Getting Stuck in the Hole - On Failure & Progress by Juliane Bergmann
The Single Pull-Up Challenge Series: Part 3
My left leg shaking, veins popping out of my neck, and muttering curse words under my breath, I was scrunched together at the lowest point of my single leg press. Brian yelled: “Push!” and I did. I struggled for several hours (okay, seconds, but whatever), and nothing happened.
Yes, those are only 10-lbs plates, but in the beginning, I couldn't even press the bar. And I still almost failed out seconds after this picture was taken.
It was my first experience of “getting stuck in the hole”—when you’re at the lowest point of a squat or leg press and can’t get back up. I felt defeated, but Brian grinned: “You just did more for your leg in those few seconds than all the reps before. This is where the growth happens. Failure is the point.”
I’ve read every tired quote about failure leading to growth in life and love and business, but I’d never experienced it physically.
It changed my whole outlook on exercise. Failing has now become a measure of progress. If I can’t get up off the floor after the last rep, great. If I can’t finish a set without breaking form and have to go down in weight, great. It means I’ve pushed myself beyond my comfort zone.
The point isn’t torture—it’s reframing my idea of failure. As Brian told me from the beginning: “Based on your age, previous injuries, and current physical state, building strength is going to be hard and take a long time.”
Hearing the truth didn’t scare me, but offered a reality check I remembered frequently during Hell Week. Think of Hell Week as boot camp meets Hunger Games crossed with the TV show WipeOut. It was absolute insanity. Every day, I pushed into failure territory and then tried to keep going for as long as possible, completing approximately eleventy billion pull-ups, plate pushes, sled pulls, and burpees.
At one point, I was doing some crazy backward beast crawl on my hands with my feet pushing a weight plate, while Hef was in my ear yelling: “You can do it! Don’t drop those knees! Three yards to go! Two! Keep pushing! One!” Hef is the coach I needed during Hell Week because he 100% believes I can do this ridiculous shit, even though only one of us looks like their arms got snapped off a life-size action figure.
I don’t listen to Hef every day, but when I want to push myself, I do. Once after an especially grueling leg workout, he added a finisher, specifically designed to burn those last few drops of gas in the tank. If you don’t have to lean against a wall after you’re done, you didn’t do it right.
I have a love/hate relationship with the sled because it was one of the hardest exercises to do when I started knee rehab. Now I secretly love pushing a strange metal contraption across the turf (proof: I'm still smiling).
The class complained, and someone joked they were going to leave. Hef barely looked up: “Go ahead. Nobody is forcing you to do this. It’s your time, your money, your workout.” Instant attitude adjustment. I don’t have to be here. I get to. I get to figure out what my body can do. I get to stay and take it all the way to the edge…if I want to.
What started as knee rehab has turned into curiosity about what my body is capable of. I went kayaking last summer, and it was love at first try, even though I had to take a break every few minutes while Rob was paddling circles around me. I was determined to address my lack of upper body strength for this summer, which is why I came up with the single pull-up challenge. I’ve never been able to do one in my entire life. Of course, RBF Pinterest Mike told me to go for three instead. “Shoot for the moon,” he said flatly, face unmoved, “and you’ll land among the stars.” His inspirational advice makes sense. When I trained for a marathon over a decade ago, I completed several runs longer than 26.2 miles. Why? So the race distance wouldn’t be the farthest my brain thought I could go. Shooting just beyond my actual goal removed a mental block.
My plan was to practice on my own, but Neil overheard me: “Be here early tomorrow. We ride at dawn!” He didn’t actually say that last part. Neil’s got the energy of Buck Wild from Ice Age (minus the British accent). It’s impossible to say no to him. He’s just so damn excited about lifting heavy shit. For weeks now, he’s been prepping me for the real deal by making me hang at the top of the bar and lowering myself excruciatingly slowly. He trash-talks me the entire time, making me think he’s distracted. He’s not. “That wasn’t ten seconds. Do it again! Slower.”
My hands have never been so ripped up in my life, except that time I cockily roller-skated down a steep hill as a teenager and faceplanted into a construction zone gravel pit.
Doing Neil’s exercises, I fail out every single time. It’s humbling. It’s maddening. And it’s a reminder that every time I get stuck in the hole, I’m inching closer to getting that first pull-up.
Juliane Bergmann is a technical writer for Montana State University, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. As a book coach, ghostwriter, and editor, she’s guided nine first-time authors through the ideation and creation of their non-fiction books spanning memoir, entrepreneurship, business development, psychedelics, healthcare, IT, immigration, coaching, and leadership.
Juliane’s work has appeared in: Mamalode, The Writing Cooperative, CRY Magazine, A Parent Is Born, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and The Scarlett Letter. She was named a semi-finalist in the 2021 Medium Writing Challenge for her essay How To Become A More Selfish Parent.
Juliane offers free writing resources at https://julianebergmann.ghost.io/
Follow the Notebook at Sport Stories Press for more segments of “The Single Pull-Up Challenge” series.
