Failure is the Mother of All Success
A few weeks ago in Richmond, BC, a few teammates and I were asked what our team motto was. We were at the new Olympic Oval for the world cup selection races. The reason for this inquiry? The oval organizing committee wanted to give us a section of wall in the facility to make our own. A graffiti artist would be hired to make art of these mottos on the massive canvas of wall.
My training group is not the team-building, gung-ho mix of people that some of the other groups seem to be. We don’t like team-building functions, activities or the facade they create. We have our own kind of bonding that we do twice a day, each and every day. This deep level of connection and respect is established through hard work. We push and pull each other through tortuous training sessions and drag each other through gruelling fatigue.
My training partners and National Team skaters Shannon Rempel, Kristina Groves and Kerry Dankers on the tram going downtown in Berlin
So, initially when the question was asked by our team sport psychologist, who has all but given up on our training group because we don’t buy into what the textbook says about ‘team-building’, we all snickered and scoffed at this idea. It did, however, get us talking. You see, we did not have a team motto. Nor did we want one. And this is precisely the way we like it.
The way our National Team system works is that we have about five training groups that vary from gender to distances focussed on and, of course, personalities. We have a group of coaches who could not be more different in Nationality and energy. Xiuli Wang (my coach) is from China, Marcel LaCroix and Robert Trembley are from Quebec, Mike Crow is from the USA, and Ingrid Paul is from Holland. They are a mix of former skaters: Olympians, World Champions and even short track skaters. They work together professionally but could not be more divided when it comes to training methods, motivational tools and preparation. It’s a good system because though I may not like a certain coach’s ideas, I can certainly find a place I fit in one of the other groups. Each group is supportive of each other but also extremely competitive. Perhaps this is why we have so much success- that each person finds their place where they can develop, and there is a constant source of motivation to feed off of with the success of other individuals and groups.
Within each group, there is a team of skaters who unite as a team to work together. We follow the program laid out by our coach and are relentless in our approach to preparation. There is no time to slack off in a workout when there are eight or ten other people there ready to attack a set of intervals. Each of us rotates in the role of giving the extrinsic motivation to others by our intrinsic motivation and getting the intrinsic motivation from others extrinsic motivation. It is a constant cycle that has one goal in mind: excellence.
In thinking about this team motto thing, we decided the only thing we could do was ask our coach, Xiuli, what she thought would be fitting. We did not want anything corny or cliché, and assumed correctly that our coach, being from China, would have some incredibly wise and original ancient proverb to reflect our motley crew of personalities. Most of the other training groups think we are ‘too serious’ and the ‘no fun’ group. This is a label we take great pride in, and enjoy this incorrect judgement. You see, we work hard, and take pleasure in coming together to do this work. We don’t need to be loud, laughing and joking when there there’s a job to do.
So what did Xiuli come up with? She came up with a line that sums up our daily toil:
FAILURE IS THE MOTHER OF ALL SUCCESS.
Good old Xiuli, who even after the most perfect of races, the most glorious of successes, will come back a few days later and say ‘can I make a suggestion….’ and proceed to tell you the next step of improving what you have already done to make the next race better, faster and stronger. This is why we continually improve ourselves and our skating abilities. There is no time to rest on what you have already done, unless you retire. She also forces us to look at the failures along the way in the learning sense, allowing the difficulties to give birth to the beautiful, fleeting moments of success.
