We live in a world that encourages us to move on quickly. Something goes wrong, we brush it off, tell ourselves to forget about it and get back to training. Some times I think that’s a mistake.
Spend some time with your failures. Not because you should dwell on them, but because they contain information. A failed training session, a poor race, an expedition that didn’t go to plan or simply a day when you didn’t perform as you expected can teach you an enormous amount if you’re prepared to study it.
- What happened?
- Were you under-recovered?
- Did you get your nutrition wrong?
- Did you start too hard?
- Was your preparation inadequate?
- Did you make a poor decision because you were tired?
- Or perhaps something completely outside your control happened?
The important thing is to separate what you could control from what you couldn’t. That’s where the learning starts.
Don’t Just Study Failure
Interestingly, I think we should spend just as much time studying our successes. When something goes exceptionally well, don’t simply celebrate it and move on.
Ask yourself:
- Why did it work?
- What did you do differently?
- How did you prepare?
- How did you feel?
- What decisions did you make?
- What routines worked?
Those answers become your blueprint. Your successes tell you what to repeat. Your failures tell you what to change. Together, they create a map for moving forward.
The E3Coach Approach
This is something I try to build into coaching. We’re not simply looking at whether you completed a session. We’re asking what the session tells us.
Training data, RPE, heart rate, how you moved, how you recovered, how you fuelled and, importantly, how you felt all provide information. Sometimes the most valuable session of a training block is the one that didn’t go well. It gives us something to investigate. And that’s where coaching becomes more than simply giving someone a training plan. It’s about understanding the athlete and using every experience to make the next decision better.
Learn,Then Let Go
There is, however, an important balance. Don’t spend so long analysing failure that it becomes an identity.
- You failed at something.
- You are not a failure.
- Take the lesson.
- Understand it.
- Write it down if you need to.
- Make the adjustment.
- Then move forward.
The same applies to success.
Enjoy it. Be proud of it. Understand why it happened. Then get back to work. Because the goal isn’t to live in yesterday’s failures or yesterday’s successes.
The goal is to make tomorrow better than today. Every session gives us information. Every mistake gives us an opportunity to learn. Every success gives us something we can repeat.
The athletes who continue to progress aren’t necessarily the ones who never get things wrong. They’re the ones who are willing to look honestly at what happened, learn from it, and then use that knowledge to take the next step.
Don’t rush past the lessons. Spend enough time with them to learn and grow. Then move on.
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