The Test of Failure 

by Johnny Nguyen

If you google the word “failure” you’ll find that it’s used in all sorts of context. If you're not sensitive to failure’s negative aura then you’ll click on the links and explore its various forms. The first click takes you to wikipedia’s grand revelation that failure is “the opposite of success,” a definition so astutely simple that it seems only an affirmation to those who were born last week. You feel silly for even clicking on it.

Then you click on other links and discover that “failure” is surprisingly a popular word used liberally in oddly glorified ways – such as for company names like Failure Magazine and Failure Bikes, or for celebrated themes of blogs and as a common purpose for membership clubs. Even hackers, in a process called google bombing, maimed the White House website (featuring President Bush) so that it appeared at the top of the page when someone googled the word “failure.”

Although failure seems like a cult hit on the google search engine, it is predominantly a feared element of life. Much greatness has been denied because of the fear of failure. Even with the strive for greatness, failure may still lurk; and, it will surely bite when one fails to plan, or when a plan goes bad, or when a plan was badly planned. Whatever the case, failure can only accompany effort, and by that account alone failure should be forgiven. It can, in fact, be invaluable, if handled correctly.

At the start of every new year, millions resolve to becoming fit and healthy, and by the end of January or the first week of February most begin to feel the breath of failure and ultimately give up on the idea of a two-piece bathing suit and settle for the single piece, while some change their vacation from the warm waters of St. Martin to a 2-week road trip to Kansas in a Winnebago. Handled incorrectly, failure can allow another year to slip by, bringing a few more unwanted pounds, flirting with the onset of diseases.

Failure due to careless planning is bad, but caused by unpredictable factors it is a tragedy. Whatever the reason for failure, it is most often inevitable and simply the scrapes and bruises of a well-lived life, and is as certain as its cousins, death and taxes. It has a way of breaking hearts and breaking down the will to continue. And it is here that failure tests us, by how we handle it, whether we’re throwing in the towel or willing to look at it square in the eye and learn from it as though it were a berating professor. Failure calls for either the white flag or for resilience.

Sometimes you just have to fight and gut through another try, other times you have to step back and analyze what went wrong and how to fix it. FIT's very own Danielle Durante's weightlifting performance at the American Open was such that she returned after two failed attempts and bravely gutted her way to a final lift that set a personal record in competition total. It was incredible to see: No thinking, no analyzing, no devising a back-up plan. She just went out and tried even harder. Coach Rob's failure at the Golden West weightlifting competition in 2007 when he suffered an injury caused him to stop his training, step back, analyze, and then return with a plan. He has put in some time with therapeutic exercises since, and is looking very strong now in his training.

There are more stories, of several handfuls of people who experienced some aspect of failure while they trained for marathons, triathlons and other sporting events. There are even more stories of people who failed in their efforts of becoming fit and healthy, and then they came back - in their own ways - to achieve their goals and maintain them long term.

As for the rest of this newsletter, Scott Kolasinski tells us in his article how to step back and analyze where failure in weight-loss nutrition might have occurred. Analisa Naldi in her article tells us how her perspective of little failures led to her big success in her workout challenge. Angelo Dela Cruz discusses what it means when the tissues in our bodies fail and how to manage them back to health. Herm Blancaflor shares his common-sense thoughts on when it's Ok to go to the gym when we're sick, and when it's not.