My absolute favorite band of all time is Faith No More. The image above is the album cover for one of their albums, Angel Dust (1992).

Faith No More is famous for their song, Epic (The Real Thing, 1989), but they had many more outstanding songs, including the one I have posted below called, A Small Victory (Angel Dust, 1992).

Faith No More did not produce a lot of flashy videos as they were pretty much ignored by MTV due to the inability to categorize the, and A Small Victory is probably the video they put the most work into, using much imagery, costumes, and employing a storyline that fell in line, partially with the song lyrics.

It even shows Thick Bar Reverse Curls performed on a set of antlers in the first 30 seconds of singing, if you watch closely…

(Of course, since I want to show you one of my favorite music videos, embedding is disabled, but you can watch the actual video here = > Faith No More – A Small Victory)

The reason I am posting this song is not to try to prove to you that Faith No More actually did other songs besides Epic (It’s it, What is it?). The reason is because sometimes in your training, Success is Built on Small Victories.

In a previous post, I told you that just because you miss a lift, you should not give up = > Misses are Just Warm-ups. In that video/post, I tried to change your way of thinking about missed lifts. Instead of being all-out failures, think of missing a lift as a warm-up. After all, sometimes you just aren’t ready yet to set that PR and you need a bit more time to get everything right.

Sometimes, try as you might to lift something, it is just not in the cards. And while by definition this is a failure, it is not to say that you should not be happy with what you are indeed able to do.

For instance, I was recently sent the picture below from my friend, Mike Rinderle.

4″ by 5/16″ O-1 Drill Rod (Fastenal Brand)

This is a piece of 303 Stainless Steel from Fastenal. At first glance, you might think, “Why is this anything special to look at? It’s not even bent to the required 2-inches between the ends of the stock?”

What you have to understand is that this piece of Stainless Steel is only 4-inches long and 5/16-inches thick.

To give you an idea of how extremely difficult this is to bend, the IronMind Red Nail is 3-inches longer, at the same diameter and made of Cold Rolled Steel, which is appreciably easier to bend than this Stainless.

When you consider that only one person has ever officially bent Steel at this level of difficulty, you can be damn sure that Mike is not looking at this as just another piece of steel he failed on. This is something he is damn proud of, and he will use this as a mental stepping stone toward bending this and other more difficult pieces in the future.

So, next time you train, if you miss a lift, don’t get hung up on that crap. Find the Small Victory that you obtained. Use that as a positive motivator for the next time you try it and eventually you will own the feat.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

Diesel Branded Skull Shirt

Matt Hunt sent in pics of his new Diesel Branded Skull Shirt. Thanks Matt!

To get one, go to this link = > Diesel Branded Skull Shirt

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Tags: how to deal with failure, mindset, misses are just warm-ups

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at 7:10 pm and is filed under feats of strength bending, strength training to improve athletic performance, your daily inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.