Thoughts on failure and What I learned from my Powerlifting Meet

Our society does a great job of keeping us in constant fear of failure. "Failure is bad. Failure should be avoided at all costs. Failure is proof that you're not progressing." We have gone so far to avoid failure that there are little leagues that don't even keep score because they don't want the losing team to know that they failed at beating the other team. Rarely does failure ever get the credit it deserves.

Sure, failure is a tough pill to swallow and I would take success over failure every time. But, failure can also teach you a lot. Failure can open your eyes to something that you never saw while everything was going smoothly. Failure can teach you what to do next time as well as what not to do next time. It can be extremely frustrating but it is absolutely necessary for growth. Don't be afraid to fall back one step if it means taking two steps forward. I am not encouraging you to accept failure but I am saying that failing is natural and I'm willing to bet that every successful person has failed at least a few times in their journey. How you respond to failure is what makes the difference between a weak man and a strong man.

Two weeks ago I competed in my first Powerlifting competition. For those of you that don't know how a Powerlifting competition works, I'll briefly explain. In short, you test your 1 rep max in the Squat, Bench press, and the Deadlift. You get 3 attempts at each lift. That is 9 total attempts. Usually, a lifter will gradually increase the amount of weight on each attempt. For example, 1st squat attempt of 350 lbs., 2nd squat attempt of 375 lbs., and 3rd squat attempt of 400 lbs. Well, I failed all of my final attempts in the Squat, Bench press, and Deadlift. At the moment the competition was over I was very upset. I thought to myself, "I came all this way only to fail in front of all these people. I trained so hard only to step onto this platform and show no improvement. I thought I was doing everything right." It took me a few days to settle down and really reflect on my competition results. Rather than blaming my poor performance on the judges, my lack of experience in competitions, my circumstances, blah blah blah, I decided to sit down and evaluate my training so that next time I compete I can do better than last time. The following is what I noticed I was doing wrong in my training and what I am going to do to improve.

Squat
My squats have always been known for their depth. The deeper, the better. Right? Maybe not (I cannot believe I just said that) I am, by no means, going to start half squatting or even squatting to parallel. Squatting past parallel is the only way to properly engage ALL of the musculature in your legs and allow your hips to do the work, not your knees. Squatting to depth is also a perfect gauge for weaknesses in your body. Does your chest collapse at the bottom? Strengthen your upper back. Can you not squat to depth without losing balance? Work on your flexibility and mobility. Anyway, back to my squat. I noticed that during my final attempt in the squat I quickly descended and really tried to hit that bounce out of the bottom hard. I quickly shot out of the bottom but got stuck and fell right back down. This tells me a couple of things
1. I need to strengthen my quads. The top half of the squat is very quad dominant.
2. I lost tension and tightness in my hamstrings when I dive bombed down to the bottom and I was unable to regain that tightness once I started to stand back up.
I was relying on the bounce to get me up rather than my strength. (This dive bomb squat is good for Olympic lifters because when they clean/snatch, the weight is moving at a very rapid pace so they carry that momentum with them into the bounce)
Solution: I am going to have more control during the descent of my squat. I am still going to go to proper depth but I am going to really focus on keeping the hamstrings tight and load the energy like a spring before I start to stand up. I squatted this way earlier this week and I am more sore than I have been in a long time and in places that I am not used to. I am also doing pause squats where I pause as soon as the crease of my hips goes below the top of my knee rather than sitting down until my butt touches my ankles. I am still doing ass to grass squats for assistance because its keeps me very flexible and mobile, and it looks awesome.

Bench
Oh the bench press. The topic of many Marine Corps Body Bearer's jokes. Definitely my most lacking lift. About two years ago I became extremely frustrated with my lack of strength on the bench press. My squat was increasing, my deadlift was increasing, but my bench stayed still. I started researching how to build up my bench when I came across some articles and videos about proper bench press form. I studied it religiously. I practiced the proper form over and over again. It required a huge arch and shortening the distance from my lockout to my chest. The bar was now only moving inches rather than feet. After I applied this new technique something awesome happened. My bench press increased! I was sold! This new technique was gonna have me benching over 400 lbs in no time! But that's not exactly how it went. After the initial increase in my lift, I stayed the same....for a long long time. It took months to increase 5 lbs. on my bench press. During the competition I saw guys that weighed as much and less than me bench pressing in the mid 400's and some over 500 lbs. They didn't have a crazy arch but they were still getting great leg drive and most importantly they were making their lifts! My form was perfect, why was my bench press not increasing? The reason: I was completely relying on technique rather than STRENGTH. I wanted to work on my technique but never worked on my STRENGTH. Rather than figuring out how to shorten the distance I have to press I should have figured out how to get STRONGER.
Solution: Get stronger. Plain and simple. Do more volume, do bench press and different forms of it; close grip, paused, etc. My arch is not as drastic but I can still get a perfect blend of leg drive and Pressing power. I am still a huge advocate for perfect form but don't forget that an arch will only get you so far. You're going to have to get stronger.

Deadlift
My deadlift has made huge progress over the past year. During training, I have set numerous rep maxes. However, something happens when I deadlift around 95% of my 1 rep max; it is a lot harder than it should be. How is it that I can rep out 85% of my max with ease but once I get past 90%, I stall. The answer: I worry too much about being explosive. During my warm up sets the bar moves very quickly. I focus on being as explosive as possible. The reason this is becoming a problem is because I am so focused on being explosive that when the weight is heavy and I can't move it quickly, I fail. As soon as I have to really grind that rep out and the bar is moving at a snail's pace, I drop it.
Solution: Learn to grind the rep out, get comfortable with grinding. This doesn't mean that I'll be grinding 225 lbs out. I'm referring to big weights. I'm going to start do more deficit pulls so that the deadlift is more challenging off the floor. I need to own that bar.

These are only observations that I have made. I am not telling you to apply them to your training. I am not telling you they are right or wrong. What works for you works for you. Keep training hard and don't ever let failure paralyze your progress. Learn from it. But most importantly, TRAIN UNTAMED!