Recently Justin from 70sBig.com posted his thoughts on why its important to hang in there after failures, figure out the cause, learn from those mistakes, and improve. Here are a few excerpts from his post:

Something is bound to go wrong. You’re going to miss a rep because you let the bar drift forward as you pulled it off the floor. You might (for whatever reason) close your eyes (followed by a forward somersault) and miss a heavy squat. At some point you won’t finish your pull and miss a clean or snatch. And you will sure as hell miss a heavy press forward. Whatever it might be, something is going to go wrong; you aren’t perfect all the time.
Some people can’t come to terms with this reality. They’ll get frustrated when learning a new movement and try to quit. Some pout and moan when they miss a lift and others don’t understand why they sucked on a given day…

Irregardlessly, you’ll face these events and it’s up to you to decide whether or not you’re going to act like a sally when they do. When things go wrong, you (and your coach, if applicable) need to figure out what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. If you can manage to learn from your mistakes, then you’ll inevitably improve.
Younger lifters will some times feel helpless because of failure. Older lifters understand failure and most will learn from it. I know some people that have gotten strong because of their persistence over years and years of training, and it wouldn’t be possible without learning from their failure

It’s okay to f*#! up. Just don’t keep doing it.

He notes that problems can be mechanical in nature like something related to form or technique in a lift, or they can be macro in nature like recovery or overtraining.  He emphasizes the importance of learning and recognizing patterns.  As coaches, this is often what we’re doing by giving cues to correct errors in movement.  We have learned the movement pattern, can recognize when something isn’t quite right, and try to help you move more efficiently and/or safely.  Justin is spot on with his statement, “something is going to go wrong; you aren’t perfect all the time.”  We should strive for perfection with every movement but be intelligent enough to understand we’re human and perfection 100% of the time just isn’t gonna happen.  In order to improve you have to be open to criticism, don’t allow yourself to be too proud, and work with your coach to identify and fix the issue.  I’ll end with the same message Justin did…it’s ok to mess up, just don’t keep doing it!

WOD 08.21.10

Bench Press 3×5

3 Rounds for time:
50 Double Unders
25 Squats
400m Run