You Have to Fail Before You Can Appreciate Winning
I had Andrea Lavoie on the podcast, and she is about as decorated as you can get in this sport. Master of Sport International Class in Long Cycle, Master of Sport in Biathlon, world record holder, mother of two. The highest accolade an athlete can actually earn through lifting, she has it. So when I asked her where the motivation comes from after you have already reached the top, I expected something about discipline or routine.
Instead she told me about the day she fell apart.
It was Worlds, in Ireland. She had trained for it four days a week. She had left her kids back home with family and flown across an ocean for this one moment. She stepped onto the platform with the 24s, the bells she had hit thousands of times, and nothing worked. Her legs wouldn't cooperate. She got a no-rep. And then, before she could even register what was happening, the bells were on the ground. Set over. The first thing she wanted to do was run and hide.
That's the part I want you to sit with. Not the records. The collapse.
The myth of the unbroken athlete
There is a story a lot of new lifters tell themselves, and it goes like this: the great ones don't miss. They show up, they execute, they win, and the rest of us are down here struggling because we haven't figured out the secret yet.
That story is garbage, and it will quietly poison your training.
Because the truth is the opposite. Andrea isn't great DESPITE that day in Ireland. She is the lifter she is partly because of it. She told me, plainly, that you need to experience failure before you can truly appreciate success. That line is the whole episode. It's also one of the most honest things I've heard a high-level athlete say out loud.
For the first few years, her progress was linear. PR after PR after PR. It felt amazing, and it also taught her almost nothing about who she was. The lesson didn't arrive until the line went the wrong way. Until she came home from Worlds, slid into something close to a depression, and couldn't bring herself to make her own daughter's birthday cake. Her husband stayed up all night and made it instead.
You don't get the wisdom without the bad day. There's no shortcut around it. The athletes I worry about are not the ones who have shit the bed at a meet. They're the ones who never have, because they have never been forced to find out what they do next.
What "it's just one set" actually means
Andrea's coach gave her a line she fought against for years before it finally landed: it's just one set. It's just one competition. It doesn't define you.
When you're in the dark place, that sounds like a platitude. Of course it defines me, you think; I trained for months for this, I crossed an ocean for this, and I blew it. But here is the version of that idea that's actually useful, the version Andrea lives now.
One bad week does not make you a worse athlete. It makes you an athlete who had a bad week.
She put it perfectly. One week she'll lift great and feel on top of the world. The next week, or even the same week, she'll have a garbage set. That second set isn't evidence that she got weaker. The fitness didn't evaporate. She just had a bad lift. The number is real, but the STORY you wrap around the number is optional, and the story is where people destroy themselves.
So the skill isn't avoiding the bad day. You cannot avoid the bad day; hydration, sleep, travel, nerves, any of a dozen things can flatten your one shot on the platform, and sometimes they will. The skill is refusing to let one data point rewrite your identity.
How she actually got back on the platform
This is the part that matters most, because it's not a feeling, it's an action.
The morning after Ireland, Andrea was supposed to lift again. Jerk and snatch. It was the last thing on earth she wanted to do, and she hadn't slept. So she called her coach, and her coach didn't tell her to chase a number or redeem herself. She said: just complete the set. Forget the pace. Just finish.
So she did. She got up there and she finished the set. Same with snatch. No hero numbers. Just complete it. And she felt a little more human afterward.
That's the move. When you've been knocked flat, you do not come back by demanding a triumph. You come back by lowering the bar to one thing you can absolutely control, and then doing that one thing. Complete the set. Finish what's in front of you. Confidence is not what gets you back on the platform; ACTION is what gets you back on the platform, and the confidence shows up later as a receipt.
Andrea quoted the Rocky line, and corny as it is, it's right: it's not about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. After Worlds she also tore a tendon in her shoulder, and then COVID hit. Knocked down, knocked down, knocked down. And the numbers came back anyway. She'd been stuck under 90 reps with the 20s, didn't even want to compete because she couldn't promise herself a 90. Then she hit 93. The mojo came back. It always comes back faster than you believe it will when you're lying on the floor.
Train the comeback, not just the lift
Here's what I'd have you take from this and actually use.
Stop training only for the day everything goes right. Anybody can ride a good day. Build the muscle that handles the bad one. Next time a set falls apart in practice, before you walk off swearing at yourself, set the bells back down and complete ONE more clean set, no pace, no number, just finished. You're rehearsing the comeback, not just the lift. That's a rep you can't get any other way.
And get out of your own head. Andrea is her own harshest critic; so am I, so are most people who care enough to suffer for this. One of my athletes once told me I needed to stop going between my ears because it's a rough neighborhood in there. She's right. The voice that calls you weak after a missed set is not telling you the truth. It's telling you a story. You get to pick a different one.
You will fail. Not maybe. You will. And the failure isn't the thing that ends you; it's the thing that finally teaches you what the winning is worth.
Listen to the full interview with Andrea here.
If you've been circling kettlebell sport but you're scared of the bad day, of stepping on the platform and missing in front of people, come train with me anyway. That fear is exactly the thing worth walking through, and I've never turned anyone away over what's in their wallet. Start here.
Vokse eller dø. — Coach Jordan