It’s no secret that many endurance athletes identify with Type A, perfectionist-oriented personality traits. Heck…I’m definitely one of them (as evidenced by how many times I rewrote that 1st sentence…at least 6 times!) We’re the folks who set high, often unattainable goals, we expect to get it “right” (the first time) & we’re highly critical of our mistakes often viewing them as a character flaw or confirmation that we’re not up to par. I mean…why should you lean into mistakes instead of avoiding them like the plague? What good could possibly come from doing it incorrectly? Turns out…lots! So, let’s talk about how making mistakes makes you better!
Embracing Mistakes
We are human. Humans are not computers. Humans make mistakes. We ALL make mistakes.
Since none of us is exempt from doing it wrong more than we do it perfectly, it behooves us to make those errors work for rather than against us. This is the art of making mistakes – the ability to turn those errors into something that helps us improve faster & more completely. When we shift our thinking about making mistakes from a negative (I keep making mistakes…I’ll never get this right.) to a positive (What can I learn from this mistake?), then we’ve opened the floodgates to opportunity. Brilliant!
Mistakes Teach Us…
It’s so easy to fear the very concept of making mistakes. That old adage of “Perfect practice makes perfect.” absolutely doesn’t help. Talk about pressure to perform, right??!! When you have the goal of perfect execution, how do you mentally handle ALL of the mistakes that you inevitably will make?
Better to embrace the fact that you WILL make mistakes & better yet, to set your mind to learn something from each & every one. If given the opportunity, mistakes can teach us all kinds of things:
- Body Awareness – Our body parts are all connected…so yes, what you do with one body part directly affects other body parts.
- More Correct vs Less Correct – Through experimentation (i.e., purposefully doing it wrong) we often get a better sense of what “more correct” feels like. This is valuable awareness!
- Movement Control – Often when I ask newer athletes to do a movement pattern in a specific incorrect way…they actually can’t do it! Doing something in a defined incorrect way requires body control…and that takes time to develop. One of the best ways to improve body control is to do a motion in as many different ways as you can possibly think of! Weird, yes. Helpful, absolutely!
- Mental Barrier Removal – One of the more insidious aspects of being Type A Perfectionist is the mental barriers that we tend to have. It’s easy to get latch onto the idea that there is only ONE way (the RIGHT way) to do something. In actuality, there are many ways to do something. And whether they are more or less “right” really depends upon the situation. Experimentation is one of the best ways to understand this.
Yes, But What About Asking for Help?
I often encourage folks to ask for help in order to make the learning process easier. And at face value that would seem at odds with all the above info on actively making mistakes. I mean…isn’t the point of getting a coach so that we make LESS mistakes? Well, sort of. Remember that quality help isn’t about being shown one way (again, the RIGHT way) to do something. It’s more about helping you understand why any particular way is more right or less right in any given situation. It’s about helping you make mistakes & then learn from those mistakes. It’s about helping you avoid making same mistake(s) over & over & over again. It’s about helping you understand why you’re making X mistake & then how to change to not make X mistake again. It’s about providing a measure of objectivity into the learning process!
All right, my friends. Time to get out there & make some mistakes!! 🙂
Happy Training!
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