One of the reasons I like weightlifting is that it’s one of the few areas of life where you are supposed to fail. That’s the whole point of it; if you don’t lift until you fail, you aren’t doing any good.

It’s a completely different approach than most of what we do, where we must meet some goal, leap some hurdle. Obviously, lifting competitions are an exception, but 99% of lifters never compete — for most, as it is for me, the idea is to lift as much as you can until you fail since that’s how you get stronger.

I like a sport where failure is the explicit goal.