuances that go into competing in such an
event. This being my first competition I
had a plan of what I wanted to do, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched
in the face.”
The time came, my name was
announced and it was my turn to step out onto center stage. As I approached the bar for my first Snatch
attempt, I felt just as amped up as I’ve ever felt in my life. I felt great, I felt strong, I felt a
youthful vigor and excitement to go crush that barbell. It brought me back to the opening kickoff of
every college football game I ever played in. The weight I chose was a weight I knew I could
hit. Maybe I was over confident or maybe
I was over excited, adrenaline is a hell of a drug, whatever it may have been I
missed my first Snatch behind me. I can
count on one hand the amount of lifts I’ve ever missed behind me. I had a few minutes to think over what had just
happened and I actually was completely relaxed within moments. It took me by surprise how I became almost
zen like as I sat there waiting for my next attempt. I completed the hardest part of the day for
me. Stepping out into the spot light,
all eyes on me, in a singlet, and failed.
The rest of the day was going to be easy, letting my practice, my hours
on, under and over the barbell take control and just ride that wave.
And it was one hell of a
ride. I finished the day 5 of 6 on my
lifts, hit my current personal best on the C&J, with ease, and left that
day flying. Could I have gone
heavier? Yeah, looking back I believe I
could’ve. But that’s what my next
competition is for. I took a chance, I
took a shot at something I’d never done before and fell in love with it. It’s one thing to work on Snatches and C&J’s
in the comfort of your gym or garage, it’s a whole new world rolling into your
first competition, the spot light, the singlet.
I leave you all with this, go
chase failure. I think that’s the whole
point, because without failure we don’t make any progress. The more you fail the better you get at your
thing, then failure won’t come as often, and that’s when you need to push for
it. Try something new, put your neck on
the line and take a chance. Go
fail and take this life further than
you ever imagined.
“Practice is the best of all instructors.” - Syrus
G
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