If it’s just exhausting, well, keep doing it; it’s the knife pain that we’re trying to avoid.                                                                                                         -–Miranda Esmonde-White

As a cultural norm, we view failure as bad and we try to avoid it.

In this post, I want to discuss how we can use failure as our teacher to develop a mindset that pushes our limits and what is truly possible.

(For our purposes failure is getting so pumped that you can’t even untie your knot, let alone any hold on the wall. I mean leaving it all out on the wall so that you can’t look back at the training session and say that you could have done more—when you’ve reached failure, you’ll know. And then STOP. Really, don’t hurt yourself trying to be a badass.)

Any time we train at our limit we are walking a razor’s edge. If you want to develop, you have to push yourself to failure. But if you push too hard, too soon, you could injure yourself and lose everything you’ve built.

So the question is, how hard do you try? How hard do you need to go to improve?

I think one of the best ways to discover your limits is by practicing in a controlled environment that allows you to establish a baseline. For example, when you hangboard, start by taking weight off and slowly adding it back on. Your point of failure will change over the course of your training, but, by staying methodical and intentional, you will be able to push yourself to failure without injuring yourself. (Don’t forget to do a proper warmup before starting your hangboard session!)

My climbing partner relayed a story about how he had watched one of our crag’s early hardmen train. Written on the wall—in black marker—was “Fuck you, Failure.” When I first heard this, I thought he was calling himself a failure (which seemed unhelpful and a little harsh). But no! He was speaking TO failure.

Every day we train (really showing up and seeking improvement), we go until we drop, until we simply can’t hold on anymore. That limit is a personal invisible line that you have to find for yourself. It will change over time and your training will evolve with it.

You have to be smart and safe about your training, but if you ever want to know what your limit really is, you’ll have to train to failure.