Mental Toughness in Weightlifting

Mental toughness is a must to be successful in Olympic Weightlifting. If you let fear seep into your mind before you lift that barbell there is a 99% chance you will miss it. A weak mental game causes injuries and “kills more dreams than failure ever will.” (Suzy Kassem)

Honestly if you want to succeed in the sport of weightlifting, resilience (mental strength in any situation) is a must. Accidents happen, but if you are prepared for them they can’t shake you. What if you forget your lifting shoes? What if the competition doesn’t have chalk? 

Here are some things to do periodically (but not too often) to keep your mental game in check:

• Lift in regular tennis shoes
• Train without any chalk
• Turn the music off
• Vary your rest times (in a competition who knows how long you’ll be waiting?)
• Lift at different times of day
• Train with distractions (like noisy football players)
• Share a platform with different people
• Know yourself

Learning to lift without your weightlifting shoes or buckets of chalk, and knowing how your body is going to react will prepare you for the obstacles you may encounter in your weightlifting career. Avoid failure by setting yourself up for success.

Kahi 160kg snatch in sandals

don't be a quitter

I grasped the frigid handle of the front door and swung it open. The first thing that caught my eye was a group of athletes upside down against the wall. They would kick up sporadically then flop down after a sweat inducing 30 seconds of attempting to breath upside down. My gymnastics years flashed back to me, I recalled myself doing 2-3 minute handstand holds and spending countless hours practicing the perfect handstand in my basement. My goal was always to get a strict press to handstand, but that goal was immediately abandoned after I messed up my wrist. 

Back to the handstands, these athletes were finishing their warm up and I had arrived just barely in time for the workout. They finished their handstands and we all grudgingly pulled out an one hundred pound assault bike from where they were lined up like an army against the wooden boxes that have wreaked havoc on many people’s shins. After the assault bikes were all lined up in the middle of the room the clock started counting down.

Our coach shouted, “3, 2, 1, GO!” so we started pedaling fiercely as if in a race against time. We had 14 minutes and 59 seconds left on that bike. As if these 15 torturous minutes weren’t enough, I made the stupid mistake of letting myself slip one negative thought through my mind. At first it was one, “You could of done those handstands if you hadn’t hurt your wrist,” but then it kept getting worse; “You are so stupid, you missed out on an entire year of opportunities because of one mistake. You ruined everything, and I bet if you had both wrists healthy you could make this bike go a lot faster.” Soon enough I had tears welling in my eyes and I let my feet off the pedals. Someone encouraged me to get moving, so I took a deep breath and tried to get a handle on my thoughts. Positive: “You can still bike, you can run and squat, all things happen for a reason, this is making you a stronger athlete mentally.”

The entire workout was like a teeter totter, my mind running back and forth between optimism and narcissism. When it was finally over I was proud to call out my results and I realized that I didn’t do that bad compared to two handed people. I’m not saying comparison is good by any means, but in all honesty it reassured me that I am at an okay place in my training and that I’m not losing athleticism even though I can’t work out at 100% physically.

I felt like giving up, I really did. I was already planning what I was going to do with all my free time that would no longer be spent at the gym, but then a quote by Lance Armstrong reminded me, “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or even a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” I’d rather have a handicapped arm for a year than to live in the presence of failure for the rest of my life.

Every so often days like these occur and that’s when I really have to tune in and focus on being positive. There are always going to be days when we feel like quitting, and things just aren’t going right. Those are the days that we have to take a step back and get real with ourselves. Is it really as bad as it seems? If so what can we do to fix it? Sometimes the answer is to just keep showing up. Eventually the downer days will lead up to a day or a week where we feel stronger than ever, where each rep is effortless.

I’m really looking forward to that week and I hope it happens soon, but in the meantime I guess this means I need to suck it up and keep moving forward. :)

Photo Creds:

https://www.facebook.com/649492038474180/photos/pb.649492038474180.-2207520000.1416023427./706479106108806/?type=3&theater

http://www.pinterest.com/tashanixoxo/weightlifting/

Mentality for a Tough Day

  Here’s a mental approach for any challenging task in your life. It works for diet, it works for back squats, it works for long runs too. It doesn’t involve willpower, and even if it did you wouldn’t notice it. So here it is: JUST ONE MORE!

One more rep, one more mile, one more step, one more minute, one more hour, one more day, one more year. Just one more good decision can lead to an entire day of good decisions and likewise so can a bad decision. Basically it is an approach that doesn’t let you give up on yourself unless you want to experience the shame and guilt of failure. I say it doesn’t involve willpower, and here’s an example: you really want to eat a cookie, but you know you shouldn’t so you tell yourself “Oh, just one more hour until I can have the cookie.” But by the time an hour is up you’ve already forgotten about the cookie, so you won’t have to exercise that muscle they call “willpower.”

I have found that this mentality extremely effective so far in many aspects of my life. I dare you to try it and see what happens!