Fighting Fear with Failure

The Only Way Beyond is Through

Much can be learned from a man who collapses due to exhaustion.

Midway through my set of pullups, I stopped to check on him after he dropped a squat on the safety rack in front of me. He was strong, 6’3, 235 by my best guess, and most of that was muscle. He’d failed a squat of ~200lbs on what I could only guess was his 30th rep (or more). Exhausted, he told me “I had to get to failure.”

“Yeah, that was impressive! What was that, 30 reps?”

“Honestly, I have no clue.”

“What a way to start off leg day.”

“Oh, it’s not even my leg day…”

He then told me a friend of his had challenged him to go to failure more often in the gym. He was supposed to start yesterday, but he backed out at the very end of his set. The goal was to squat until you can’t. Not until you THINK you can’t, but until the bar overcomes you, and you drop it on the safety racks below. The day before, he’d racked the bar after many reps instead of continuing to try.

“It bothered me so much that I lost sleep. It was all I could think about before bed. So I told myself, ‘I'm going back tomorrow, and I’m finishing it.’”

And he did.

In doing so, he inspired me to try the same.

Squat is a lift I’ve become comfortable with, and I trusted my form and practice enough to try. The next day, on my leg day, I built up to a heavy set of 3 to prime my body for full muscle recruitment. The plan was 20, then 20, then as many as possible.

The first set of 20 was easy. After cutting the weight almost in half from my final warmup set, my nervous system was overprepared to lift lighter weight. The second set of 20, not as much. I started to feel nauseous. My legs were tight, my back was tight, I was out of breath, and my mind was focused on one thing: how much my body was struggling. My focus was no longer on the work, but on the work’s effect on me. Despite my complaints, the bar would not move itself. I found inspiration in the work that man had done. So, ignoring my condition, I went.

I understand how easy it is to lose count in a set where you plan to fail. I don’t think I began counting in the first place. Was it 10? 30? I have no way to know. But as I kept going, the desire to stop only grew. Until that failed rep, until the bar hit the safeties, I wanted to stop.

As my vision stared to fade, I continued pushing until the weight overcame me, and clattered off my back and onto the safeties. It took me several minutes to catch my breath, but the moment I was done, my desire to quit turned immediately into satisfaction. I’d made it through. I had successfully failed.

Our minds tend to exaggerate risks. In a world more devoid of risk than at any point in human history, we invent new fears. Fear is a tool - a guide that cautions us and protected our ancestors from very real and present dangers. But in the relative safety net cast around many of us in developed countries, fear can quickly turn into irrationality. We fear failure. We fear pain. We fear setbacks. And often, our fear is far disproportionate to the true consequence of failure itself. The solution to this is simple, but far from easy.

The only way to defeat fear is to face it. The only path beyond is through. In a world which romanticizes comfortability, this can be all too easy to forget. Being comfortable for too long reduces our tolerance for pain. This is not to say we should always be in pain, but we should not always be in comfort either.

So ask yourself: What are you afraid of, and how will you face it?

Devise a plan, develop a strategy, then follow the steps. If your fears are keeping you from growing into a better version of yourself, prepare for battle, and face them. Once you’re on the other side, your capabilities will surprise you. Our greatest defeats are often psychological. Therefore, train the mind, and the rest will follow.