Learning to Dance in the Rain

There are many lessons to learn in life. Nobody has the same story and no one deals with anything the exact same way. There are all these quotes and maxims out there to live by, but some are pretty contradicting. For example some people say “look before you leap,” while others say “he who hesitates is lost.” Confusing right? There’s a right time to use both depending on the situation and the person. What I’m trying to say here is that almost nothing is set in stone and when it comes down to it we make our own decisions.

The one thing I am sure of is that every life on this earth is filled with tragedy and suffering. Everyone dies; most likely you are going to lose loved ones at some point in your lifetime. Most likely you will have to deal with things you don’t want to deal with. As Rocky puts it, life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

The difference between the people who are successful and the people who sit at home depressed is how they react. Successful people realize that sometimes life sucks, but if you can find positivity and opportunity in the ugliest of days you can rise above it. If you can always find things to be thankful for,  you can rise above it. The people who sit around depressed are the ones who look at the suck and say “nothing good can come of this, and I can’t do anything about it.” They throw a pity party and hopelessly mope around for a couple of days.

I’ve been there, I’ve done that. What I am starting to realize is that life really is what you make it. No one will be there for you in the end, except yourself. Yes, you may have close friends and family who you can trust and are very supportive, but in the end they can’t make your decisions for you. Your life is completely up to you; the more situations that you are able to find opportunity and positivity in the better off you will be.

The most successful and happy people have lived tragic lives filled with repeated failures, setbacks, illnesses, deaths, etc... They all have one thing in common though, they’ve learned how to dance in the rain.

For the Love of the Sport

The bar stares me in the face. It is cold, rough, and stiff as I place my calloused hands around it. Today I will do the same thing I have done everyday for the past year: snatch and clean & jerk.

I do some box jumps and and a couple double unders to get the blood pumping to my legs. The room is cool, with some chill music playing softly in the background. It’s just another day at the gym.

After stretching and warming up I slide on my high knee socks that will protect my shins from the wrath of the bar, and next my bright red adidas shoes. I tape my thumbs, tighten my wrist wraps, and slather chalk all over my hands. My coach threatens to make me clean the gym, so I put down the chalk bucket and get ready to lift.

Starting with the tens I do a couple quick reps. This is my chance to fix any technical errors before the bar gets heavy. As the weight goes up, I have to get into more of a routine before each lift. I take a sip of water, chalk my hands, shrug my shoulders, and stomp my feet out as if catching an imaginary bar. My hands grip the bar and my back tightens. There is no doubt in my mind that I will make this lift. I raise my head and find a focal point to stare at.

Shoulders tight, back tight, and heels pushing hard against the floor I start to pull the bar. The bar doesn’t want to move, so I add more force. The bar scrapes my shins and out-turned knees on its way up. It gets to my hip crease, and I hesitate a second longer before I begin the second pull under the bar. The bar is motionless; it sits in the air right where I left it.

My feet move out with a bang and I dive under the bar to catch. My chest is parallel with the wall and my shoulders are flexed. The bar is solid in my grip and I will not let it go. As I stand up I let out a breath relief. The bar stays above me a second longer, before I slam it to the ground with a satisfied grin on my face. My coach walks over and gives me a high five before telling me what I need to fix for next time.

The battle continues everyday with that barbell. It never gets lighter, I just get stronger. Some days the bar defeats me and I leave with my head hanging low. Some days I reign victorious, beating my own personal records and doing what I never imagined I could. Either way, every time I walk out of the gym I leave motivated to be better the next day.

Weightlifting is a metaphor for life. The whole point is to overcome obstacles and better yourself in the process. The goal isn’t to know everything, or to be able to lift all the weights in the world; the goal is find your physical and mental limits then to push past them!

It is a lifelong pursuit to become the greatest you can be.

Bomber Strong: Scott Safe on High School Weightlifting

Liz - interviewer

Scott - interviewee

So how long have you been in the sport of Olympic Weightlifting?

I think 18 years. Longer with powerlifting, but for weightlifting I think 18.

So you have a big powerlifting background then?

That’s what I was. I was a powerlifter, then I converted to weightlifting because that was much better for athletics. My kids were coming up and I wanted them to do what was the best, so that’s when I made the switch.

How did you get involved in the high school weightlifting program?

We started it. I knew that when my kids were coming up I wanted them to have fun with weightlifting in a high school environment. So when my son, Nathan, and I were deer hunting one year, we were talking about this sitting in the woods, and I said “We’re going to make this weightlifting association up with high schools,” and he thought “Yeah, that’d be cool dad,” and that’s actually how it started. So I got with Roger Sydecki, and the NSCA (Scott Sully), the NFC people, and the USA weightlifting people. We called a meeting, and I said I wanted to run these high school meets, it would be for high school only, with high school state championships. They all kind of laughed at me, but said “Yeah, lets try.” That was the start of it, and I think this is the seventeenth high school state championships. That was seventeen years ago, and that’s kind of how it started.

So, just follow your dreams then right?

It was! It was something where we just had a plan and it worked out.

Can you tell me more about the program? Like how often are the meets and more about the season.

The meets start in December, after volleyball and football are finished. We like to be finished before track and baseball get started. So we’re kind of a winter sport. We follow the model of Texas with powerlifting and that, but the reason they did that is because more high school coaches are accepting of that. We’re not interfering with their sport seasons too bad, we’re just taking up one sports season, and that’s the one we picked; the winter.

How does this program benefit the students?

Physically, weightlifting is by far the best and as an athlete I think mentally it’s awesome. It’s all about hitting PRs (personal records), and building self-esteem. All kinds of good character-building things. Weightlifting is good in many ways, so I think it’s a beautiful program for kids.

Do you have any ideas for how to spread the program to other schools?

We try every year to bring new schools in, and so we’re always talking to schools. Not just myself, but Scott Sully does, a lot of guys do. Also now USA weightlifting is flying me around and we are going to other states trying to build the same kind of program in hopefully all 50 states. We need to get more weightlifters.

What do you see for the future of the program?

It’s very bright. I don’t think many people know how cool it is, but they’re finding out and as they find out, for every good experience that a youngster has that youngster and his parents tell other people. So I think the future is very bright, it’s a great sport that not enough people know about.

How do you think we could make it more entertaining?

Part of that is that we just need it to continue to grow like it is now. Nationally, weightlifting is growing because of the influx of crossfitters. That helps because there’s more interest, more money, more gear, and more people doing it. The more people do it, the more they like it, so it’s kind of like the chicken and the egg. You don’t grow unless you got more people, but you don’t get more people unless you grow. We’re kind of in that, but I think every time we can hook another school in, we bring another whole group of people; parents, kids, coaches, etc. I think we need to continue to just keep on doing that.

Any ideas to get weightlifting on the media?

The entertainment part is a good question. That’s a toughie, because we still need to get through six attempts with everybody. Cooler singlets are fun, people like that. Streaming live, like today, so people can watch from home is good. It’s a long day and I don’t think we can ever get away from that totally, because everybody gets six attempts. They need their six attempts. That is something we have to keep working on though; figuring out how to make it more acceptable to the TV audience.

Last question, what’s the most important thing in weightlifting?

Desire. If you’re really going to be the top of the top certainly there’s a tremendous amount of just physical talent. At the very very top of the heap you do need a big amount of talent, but I think passion more than anything. People with a lot of passion for it, they continue to train even when they don’t get maxes. You just keep on and keep on. I think passion is #1.

 The Cannon Falls weightlifting team. Each one medaled at the
 state championships. Coach Scott Safe is pictured to the far left.

Scott says none of his lifters are pure weightlifters, most of them participate in other sports such as volleyball, football, and basketball. If you are interested in the high school weightlifting program go to www.mnweightlifting.org.

You Are Good Enough

What is that feeling that leads so many people to depression, cutting, eating disorders, bullying, suicide, drinking, abusing sex, and drugs? We all know it, we’ve all felt it before. It’s made us feel tiny, unwanted, and unloved.

It’s the feeling of not being good enough.

It comes from the pain of our past, the fear of our future. We were abused, misused, misled, misunderstood. No one cared. We were rejected. We were forgotten and we were yelled at for our mistakes and our differences. There is so much pain and hurt inside all of us.

Pain is inevitable.

In this life you will feel pain. Loved ones will die, parents will divorce. Things do go wrong at some point. The thing with pain though, is that you can carry it around with you, weighing you down or you can let it go and recalculate your path in life.

The first step to letting go, as Natasha Bedingfield would put it, is to open up your dirty window. Realize that the past is the past, there’s nothing you can do to erase it. Most people run from their past, letting it define who they are and how they act. There is another path, that is much more difficult, it will lead you to happiness.

Let go of your past and learn from your mistakes.

Stop running. Just stop. Take a second and think; what can I do in this moment to become a better person and lead a better life? Take all the lessons that you have learned, all the experiences that you have gone through and let them help you make better decisions in your future. Embrace who you are, your imperfections and all. Somebody loves you.

I just want you to know that you are good enough.