AN OFTEN FORGOTTEN FORMULA FOR WEIGHTLIFTING SUCCESS
MAKING LIFTS + PERSONAL BESTS + HAVING FUN:
THE KEY TO COMPETITION SUCCESS AND LONG TERM PARTICIPATION

We recently took our athletes to a local competition in the Orlando area, the Coach Mac Memorial. The Coach Mac Memorial is a USA Weightlifting sanctioned event that we hold annually in March in Florida to honor the memory of Florida's long time coaching expert and weightlifting promoter and advocate, the late Bill McDaniel.

As such, the turnout is usually great and the competition very spirited, with athletes of all sizes, shapes, ages and talent level competing in an open format.

Watching the competition over a span of 9 hours this past Saturday, I was reminded of the importance of an often-referred to, but often forgotten, aspect of coaching tactics, the goal of making successful lifts on the platform.

While there are a number of variables that contribute to the completion of a successful lift in competition, there are some key variables that the coach has direct influence over and can often act upon to "steer" the outcome in a specific direction.

Many coaches, after witnessing a missed lift on the part of one of their athletes, will shrug their shoulder as they walk back to the warm-up area, muttering in bewilderment to themselves as to the reasons why a lift was missed.

At the risk of "angering" some of my peers in the coaching profession, how many of us actually are asking ourselves the question "Did I make the right call on that weight?" or "Did I do everything within my power, ability and knowledge base to put that athlete in the best position to have success on the platform?"

More often than not, coaches, and I include myself in this group, are saying, "He/She should have made the lift…they made it in training….what do you want me to do…go out and lift it for them?"

Think about this for a second. What are we really saying here? When I caught myself thinking similar thoughts in the past, it was like a sledgehammer hit me square in the noggin. I had to remind myself as to the function of a coach.

In my opinion, we should coach because we enjoy seeing our athletes have success. We should coach so that we can make a positive influence on our athletes both on and off the platform. We should put our efforts into coaching and teaching so that others can succeed, not for our own glory and ego.

If you disagree with these concepts, save yourself some time and aggravation and STOP READING this article right now. If you do not agree with the statements and philosophy of coaching that I just touched on above, no matter how much I write or talk to you about the subject, I will not convince you one iota on the following subject matter.

Hopefully, I still have enough of an audience and did not lose you all. (If I did, the state of coaching is in more trouble than I previously thought.)

Back to my original point: If we are coaching and trying to be the best coach possible in order to help our athletes and teams achieve success and have a positive experience, then we have to ultimately place ourselves in a position that demands of us to take every precaution and plan accordingly to help these athletes achieve success.

Of course, proper training (both the planning and implementation of such training) must be carried out on a consistent basis with our athletes. Such training should be scientifically based with an emphasis on technical proficiency, general physical development of the associated biomotor qualities, and safe and warranted progression under the eyes of a watchful coach.

If we, as coaches, blindly stick to a pre-planned program of sets, reps, volumes and intensities without taking into account the daily variables that can change from session to session, we are making our first mistake. We must coach in the "here and now", making acute adjustments based on what we are seeing before us in terms of proficiency, bar speed, mechanics of movement and central nervous system recruitment.

Variables like nutrition and sleep will also impact recovery between sessions and will have a significant impact on what an athlete can accomplish in training. Add into the mix the daily stresses associated with being a teenager, a young person, or even a high performance athlete and you have an ever changing dynamic mix that will challenge you to make the right calls on weights and reps and exercise long before that athlete ever gets to a competition. An all important point to remember is that STRESS IS CUMULATIVE.

Now assuming that the training cycle has gone well for the athlete, and that he or she has responded well to the acute changes that the coach may or may not have been made in response to his or her recovery and adaptation level, we find ourselves back at the competition.

The competition environment will always be a challenge. The proper timing of warm-ups, the selection of attempts and the stress of competing against unfamiliar athletes in front of judges and an audience all present significant challenges that must be addressed.

After some mishaps in my own competition career (in powerlifting) and even more devastating disasters in my early coaching career when it came to warming athletes up properly and responding to the heat of competition, I realized that I had been "schooled" by other, more experienced coaches. This was a blow to my ego, but a much needed "reality shock".

I swallowed my pride (a dangerous thing for a coach to have too much of, in my opinion) and sought out the advice of other coaches. I participated in the USA Weightlifting Coaching education programs. I dusted off my old college textbooks on the psychology of coaching and re-read things that I had forgotten. I watched and observed other successful coaches as they performed. In short, I realized that if you ever stop learning or wanting to learn to be a better coach, then it is at that moment that you are beginning a process that will ultimately result in your failure to be as much help to your athlete as you could be in his or her pursuit of athletic and personal success.

The end result of this ever-existing search to learn was that I finally was able to establish a competition coaching philosophy that suited my athletes well.

In short, I teach my athletes and continually remind them that the most important thing to do is to accomplish the "task at hand", in this case to make the attempt on the platform. In turn, they have established a trust in me as their coach that I will choose the appropriate weight for them to attempt.

It was music to my ears when a ten year old looked at me at the meet this past weekend and said, "I know that whatever you tell them to put on the bar, I'll be able to lift."

This is a direct outcome of my philosophy that if you base your athletes' attempts on realistic expectations as evidenced by the training cycle they have just completed, the athlete should be able to achieve success. You must then factor in how the warm-ups are proceeding and make any adjustments that might be needed (including moving the opening weight down if things are not going well…yes, this might actually be necessary some times.)

Additional concerns might be the amount of sleep the athlete was able to get the night before, their recent nutritional intake and whether or not any short or long term weight loss was required to make weight.

If you take all of these variables into consideration and then err on the side of conservatism, your athlete should be ready to go out to the platform and make the lift.

Yes, of course, there could be some exceptions…a technical miscue, a slip on the platform, etc., but overall the athlete should be ready to enjoy success.

This brings me to the next aspect of my coaching philosophy as it pertains to weightlifting competition: ENJOYMENT.

Some may question what enjoyment or having fun has to do with high level performance in the realm of athletics. I will answer this by asking the following question to all of us:

"HOW DO WE ACHIEVE HIGH PERFORMANCE IF WE LOSE ALL OF OUR LIFTERS AFTER A FEW MONTHS OR A FEW YEARS OF TRAINING AND COMPETITION?"

The answer to that question is, WE DON'T.

As stated in a previous coaching article of the month, it has been proposed and widely accepted that high level performance at the elite level of athletics usually requires ten years of training and/or ten thousand hours of training. (for more info, I would refer you to the writings of Istvan Balyi and Josef Drabzik).

If you refer to one of the recent issues of the USOC Publication Olympic Coach, it reiterated very strongly that one of the main issues involved in why children and young adults quit a sport is that they were not having FUN.

The USA Weightlifting Club Coach and Senior Coach courses have included this information on their coursework for the past 3 quads, but as I watch the calls that some coaches make for their athletes at competitions, I wonder if anybody ever remembers this important concept.

My approach to the objective of having FUN at competition is relatively simple. Achieve success on the platform and you will enjoy the process of competition and the spirit of sport.

Let's realistically ask ourselves the following question: HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU WITNESSED A YOUNG ATHLETE BOMB AT THEIR FIRST MEET OR THEIR FIRST NATIONAL MEET AND THEN SIT IN THE WARM-UP ROOM AFTERWARDS WITH A BIG SMILE ON THEIR FACE, CRACKING JOKES AND LAUGHING WITH THEIR FRIENDS?

Not very often, I bet.

Well, I had the unpleasant experience of bombing at my very first powerlifting meet when I was competing back in the early 90s. It was a decidedly unpleasant experience that took me months to actually move past…actually I don't think I ever really got over it until I won my weight class for the first time at a meet two years later.

And to be very blunt, that decidedly unpleasant feeling was nothing to the feelings I experienced when one of my athletes bombed at the American Open ten years ago after enjoying a great training cycle and coming in all "psyched up" to break records. It was at this meet that I was "schooled" by other coaches and screwed up the timing of the warm ups. And while all of my friends were telling me that it was ultimately the athlete's fault and that I could not go out "and lift the weight for him", I knew in my heart that it was I who messed up. It was I who FAILED, not the athlete. I FAILED, because I did not do everything possible or make the right calls when "the bullets were flying" (thanks for that phrase, Lyn).

With that thought in mind, I approach the competition with the following objectives:

1. PREPARE THE ATHLETE FOR WHAT HE OR SHE WILL BE ASKED TO DO
2. CHOOSE AN APPROPRIATE WEIGHT FOR THE ATHLETE, BASED ON THE VARIABLES WE TOUCHED UPON ABOVE.
3. BE PREPARED TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS IF NEEDED, UP OR DOWN.
4. ENCOURAGE THE ATHLETE AND REASSURE THE ATHLETE THAT THE "TASK AT HAND" IS WELL WITHIN THEIR ABILITIES.
5. CONGRATULATE THE ATHLETE ON THEIR SUCCESS.

If you have set things up appropriately, the athlete will have success. And if an athlete has success, they will have FUN. It is a relatively simple concept, yet it is one that we often must remind ourselves to adhere to when coaching at competitions.

Another trend that may be of interest and is definitely relevant to the topic is that all things being equal in terms of the level of athlete and the level of competition, it is often the lifter that makes the most attempts that winds up with the personal records and the higher placing.

Remember it is hard to achieve personal records if you only make 2 out of 6 attempts. It is even harder to win medals, or points in international competition if you bomb out.

I think I will end with this personal experience from the meet we attended this past weekend. Our club had eleven athletes participate in the competition. Of a possible 66 attempts, our athletes registered 59 good lifts, with only one lifter making less than 5 good attempts and 5 athletes going six for six, and the other 5 athletes registering 5 good lifts of six attempts. All together, there were 25 personal best performances in the lifts and a total of 9 medals for total that were won. Perhaps best of all, I saw 12 big smiles after the meet, courtesy of the eleven athletes and one huge smile on my own behalf.

Besides any scientific and statistical data I could give you to prove my point, I think the last paragraph does the job in a more than adequate fashion.

Train hard. Train Smart. HAVE FUN.

Rich Lansky, CSCS, ACSM HFI
USA Weightlifting Certified U.S. International Coach
Coach and Director of Operations for
Team Florida Gulfcoast Weightlifting, Inc.