It Sounds Totally Backward, But ACHIEVING Failure is the Key to Success in Life

Matt Karamazov
5 min readJun 19, 2023

A legendary bodybuilder from the 1980s taught me what makes the difference between #1 and the guys who didn’t quite make it

Image: Adobe Stock (Not the Bodybuilder I’m Referring to!)

I pushed my hernia back in after completing my fifth set of heavy barbell squats and stepped back to recover, but I knew my brutal leg workout wasn’t even half over.

In fact, it was just beginning.

Even though I had just achieved muscular failure performing the squat (that’s when you physically, LITERALLY CANNOT perform another rep, not when “you” want to stop), I still had to do the same thing with the linear leg press, leg extensions, leg curls, and seated calf raises, before moving on to decline sit-ups and a final half-hour of walking cardio.

Yea, Wednesdays suck.

But I’m standing there with my legs on fire and I’m thinking:

“No one else is doing this.

Not only is there no one else here (I mean, it WAS midnight after all), but virtually no one else in the entire world is willing to put in THIS MUCH EFFORT to win; they’re not willing to go through THIS MUCH PAIN; and they’re not willing to do this for as many DECADES as I’M willing to do this for.

This is f***ing NORMAL for me, and that’s why I win.”

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Matt Karamazov
Matt Karamazov

Written by Matt Karamazov

🥇 The Most Disciplined Man on the Planet 📚 Read 1,329 Books in Just 10 Years 💪🏻 Strong Believer in Human Potential ⤵️ https://thereadinglife.beehiiv.com/

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