Why do we fail, and what's the best way to deal with it?

[maestroak]

Greg,

I probably paddled about that pace on all my rests, even the 1:40s. As for your thoughts on failure, I agree that the issue is selecting workouts and I'm very careful to do it. It takes a lot of thought. Just like today, I knew I probably couldn't row a 5K in under 2:00/5, then row 8x500 in 1:40 each with 1:40 rest. I wanted to do that, though. So I gave myself the opportunity to try without "failing" by designing a workout I could complete. To me the rows you describe aren't failing because they are designed to row as much as you can at a certain pace. No way to fail that. My personal reason I don't design workouts I fail is because once that starts happening I don't know what's failing because the workout is too hard and what is me giving up mentally. I think my way makes me push myself harder. Like today, I committed to the workout, which was 1:45s for each 500. It ended up being pretty intense and I was struggling the last 2 500s, but I committed to it and pushed through it. Could have easily said, oh this is harder than I thought, I'm bailing. It certainly requires a measured approach to what you commit to doing but I certainly end up pushing myself.

-Steve

[Edward4492]

Steve, I think you hit the nail on the head. When I'm training clients I always like to start with numbers I know they can hit. Then I keep tweaking it until I see the limits starting to appear. On occasion I'll give a work out where I dial in a certain amount of work and maybe the last two or three intervals the pace is "as hard as you can go". At that point there can be no "failure", the point of those intervals is to find the failure point. Like you, if failing a scheduled work out becomes a regular occurrence, then the little voices start to interfere with the effort. I consider my personal work outs to be where I want them to be when maybe once a week I hit the wall at the end of the last interval. But for the most part, I want a work load that is manageable. Not easy, but do-able. And then.....just do it.

[hjs]

Greg, you get my thinking a bit, nice.

Example from erger, top level. The last 4/7 years we got a fast otw erger, got the Dutch record, always won the title. With sub 5.50 times. He never "failed" .. Or did he?

The last 2 years a young guy came up. In 2013 it was a very hard race, both ergers ended up 100% spent, they pushed themselves to the max. The champ stayed the camp and broke his record by a good bit. 5.43 from memory.

Last year, the champ did not show up. The younger guy was on his own, he went for sub 5.40, the holy grail in erging. At 1500 meter in he was spend, rating high 30, picked the pace up for a short while to 1.23 but had to slow down. No sub 5.40 this time.

The otw guy otw has a habit in sub performing otw races. He never seems to make his promise. His head is not his strongpoint. Its a beast of a man, superfit, but he can,t get everything out of him fully.

[christopherregisryan]

Except, what about how we set our training objectives? What if I set the objective to push myself so hard that I am unable to complete the final rep at target pace? This might be a good thing to do to see if you have a bit more to give than you think? There are a bunch of guys in the UK that use an approach sort of like this. They define the desired pace that they want for a 2K (or some other distance). Then as a regular part of training, they have a session where they see how many meters they can get when they hold that pace. Over time, as fitness improves, the distance gets closer and closer to 2K. And in every session they essentially "fail" on purpose.

On the other hand, you could have someone who wants to always succeed, and sets targets for an 8x500 that are not challenging enough. They could rack up a win in every session, but not make nearly as much progress as someone who pushes closer to the edge and periodically falls over it.

So, maybe the thing we should do is set goals for sessions that are less about a specific split, but more about how close we want to go to our limits on that day?

When I was weightlifting religiously I would generally do my final sets to failure. I believe that my gains were best using that strategy (provided I had ample rest after each workout). On the other hand, I don't like to fail on the erg. Maybe the physiological benefits would be greater if I failed more often. For me, the psychological cost would be too high. I find myself fighting the thought of HDing on many of my test pieces. It is a battle that I like to win. I would not want to get into the habit of losing that battle. Also, I produce my best test outcomes at 2k and beyond if I negative split and sprint out the last 5-10% of the piece. That's a habit I like to practice in my intervals.

[gregsmith01748]

I think that I am arguing for switching it up. If you push so hard that you always fail, I think it is counter productive, but if you design you workouts to always avoid failure, you won't really know your capabilities.

[G-dub]

I think if you set out to do 8x500 w X rest and you don't finish you didn't succeed at finishing that workout. The opposite of succeeding is failing. It's pretty simple. And if you cut a workout short because you went too fast, you may not get all you could have out of that workout. Doesn't mean you don't also learn other things or you don't push some boundaries. I don't think falling short of completion is good practice for the main event either.

[markinnb]

only those who risk going too far can possibly discover how far they can go." to misquote Eliot who popularized a common thought

In another thread, someone asked another " why pick a pace that you know you can get?" I think that that specific thread was about a completely different topic but the comment was made.
try to see if you can reach what you may not be able to grasp.
assess & recalibrate.


Moreover, calling into question the intestinal fortitude of a group of athletes who routinely push themselves past the point of caution is a conceit that may have crossed the line into arrogance. And revealed much about it's author.

All for the fact that they may have a philosophical difference on the definition of 'failure'.

Few, if anyone is being soft on themselves by having a different perspective of this.

[G-dub]

Conceit? I'm in no position to be conceited. But I definitely haven't finished workouts (too many) so should be qualified and allowed to discuss the topic. Or do the responses have to pass muster with you first?

[markinnb]

I think that I am arguing for switching it up. If you push so hard that you always fail, I think it is counter productive, but if you design you workouts to always avoid failure, you won't really know your capabilities.

yup.

it can be said that if you constantly pick easy targets, then all that is accomplished is a form of ego stroking or fluffing.
as you improve, you incorporate efforts that take you to the edge of your abilities.

you don't have to go all out all the time but every now and then, test yourself by picking something that is beyond your current capabilities.

There are many athletes who get upset with themselves when they meet their expectations as they realize that they played a mindgame on themselves with too low of a goal.

people who never " fail" may be too soft on themselves, lol... if 'being soft on yourself ' is going to be tossed around about a group of people who are striving for excellence in their chosen field.

if I had any ability, I would slowly close the gap between the work intervals , gradually going from 3.5 minutes down to 30 seconds or whatever.

as someone else has posted elsewhere, there are numerous ways to change up your workouts. in this case, bonefixer had a couple of options:
increase the power output per piece ( 1:39.7 pace ) while holding the rest interval to 3.5 min.
decrease the power output per piece ( ~1:42.0 pace ) while decreasing the time of the rest intervals b/n. this would be over a period of a few weeks , multi sessions anyway.

Someone here knows which one of those two options results in a better outcome for the 2k. I would tend to go with the second but I don't have any experience in this.

Based upon bone's post about picking too fast of a pace for the first 500 m ( this was in bisquets thread ) , I think that bones now understands the pace requirements for his upcoming attempt.

[markinnb]

Conceit? I'm in no position to be conceited. But I definitely haven't finished workouts (too many) so should be qualified and allowed to discuss the topic. Or do the responses have to pass muster with you first?

oh.. sorry.. I don't believe that you were the one who called people soft.
it was about calling people soft on themselves from a day or two ago.
so I wasn't referencing you or anything that you had posted. My post simply came after yours. sorry for the confusion.

I think that had I been talking about your directly, then I would have quoted you.
Reading your post , I don't see anything inherently wrong with it, having internal consistency and keeping in line with many of your other posts.
again, I am very sorry that I gave you the impression that I was talking about your post.
if I had been , you had every right to make that comment. However, my error was in not making it clear that I was not talking about what you had written.

I think that I had read Greg's post, pondered it for a bit, saw that he did an ever better job at Eliot's quote than I had , and posted up my thoughts.

[G-dub]

Sorry too. I jumped the gun on that one and probably let my fuzzy head affect my emotions this morning! I do think Bonefixer is going to nail his goal regardless. I think the conversation gets confusing when a workout is used as a proxy vs having it be a workout to get fitter and as part of a training plan.

[jackarabit]

Greg writes:

There are a bunch of guys in the UK that use an approach sort of like this. They define the desired pace that they want for a 2K (or some other distance). Then as a regular part of training, they have a session where they see how many meters they can get when they hold that pace. Over time, as fitness improves, the distance gets closer and closer to 2K. And in every session they essentially "fail" on purpose.

Greg, I'm interested to know the frequency of the planned failure session. Could you link us to your source? I'd be surprised to find the Brits doing this more than once per month. By "regular" I take you to mean on a periodic basis rather than frequently. What is the optimal frequency of 2k comps? Once per year in a venue of celebrated reputation? Four or five times in prelims or feeder competitions? How about 2k tests? The shortest Interactive 2k prep to test is 8 weeks of training. So maybe 6 opportunities per year? The longest is 26 weeks--twice yearly. On this basis of regularity, I doubt if the reinforcement stimulus tips in favor of quitting no matter how many times one "fails" to equal or better the victories of one's wonder years. Likewise once per month. I wouldn't fancy scrambling for training peaks once a week or more often.

I have this Wrong-way Corrigan thing I call the "frontloader." I've done it on speed and endurance intervals and, perhaps predictably, also done it on 2k tests. Classic fly and die, fly and struggle, fly and fade. Saw another recent member here get a 2K PR with an initial 500m 11" faster than the next and 9" faster than the average of the final splits. Newby nonsense? Low probability of even finishing? Other time-tested strategies promise better results? Yes yes, YES!

Take note that an initial pace maintained is a FLAT pace. Somewhere someone will take this training path, succeed in competition, and everyone will swear it's the flattest-paced effort they've seen. Or the pace will go negative and everyone will swear it's down to good old time-honored training wisdom.

[markinnb]

2015 WIRC top 2 finishers.
1:29.2r36 1:27.6r36 1:25.2r38 1:23.9r45 Angel Rodriguez
1:24.2r36 1:29.0r34 1:28.9r36 1:29.4r39. Sam Loch

so Sam went out a bit too hard in the 1st. the power reserves were depleted a bit more than he could recover, robbing his later quarters.

2014

1:26.0 r35 1:26.6 r34 1:27.7 r34 1:27.5 r35 Andrew Stewart Jones
1:27.2 r34 1:28.2 33 1:28.5 34 1:27.1 37 Semen Yaganov

2015- 65-69-- Peter D.

1:48.4r29 1:47.8r27 1:47.5r28 1:46.4 r31- while it is declining by .5-1.0% of so between quarters, it s pretty close to maintaining constant pace.

so using this small smattering of times-

1.for your 1st quarter, pick a pace that is within 3-5% of your target average pace, then progress through while watching the projected finish and quarter pace times. or

2. figure out your target pace , hit it in the first quarter, stick it, and maybe even improve it a bit with a surge at the end
3. go out hard, trying to hold on to outlast people who came in with a different set of skills and/or different plan. keeping in mind that whatever you gain in the beginning, you may lose double that at the end. so your beginning has got to be magnificent!

it would be interesting to find out which method people on here follow.


I would hope that people had a plan before going into the WIRC. maybe some people fly by the seat of their pants.
Some people modify their plan throughout the race depending on how other people are doing.

[Galeere]

On my 2k-PB a slightly U-shaped pace seemed to work ok (similar to what Semen did in 2014, much slower of course). First fresh 500 at target - 1,6 sec, then 1k sub target pace (held around target 0,5 - 1sec) and then last 500 put in what was left (target - 2,6 sec). But all in all it was pretty flat paced.

[jackarabit]

Buddy, if I could split it like Rodriguez does, i wouldn't worry my head over training heresies. If i had his power output and endurance I wouldn't even have to. My guess is that "ambitious" first .5, positive second, flat third, hang on and die final is very common.