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The Last Snatch

I sit there with my eyes closed and I can’t hear anything, it’s like I’ve gone temporarily deaf. I can still feel though, and when I reopen my eyes the movement around me is just a blur of figures moving back and forth, and all I feel is the coldness of the chair against my back and glutes. I’ve done all my warmup attempts and I’ve missed my opener twice, this is my last chance, I’m not thinking about it, but I know it. My body is warm, and nothing hurts, so that’s a plus, but I need this last lift to make a total. Coach says something to me, and it sounds like a mumble, all I know is I’m up to lift. I stand up, the clock hasn’t started yet because the loaders are putting the final touches on the barbell for my last Snatch attempt. Then my hearing comes back like the crack of breaking branch in a still forest, my name is called along with the weight that’s waiting for me on the barbell. 

I pass through the dark heavy curtains that separate the stage from the back and the brightness of the light is nearly blinding. An ocean of faces watching as I approach the steps to the stage and the platform, and my heart quickens its pace just a little bit. I take the executioners steps up to the platform and make a pit stop at the chalk saucer, bathing my hands in the powdery white substance I trust to help keep my grip on the bar. I look at the barbell as I set the grip enhancing block of dust back in its resting place and I think to myself “It’s just me and you.” My body turns to face the platform and I take a few steps and stop directly behind the platform and line myself up with the barbell, I take a deep breath and step onto the planks of solid wood that make up the square of space I have to perform my lift on. 

Light shines brightly on the space I am occupying, and even though I know the crowd and center judge are in front of me, I can only see the edges and outlines of them. I step up to the barbell and I look above the crowd, searching for a spot to fix my gaze once I have the barbell overhead, then I return my eyes to the bar. I line up my feet with a measured, practiced, distance from the bar, then I reach down and put my right hand on the knurling just outside the ring, then the same with the left. I feel the chalk and the metal fasten to each other like a quick drying glue as I synch my thumb around the bar with my middle and pointer fingers. I sit in a squat with my chest and eyes up looking again for the spot I chose earlier. I raise myself up and bring my hips high into the air, but my chest is dropped so I can lean over and take one last large breath before I go. In this moment, there is nothing, only silence. 

No fear, no joy, no doubt, no worry, only bottled aggression and the tingle of nervous energy coursing through my body. “I got this.” I take a final slow breath into my belly, then up into my lungs, then hold it against my abs like a self-inflicted bear hug. I lower my hips and flex my back as I quickly set my start position to take out any slack and then I push against the floor with my both my feet. The bar leaves its resting place and picks up speed as it orbits my body like a rocket ship about to slingshot using a planet’s gravity. No thoughts enter or exit, only action, the action of a movement performed hundreds of times. I’m pushing as hard as I can against the floor like an inverted leg press and as my legs reach the fullness of their length, I begin to use my arms to propel myself back to the ground as the bar continues its upward motion.

CRACK! My feet connect with the platform as I press with all my might against gravity and the falling weight. I’ve pulled myself into the full depth of my squat with the weight locked out overhead, my eyes fixed on the spot I found earlier. No time passes between the bottom and starting to stand as I trust my legs to drive the weight and my body away from the floor. As I stand to my full height, a sense of relief begins to wash over me like a warm ocean wave. I wait for just a second until I see the blinding little down signal displays and the weight of the world comes falling down as I guide the barbell down from its overhead flight. The journey of the weight ends with a concussive thud and the barbell rolls to a stop. I turn and wait for the decision of the judges, 3 white lights as I step down and off the stage…

…I open my eyes, and I hear my name being called to take my final attempt to make a total, my last Snatch. “I got this.”

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The Importance of Routine

Routine

For a lot of people there is a certain amount of disdain for the routines of a well ordered life. They worry about feeling caught in a rut, or are bored when faced with doing the same things again and again, but they are missing some of the bigger picture. Do you have to be an automaton and forgo any plan that doesn’t directly fit into your routine? No. However, if you want to really get the most out of your training there is a certain amount of discipline involved. You don’t need to go crazy with your planning but there are some things that you should hold as non-negotiable parts of your daily plan, your routine.  The routine can take many shapes, and is not one size fits all. Some may need far more structure, others may need more of an outline to get things moving into the right direction. Either way, here are some things you should take into account when planning your routine.

Where to begin

The first thing I would look at when planning your routine is what time of day and days of the week you will be training. I think that it is important for you to choose a set schedule for your training days, and keep that schedule as constant as you can week to week. For instance if you train Monday-Thursday and Saturday, try to keep that Friday and Sunday as your rest days for the remainder of the cycle. It’s not the end of the world if you need to change things up, but your body will settle into the habit the more consistently you stick to a schedule and getting outside of that groove can feel a little odd. Personally I feel a bit off trying to train on a Sunday for instance. Time of day is also an important factor, generally speaking people tend to lift better in the late afternoon or evening, so this is when I would advise you to set up your training. The other important factor in time of day is the availability of your coach. If the coached practice is from 4pm-8pm, if you have any interest in getting feedback on what you are doing it would behoove you to train when coaching is available. And now you have a training schedule, from here we can move onto structuring things around it.  

Do you even job

Clearly, the second most important thing is going to be whatever it is that pays the bills while you do all of this weightlifting. Your job will and does impact your training, and that must be taken into account. If you work a swing shift, or spend most if not the whole day in a seated position, we have to take that into account when building up your routine. If you are working long hours and missing out on sleep it may be best for you to follow a three day per week program, to ensure that you are actually recovering from the training you are doing. If you spend all your time at work sitting or driving (me) you are going to need to budget some more time for warmup and mobility to make sure that you are actually getting into the proper positions when you are making your way through that days session. Everyone need not put their lifting at the absolute front of the priority list, but for those who wish to lift at the highest level there will come a time when it will be optimal to pick a job that works around your lifting schedule. If your job is robbing you of sleep, or is wearing down your body, you have to make the hard choice and make lifting the first priority.

Other things

Now that we know when we are training and working we can now piece together the rest of the daily routine. First and foremost, it is important to schedule your sleep in order to perform optimally in the gym and ya know, just not feel like garbage all the time. For strength athletes it is recommended that they sleep for eight to ten hours per night and never drop below seven, for optimal recovery. This means you have to go to bed, and early. Dial back the Netflix and catch up with your shows on the weekend, sleeping should be a priority. You’ll notice that with that nine hours of sleep, eight of work and two of training we have already eaten up much of the day. This is why it is important to prepare the majority of your meals ahead of time, make sure to have a meal before and after training, and that you are not leaving performance on the sidelines by under eating calories or protein. I may be biased, as I am woefully inflexible, but I believe it is important to do 20-30 minutes of flexibility work every day. I choose to do this before bed, but it can just as easily be performed directly following training. Stretching relaxes you, can help reduce injury risk, and is important if you would like to stay ambulatory as you age.  

Conclusion

I can see why people hate the routine, it can seem daunting and most of all boring. Nobody wants to be boring, but nobody wants to be weak either. The hours you spend in the gym are important, that is where you hone your skills in the lifts, and generate enough fatigue to induce an adaptation within the body. However, if the only thing you have down is making into the gym, and are not making sure that you have the rest of your schedule set up in a way to facilitate the recovery from your workouts you are shooting yourself in the foot. You do not have to lock yourself up, blow off all your friends and family, and become a meal prepping hermit. But if you want the most out of your training you may want to start turning down Wednesday night happy hour, and get to bed early. You may want to save some minutes by cooking ahead of time rather than making dinner every night, so you can have some time to stretch before bed. Make a schedule or an outline and try to stick with it, the more consistent this plan the more consistent your training will be. Weightlifting is hard, there is no need to make it harder by failing to plan.

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Love and Weightlifting

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love, but I’m cynical about it. On one hand, love is a driving factor for a lot of the population. Find somebody to love, all we need is love, do what you love, love yourself, love conquers all. First let’s delve into what happens when you fall in love with someone or something.

You get that first taste of something new, something different, something that sparks that fire of existence within. When it’s a person, you feel elated in their presence, colors seem brighter, you laugh a little easier, they can do no wrong and you want to spend every moment you can with them. You spend a lot of time learning about them, what they like, what their favorite style of coffee and eggs are, trying to love them in as many ways as possible. When it’s an activity, let’s say Weightlifting, you do the same thing, minus the coffee and eggs. You want to know as much as possible about it, do it as often as possible, try to excel at it. The PRs are continually rolling in and you are addicted to the feeling of getting stronger. This is the point in time your friends and relatives think you’re insane or it’s just a phase. This is what I refer to as the honeymoon stage, it typically lasts around 2 years, but often less. When that stage ends, and it does end, that’s when the real work begins.

I’m sure you’ve come across them, the couples that have left that honeymoon stage. They don’t hold hands anymore. They start to get annoyed at small things like which way the toilet paper faces (and yes, there is a correct direction). That cute thing they used to do now gets on your nerves so fast you can barely keep yourself from kicking them down a flight of stairs. Arguments start to bleed through the cracks of conversations. While you can’t really argue with a barbell, the frustration still sets in. You’ve learned a lot, so much you can explain it well to people and get annoyed when they still ask you how much you bench. You’ve gotten good at it, good enough to decently compete. At this point, you’ve done it so much it becomes second nature, bordering automatic. You have a routine, and a small part of you thinks it’s becoming monotonous. It starts to get more difficult to PR and it’s probable you’ve acquired some nagging injuries, or reoccurring problems that make Weightlifting a little less enjoyable. I like to refer to this stage as the drop off or burnout.

After the drop off, it can go a variety of ways. Some decide to have children to add a new dynamic to the relationship, some visit that store that has no windows with all the weird rubber toys to spice things up. This is the point where people start cheating or getting distant, they just want something different, or they feel like other people have it better. This is where things really are routine, there isn’t a lot of variation or excitement. Weightlifting has become an uphill climb with a backpack loaded with a 100kg boulder. You still show up though, but you haven’t hit a PR in a year, and you don’t see the next one in sight. You may have experienced a setback because you neglected something or got careless and ended up injured. You wonder if it’s still worth it, if that’s as far as you can go with it. You’re putting in a lot of work for little results, and the thought of moving on to something else starts to occur over and over. Somewhere deep down you don’t feel the same way you used to, but you’ve invested so much time, so a decision has to be made to keep going or throw in the towel. Showing up isn’t the hard part anymore, wanting to stay is. I refer to this stage as the grind.

The grind is the hardest thing to endure, because it isn’t glamorous. This is where that choice to stay is solidified. You have to start choosing to love that person, in spite of their flaws and annoying habits. You put in effort, and learn not to expect reciprocation, you love them anyway. It’s no different with Weightlifting. You get to a point where you choose to do it, whether you get a PR or not, because it matters to you more than a number on the bar, and you love it. What people don’t realize is that love is an action, not a feeling. If you depend on other people to hype you up, what happens when they aren’t there. If a PR is all that keeps you going, what happens when you’re older and you’ve reached or passed the limits of your potential. If you never got a PR again, would you still do it? Sometimes priorities change, and you leave, and you can come back, but don’t expect it to be the same, love rarely happens the same way twice. So what do I really think about love…falling in love isn’t always a choice, staying in love is.

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This is Your Hamster Wheel

The Problem

First things first, we have to acknowledge the unnatural insanity of our modern world. Our species evolved as tribes of hunter gatherers, living communally, and working only enough to secure our next meal, on average around twenty hours a week. The rest of our time was spent within the community building relationships, playing, talking, and watching the stars. As we have progressed, we have piled on more and more work and removed a lot of our involvement in our communities. We may have split the atom and increased communication via the internet, but our needs as individuals haven’t really changed. We need physical activity, meaningful work, and a community to fit into. We can see the sickness of our current state when we see the various forms of tribalism manifesting themselves in our lives today.  We are in essence a wild animal, caged in a society that barley fulfills our needs, and projects its heightened value of personal possession onto us. The memes that have replicated themselves throughout our societies are those that prize things over meaning. We live in a world where we value our possessions more than finding real contentment in our lives.

What do we do?

At least once a week I find myself in traffic, and I am punched straight in the face by the absurdity of my daily routine. Why do I really need to go through these motions every week, are they really helping me achieve a life of true meaning? Am I being an authentic human being? In those moments I have the strong urge to check out, and run away to live a simple life as  Henry David Thoreau did at Walden Pond. But let’s be realistic. We cannot simply opt out of our caged existence, we have people who count on us, things we want to accomplish, new seasons of Game of Thrones to look forward to. We have to make our cage more enjoyable. We’ve all seen videos of wild animals in third rate zoos, sitting in their concrete cells, looking miserable. That is essentially where we are living today, disconnected, locked into mundane jobs, eating poor quality food, making money for our corporate masters. We need to spruce up our zoo, and enrich our environment.

Weightlifting

Animals are happiest when they have playthings in their environment, others to interact with, and a life that somewhat resembles their natural habitat. As human beings we can do this in a variety of ways, however I’m going to talk specifically about how we can use our time within the walls of the gym to enrich our lives. This is our hamster wheel, an approximation of the physicality, play and community that we’ve lost to modernity. When you are a part of a team you get more than the mere physical activity you could at a twenty four hour fitness center, you get a tribe. A group with common goals, struggling and celebrating together, becomes a family. The interactions you have with your team in real time gives us personal interactions that the social media age has taken from us.  Our training sessions are group play, serious play, but play nonetheless.

Physical achievements help to build our confidence, and give us something to look forward to that gets us through the nine to five grind most of us have to deal with. They give us the strength to overcome the absurdity, a mental toughness that has to be earned in a world where we expect so much to be given to us. We can restructure our lives to maximize these real experiences that require you to be both physically and mentally present. The material world won’t understand this adjustment, for it does nothing to get you a better wardrobe, or nicer objects. But the depth of meaning is there, we are enriching our cage, making our lives more fulfilling which in the end is what matters. The relationships and strength you form within the walls of the gym will be carried with you wherever life takes you. Spit into the face of society and do your own thing; only we can decide what is truly important.      

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Weightlifting and the 5 Second Rule

There’s a lot of thinking in Weightlifting, and there really shouldn’t be, at least not while you’re performing a lift. The discussion of corrections and technique should happen between lifts, internalized by the Lifter, and executed when the barbell is in their hands. Part of this falls on the coach, don’t give a Lifter too many things to think about, or they end up looking like a computer with a hundred browser tabs open. Snatches are already difficult enough without having to think about: keeping the chest up, keeping the bar close, staying balanced, relaxing the arms, fully extending, pulling under, moving the feet, punching up to lock the bar in place, standing up after gaining control. It’s more confusing than trying to put together a piece of IKEA furniture. That’s why we drill, and lift, and practice over and over until things become nearly automatic. Here’s the problem, when the weights start to get a little out of your comfort zone you start to hesitate, and doubt, and…think.

I’ve seen so many people do it time after time. They’re rolling through a workout and the warmup reps look solid. They keep going up and eventually reach working weights. Things could go either way at this point depending on the percentages. If the percentages are on the lighter side, no problem, you’re comfortable with those weights. You’re cruising down a familiar street you’ve been down a thousand times. Things start to fall apart when the percentages are high or you’re going for a heavy single/1RM. Now you’re in an unfamiliar neighborhood in the middle of the night with shadows scurrying in and out of alley ways. You don’t set up the same way when it starts to get heavier, why? Nothing changed, you just added a little more weight on the bar. That high percentage or the pressure of making a PR causes you to talk yourself out of even giving the lift a good attempt. You scare yourself with all that extra thinking, that’s a main reason people Clark lifts. I really hate when people Clark the bar, if I see it happen and it’s my call, they are done, time to move on.

Weightlifting is ritualistic for many people. They set up a certain way. Some people scream like banshees or slap themselves as hard as a person belly flopping off a diving board. Most people don’t do it for the warmup, it’s usually an attempt to psych themselves up for heavier lifts. Therein lies the problem, it’s no longer in your comfort zone, you feel like you need something extra to be successful. There is nothing wrong with trying to amp yourself up, just don’t take forever to do it. I’ve watched people set up for a lift, then take twice as long as they normally would to initiate the lift. Then they miss, and act like that was going to happen all along. They sit there letting the doubt creep in, they are talking to themselves, bargaining even. It’s not something they feel like doing, because they don’t want to fail, so they reluctantly try it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So how do you fix it?

Let me introduce you to the 5 Second Rule. No, I’m not talking about picking up and eating the food that fell on the floor 5 seconds ago, although that might be a discussion at some point if you still do it. I’m talking about the 5 second rule that a woman named Mel Robbins talks about. I heard about this rule a while ago and started implementing it in my life in as many areas as I could, including Weightlifting. The rule is this: When something pops into your head that requires an action, do it within 5 seconds. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy. It’s a tool that you have to become familiar with using, and it only works if you apply it, and it can be applied to anything and everything. Want to drink more water, get up and go fill a bottle, within 5 seconds of thinking it. See a person and want to ask them on a date, do it within 5 seconds of thinking about it. Thinking about sending a text to check up on a friend, take Nike’s advice and Just Do It. Action is the cornerstone of getting anything done. You’re rarely going to feel like doing things, but you don’t have to listen to that voice, you can act in spite of that feeling. Weightlifting requires action, obviously.

That hesitation, that conversation that you have with yourself when you’re about to attempt a lift, isn’t helping you. You only need to act, lift the barbell. 5 seconds, that’s all you should give yourself. Don’t sit there with your butt raised in the air like a stink beetle for 15 seconds. Don’t close your eyes for 20 seconds as the clock ticks away and you try to convince yourself you can do it. Do that when you’re resting between sets. Only action is required when you’re set up and ready to go, just as you would with any other lift that’s lighter than the one you’re attempting. If the 5 second rule doesn’t work for you, the problem is not the rule, it’s that you don’t want to change. You have to face the unknown, step out of your comfort zone, try something new, and risk failure. 5 seconds, that’s it. What are you waiting for?