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.
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.
Podcast Episode 7
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?
Podcast Episode 3
Lift Between Anarchy and Order
People have a tendency to divide things into categories, it just makes the world around us more manageable. Most of the time, these categories are pairs of opposing perceptions. Good and Evil, Yin and Yang, Logical and Creative, Anarchy and Order. The brain itself is divided into two hemispheres, one geared toward the logical and systematic, the other toward the creative and chaotic. The place that exists between those categories is what people refer to as balance. Balance is what most people strive for, in almost any category you can think of. Order in a good sense creates rules, laws, structure, and a system to thrive in. Order as a downside is strict routine, absolute uniformity, and paperwork. Chaos in a good sense is creating a piece of art, visiting a new place, trying a new food, learning, growth. The downside of Chaos is uncertainty, the darkness in an unlit parking lot, the wreck on the side of the road, drinking too much coffee before heavy squats. On that note, let’s bring Weightlifting into the picture.
Weightlifting requires balance. Not just physical balance, but mental and emotional balance as well. You must find the place between Anarchy and Order and plant your feet on each side. Grayson has this cue for the Split Jerk, “50/50.” When he says it, he means to have equal balance between both feet, front and back, both legs bearing weight in an even manner. I think this is applicable for the entirety of Weightlifting, not just the Split Jerk. On one side you have Order. Order is following the program, at the prescribed percentages, reps, and sets, predictability. Order is doing the accessory work and stretching. Order is sleeping and eating enough to optimize performance. Too much order will cause boredom, burnout, and the look that assembly line workers used to have in the Industrial Revolution. On the other side is Anarchy. Anarchy isn’t really in our control, but when a small portion is, it’s living on the wild side, YOLO (You Only Lift Once), and doing handstands in a truck stop bathroom (probably for Instagram). Anarchy is adding a little more weight than was prescribed, going for an extra rep, full effort maxing out, testing your limits. Anarchy at the far end is losing all emotional control after lifts don’t go the way you want them to, hoping that pain in (name a body part) doesn’t turn into an injury, jumping straight to a working weight without warming up, taking 4 scoops of pre-workout.
Weightlifting requires you to ride the line if you want to know what your potential is. Too much Order and you’ll be scared to try a heavier weight, because Order brings comfort, and you won’t grow much being comfortable. With just enough Order, you will be disciplined enough to keep yourself calm when you miss, get enough sleep and eat what you need to, and make sure there is enough time for accessory work, stretching, and recovery. Too much Anarchy and you’ll end up in one of those fitness fails videos, because Anarchy is unpredictable, and what you don’t know (or aren’t aware of) can be really dangerous. With just enough Anarchy, you can push out fear and doubt with an appropriate bit of reckless abandon, and you can test yourself maximally. I can’t tell you where that line is for you, but I’ll tell you how I found mine. When I come into the gym to train, I know what I need to do already, I’ve already looked at what’s in store for me. I know what numbers I am supposed to hit for the amount of reps and sets, and how tired I am going to be once I’m done. I’ve already done the entire training session in my mind. I follow a routine for my warmup, and my body knows when I start that warmup, I am going to be putting heavy things over my head. That is Order. Sometimes things don’t go as planned, or I have to make adjustments. I could have gotten less sleep than I thought I needed, or maybe I ate too many slices of pizza the night before. The percentage I was supposed to work up to felt too easy or too heavy, I’ll round up or round down. I have a little pain in my hip and shoulder, I make a choice to keep going or allow myself some rest. This is the most weight I’ve ever attempted on this lift, PR time, I’ve got this. That is Anarchy. This applies emotionally as well. Too much Order in your emotions and you won’t know when to let loose the rage and fury that sets in when someone is walking really slow in front of you, you’ll just Clark the bar and tell yourself it was too heavy to get under it fast enough. Too much Anarchy and you’ll punch a wall or end up crying in a corner. Find the line. The line in which lies a calm and controlled lift executed with the ferocity of a mother pulling a car off her child trapped underneath. Lift between Anarchy and Order.
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.
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.
We Are All Sisyphus: Weightlifting and the Absurd
Our would be mascot at Albuquerque Strength Academy is the infamous Sisyphus. The story of Sisyphus begins at the end of his life, wishing to postpone his journey to the underworld he developed a scheme. Sisyphus tricked the god Hades, and having bound him, left him in a closet within his home. When the gods discovered what had happened, they were furious. They sentenced him to an eternity of rolling an enormous boulder to the peak of a mountain, only to watch it roll down to the base and the process began anew. His eternal afterlife was to toil and strain only to accomplish nothing in the end, adding to the madness of his sentence. Imagine yourself in this position, exerting yourself day after day in a never ending loop, knowing full well that at the end of the day that boulder will once again be at the bottom of the mountain. If you are a weightlifter you already know this feeling all too well.
The Absurd
It is natural for us as human beings to seek meaning in the universe, you want to believe that what you do matters in a real way. Our time on this earth is short, and our pursuit of meaning is a way to make our inevitable demise seem less frightening. But the universe doesn’t care that you are scared, and the world as we know it is chaotic and lacks any true objective meaning. This clash between our pursuit of meaning and the lack of our ability to find it in any measurable way is what is referred to as the absurd. Trying to find meaning in a meaningless world. The use of Sisyphus as a metaphor, by Albert Camus, for the absurd is what draws me to him as an icon. In a world without purpose, we are all like Sisyphus. Working day after day, knowing deep down that in the end what we are doing lacks meaning.
At first this realization can be met with despair, and leave you feeling like there is no reason to continue with the futility of our modern lives, but don’t you worry. If nothing matters, we are free do determine our own meaning for the world, giving ourselves our own purpose. You don’t have to listen to the herd and blend in, you can choose your own path. A path that gives your life meaning and isn’t dependent on the universe giving you anything. The idea is Sisyphus, knowing his task is meaningless, chooses to spite the gods by enjoying the details of his work.
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”- Albert Camus
And so must we find the things in our daily struggle that we can enjoy, the feeling of the chalk on our hands, the weight of the bar on our backs, the numbness in our faces after a heavy lift, all forming a world. In this way we can live in our present moment, and choose what gives us meaning on a personal basis.
Weightlifting
The most obvious connection to Sisyphus is how his struggle relates directly to the challenges of daily training. Success in Weightlifting is fleeting at best, and if you are seeking happiness through only your results, your satisfaction will be short lived. We train, three to five days per week for weeks on end, for the chance to spend six minutes on the platform. Holding our achievements over our heads for the fraction of a second needed to get a down signal, only to watch them fall to the ground once again. To someone on the outside it may seem futile to work as hard as we do, day after day, seeming to get little to nothing in return. However, we lifters know the truth. It is not the weight being overhead that matters in the end, it is the process that gives us meaning day to day.
Meaning
Sometimes the world seems bleak, unfair, and devoid of meaning. Like many people, I occasionally struggle with depression. Before I found Weightlifting I frequently felt adrift and lost, having nothing to pour myself into. I won’t say that after training I never struggle with despair, but in those moments having time focused on Weightlifting has been more meaningful than I can express. Those times when it is just you and the bar, everything else fades away, and for a moment all that exists is the next lift. The universe won’t provide me a meaning, so I choose that meaning to be a pursuit of physical strength, and helping others to find the sense of fulfillment I find in the training process. Don’t worry yourself about what the herd tells you is important, they are no more right than anyone. While our passion may seem arbitrary, tedious, and meaningless from the outside, we know that every atom of that barbell creates a world. We create our own meaning. We create our own happiness.