Tag: Strength

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.