You gotta let them fail.

It was about a year ago to this July past that I had the key moment that absolutely destroyed my motivation in professional wrestling. I had recovered from another bout of covid from the month prior, come to training where there were about 20 other people, and thought I was ready for another group training session. But I only managed to last 15 minutes in a two hour class.

I had barely finished the warm-up grape squashes, squats, and get-up drills; sat to the side and felt more dizzy than I had ever been in my life, and watched everyone else go about their drills. Although you were definitely allowed to rejoin the class once you had recovered, I felt so defeated and so self-conscious. Like, how could I justify getting back into the ring when I couldn’t even last 15 minutes in a class? A thought crept into my head about what everyone else was probably thinking: “Who the fuck is this guy who thinks he can just hop back in without doing the minimum?” I felt like I had no place there.

The sense of defeat was intense.

It was a wake-up call. No more beer, less fatty foods, discipline, discipline, discipline.

I had always been the kind of guy who would try to work through the pain; I rarely took days off from school growing up, 13 years I can count the number on one hand. But I’d been neglecting myself. I used to go to class every single night, four nights a week, for two years straight. I was an iron man when it came to pushing through pain, but I might as well have been a cripple in terms of skill.

A man turns to religion when all else has left him as a source of external comfort and reassurance. But that isn’t me, the “hard-headed fuck”, as a previous co-worker once called me. I needed to become stronger; I needed that source of comfort and reassurance to come from within and be fortified. Because no matter how many lost jobs, ex-girlfriends, family troubles or tragedies, and despite my hard-headedness, at the end of the day all you really have is yourself. You have to be your own rock, your own foundation… you will always be there.

So, over the next 12 months I trained.

Personal training would leave me gasping and dry-heaving, my body as sore as possible and sweating buckets. My goal was to get through a personal training session without breaking a sweat. Can I really make it 30 minutes without sweating? I wasn’t just determined to get there, I needed to get there at all costs. Every time I failed the reps my coach asked me to do, I would add more that I had to do before I could finish the set.

If he asked me to bench press 50kg for 10 reps and I only got to 8, I would have to do 12 reps. If I failed again, I would have to do 13. And so on, until I could get the task done.

If I was asked to carry 80kg in a farmer’s walk around the gym, failure simply wasn’t an option. The palms of my hands could be shouting at me to stop, with mental images of torn skin and protruding calluses; my wrist with a titanium plate would conjure images of metal bending and warping and bones separating at the joint.

But “no” means “no”. I cannot let myself fail. I cannot half-ass this shit. I cannot put myself into a false sense of security of having done “enough”, only to slide back and end up sitting against the garage door of the gym then-16 minutes into a two-hour class again. It just can’t happen. The foundation at my core needs to be strong, like iron hammered a thousand times.

Then, once personal training is done, an hour of wrestling. Because power is nothing without control and discipline. Perfect footwork, stances, flips, bumps. It doesn’t matter how often I look at the clock, no matter how much I mentally beg, it only goes by a second at a time.

Have I come back to class since then? Yes.

Have I failed since then? Yes.

But am I better than I was before? Yes.

Have I quit? No.

Because sometimes you have to let yourself fail, accept the fall, see the distance you can descend, and know that not only can you get back to where you were, but can surpass it.

“I’ll live, I always do”.