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Progress, Not Perfection

People have this idea that perfection is what should be strived for. The perfect mate, the perfect career, the perfect diet, the perfect life. In sports, the perfect jump shot, the perfect batting average, the perfect game, the perfect season. I’ve heard that practice makes perfect. I’ve also heard that perfect practice makes perfect. This is all assuming that something can be perfected. I don’t believe in perfection, it’s an undefinable concept, like dividing by zero. Nothing can be perfect because nothing has ever been perfect. Why does that matter in Weightlifting? I’m glad you asked. Here’s the thing, there is no perfect lift. There’s the lift you barely made. The lift you kind of pressed out. The lift you nearly chased off the platform. The lift that felt wobbly. The lift that felt fast. The lift that was better than the last one. None of these are the perfect lift though. Let’s say someone was tasked to create a computer simulation of the perfect lift. How would the Lifter be put together? Height, age, body weight, body proportions, mobility, years of training, range of motion, mindset, the list could go on. The barbell and the weight on it are a constant, you my friend, are the variable. Let’s set the idea of perfection aside and focus on a better concept to aim for…progress.

 

Progress is something that can be achieved and continually worked toward. Progress isn’t sexy though. Progress can take time, a lot of time, and that requires patience. Patience with yourself and with the process of advancement. There are times when your advancement feels like a bumper to bumper traffic jam in 100 degree weather as you see a tumbleweed roll right past you. At the very worst, it can feel as if we are regressing. This happens in Weightlifting. It’s all PR’s and rainbows when you first start, but then plateaus arrive like dark clouds over your summer barbeque. The leveling off of progress. This is the point where the real work starts, and where people start to feel a little bit of despair. I’ve been there. Until recently, I had been on an uphill climb in first gear with the emergency brake on, and it sucked. I got through it though. How? One word, Kaizen.

 

Kaizen is a Japanese word for improvement. Continuous improvement. The concept is this: systematic improvements through small incremental changes to processes. What does this concept have to do with Weightlifting? Have you not been paying attention? Progress is continual improvement. Boom goes the dynamite! As long as you make continual improvement, even if it’s one small incremental change at a time, you are winning. You get injured and have to start at the beginning, the moment you get back to training in some way, you’re making progress. You haven’t made any PR’s in a year, but you rarely miss any lifts, you’re making progress. You missed a bunch of lifts and had a lousy training session where you wanted to quit but you didn’t, you’re making progress. You are on the verge of injury or having a complete meltdown and you throttle your training back to recover more, you’re making progress. Progress is the river, through time and effort, that created the Grand Canyon. If your only metric is perfection, you will continually be disappointed and eventually give up. Ever hear that if you aim for the stars and you land on the moon, you’ve still achieved something great? There it is, what you aim for determines where your effort is placed and how close you get to your goal. If perfection is the only measure of success, and you miss the mark, by that logic the result is that your effort has been wasted. Focus instead, on learning from every mistake, every failure and setback, and seek mastery with DELIBERATE practice. Aim toward Better, and you’ll make progress. Who knows, if you make enough progress, you might be the first to hit perfection. Perfection is the enemy of Progress, because if you wait until something is perfect, you might be waiting longer than it takes your crush to text you back. Progress, Not Perfection.

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Get Under It or Die Trying

You’re looking at the barbell. Sitting there with your final heavy single loaded on the bar, which if successful, will bring that new PR. You look at it, that still small voice telling you it might be too heavy, the doubts start creeping in. The weight felt heavy on that last rep, you’re not sure you can make another one, even if it’s just one kilo more. Coach’s eyes wander in your direction, you can’t procrastinate any longer, you stand up and begin your setup routine (which you should have by the way). You close your eyes before you begin your pull, waiting just a moment longer than you usually do, hesitating in that final moment where you would normally just rip the bar from the ground on a lighter lift. The doubt has doubled at this point, and as you pull you’ve already given up, it’s just not going to happen, and it doesn’t. The people cheering you on in the background shouldn’t make a difference, it’s just noise. “Big pull, stay tight, c’mon!” None of that will help you in that moment, if you hear those people, it’s because your focus has left the lift and drifted off to whether or not you left the stove on at home (which you probably did, and your front door is unlocked too). I can’t say for sure what causes people to turn a potential lift into a heavy pull. I’ll give you my take on it…fear. A dictionary definition of fear is: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined. The first time you attempt to put your body weight over your head can instill panic, I get it, I experience it too. If you never get scared, cool story bro, become a guru and teach the rest of us your secret techniques. However, if you’ve felt like a child staring at a storm drain with a clown in it, and you want to be a successful Weightlifter, you’re going to have to get comfortable with that feeling. There comes a time where you have to acknowledge and set that fear aside, it has to be compartmentalized and fiddled around with later, but not when you’re standing in front of that barbell. If you’ve never been skydiving I highly recommend it, it’s a lot of fun. Some people can’t fathom jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, but you can never appreciate what fear is, and isn’t, until you do something that would make the average person squeeze their glutes tighter than a prison inmate in the shower. Same thing with Weightlifting, who in their right mind would take a bunch of weight and try to put it over their head. If you haven’t Snatched your own bodyweight, you’re still a beginner, you have a lot of room to grow (unless you’re 80 years old, even then, you’d be surprised). I’m not even going to comment if you aren’t able to Clean & Jerk bodyweight. I’ve seen some people that are really strong and have the mobility and technique to accomplish a bodyweight snatch, but one thing stops them, fear. I like to laugh at motivational quotes, especially cliché ones. “Feel the fear and go for it, ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself,’ ‘False Evidence Appearing Real.” If it helps you to see those quotes, and they drive your fear away, that’s good, whatever works for you. For the rest of us, you just have to pull like you’re trying to wrench the Devil out of hell and pray to Pyrros Dimas that you get under it. It could be, that you need a stronger mental attitude toward the whole idea of getting under the bar. What if you lifted like your life depended on it, like someone had a gun to your head? If that was the case, which would you fear more? How would you overcome your fear? I don’t have those answers for you, nobody is coming to lift it for you, you’re going to have to figure it out yourself. Find something though, it could even be nothing (like learning to clear your mind, aka mindfulness). Whatever you choose to motivate yourself to get under that bar, do it. As for me, I tell myself…Get under it, or die trying.

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How Bad Do You Want It, Really?

I was asked a question by an athlete recently. The question was, “What do you do when no matter how bad you want it, it doesn’t happen?” I watched the athlete step up to the barbell, set up their starting position, and go for the lift. There are times when no matter how much you psych yourself up, no matter how many people are cheering for you, no matter how many scoops of pre-workout you took, your ability to make it happen isn’t there. Sometimes, that’s just how it goes. A little later I thought more about what it means to really want it? I came to this conclusion, you don’t show how bad you want it when you step up to the barbell, it starts well before that. Sure, sometimes you can pull off a lift on sheer will but is that something you want to rely on when it really counts (like in competition). Beyond those rare moments, it starts in how many times you show up to the gym when you don’t feel like it. It’s in how much you push yourself in your training session and not checking your phone every 5 minutes. It’s in how well you eat, sleep, and commit to self-care. It’s in how much you’re willing to give up in exchange for an ounce of performance. When someone says they’re committed and will work harder than anyone else, I don’t care what they say, I pay attention to what they do. In the age of social media, I can tell if an athlete really means what they say. If they’re out on Saturday night, cracking a cold one with the boys, I know they don’t want it bad enough. When they spend the week eating junk food, barely making it to sessions, and skipping out on accessory work, I know they don’t want it bad enough. Words are wind, and I’m from the Show Me State (not really, but metaphorically). Athletes who don’t do the seemingly small things, don’t want it bad enough. It’s a way to make an excuse later on, to avoid personal responsibility. “Oh well, I gave it my best shot, and that’s all that matters. Next time.” Did you really give it your best though? An athlete has to be selfish, and they’re rarely satisfied with their performance, and a single-minded focus with a relentless pursuit of their objective is necessary to achieve something beyond mediocre. Mediocre effort will get you mediocre results. An athlete has to set aside life balance to achieve great results, and that applies to anything else in life that requires a lot of time and effort to achieve. Look at any historical figure or athlete that accomplished something great, and I’ll show you a person who shunned balance. When their teammates were out stuntin’ and flossin’ at the club, they stayed behind and kept practicing. They didn’t tell themselves they did their best, they gave their best, in and out of competition. Telling yourself you did your best with a mediocre effort is the equivalent of giving yourself a participation trophy. I’ve given myself that participation trophy, telling myself it didn’t go as planned, but I tried my best. Did I though? When you step up to the barbell, whether it’s in training or on the competition platform, is the wrong time to ask yourself how bad you want it. The time to ask yourself is when you need the self-discipline to avoid junk food and not have to nearly kill yourself to make weight, when you get an invite to drink yourself into a hangover, at the start of a training session, when you need to go to bed early, when you don’t feel like doing it. Those are the moments where saying you’re committed and showing you’re committed are separated. If you do as much as possible to set yourself up for success, you can be proud of your effort, no matter the result, because you can say with integrity that you really did give it your all. Ask yourself what kind of effort you have really given, leaving no room for excuses…How bad do you want it, really?

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You Missed A Lift, So What

How many lifts do you take during a session? During a week? During a month? During a year? Some people act like a missed lift is the end of the world. They start to pout, and each successive lift gets less and less intentional and you can see the inner toddler who isn’t getting their way start to emerge. They get defeated, start the negative self-talk, and pretty much start giving up. I’ve been that lifter before, hell, I’ve been that person in general. There is a point you have to reach, where you realize that kind of mentality isn’t productive. You have to learn to let it go, whether the lift was successful or not. Either the lift went over your head, or it didn’t, you can’t change the result after. You can’t change the past, and that lift is in the past. The lift you are about to attempt is the only one that matters, because that’s the one you have control over. No more pouting if your session isn’t going well. No more negative self-talk. No more giving up. You’ll get another chance. Treat a lift like your life depends on making it but remember that life goes on no matter the outcome. In the grand scheme of things, and the many reps you still have waiting for you…you missed a lift, so what.