Compete, more.

This is gonna be one of those blogs that sounds stupid, one of em' that sounds like a no brainer, no college required as my dad would always say, back when Ed would become Edge, the hard ass that would throw cold water in my face if I didn't wanna wake up for church on sunday. This blog is about competition and how training isn't training without it. Technique is important, sure. Puttin' in the work is important, sure. It all comes down to one thing though. I mean, what are we doin'? What is the sport of weightlifting? It's competition, and the minute you forget that is the minute you aren't training for weightlifting, you're just playing around, you are forgetting the game, you need game, be a gamer. Find someone who is a little bit stronger than you or a little bit weaker than you, the closer you guys are in strength the better. I don't care what exercises you do with that other person, it doesn't matter, but on ever set and every rep, compete, do one kilo more, do one extra rep, do the lift better, do if faster, do it cleaner, do it better. What if you don't have a training partner like that you ask? Well, you are shit out of luck in a big way but there is still a way. You have to compete with yourself and that's the hardest thing to do. You think it's easy, you think training alone means you are automatically competing with yourself, with your old numbers, with your old form and all that? No, what you have to do is play the more game. You just lifted a weight on an exercise, more. You just squatted 200 kilos, more, 201 beats 200, more. More, more, more, more. Compete.

Wired for Weightlifting

How do you find weightlifters? How did I become a weightlifter? Well, I lifted weights in high school and eventually put the bar over my head by chance and....BANG! I was hooked! Soon I was using the hook grip, soon I had a platform in my dad's garage. I found out the closest weightlifting club was two and a half hours away. Oh well, I call up the club, talk to the coach, mind if I stop by this weekend and lift in front of you and you can point out what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong? Sweet! see you this weekend. The rest is history, I traveled 2 and 1/2 hours many times to get coached. So, what is a weightlifter? It's not just someone doing snatch and jerk I'll tell you that. I now train in a gym with many people doing snatch and jerk thanks to the popularity of crossfit and not one of them has come up to me and said, "Simon, I just did a clean and jerk and wow! how do I get started? I wanna be a weightlifter!". A coach once told me that weightlifters are born to be weightlifters, they put a barbell over their head and they know it's meant to be, but is it something rare? Does it take a certain type of person, someone that walks to a different beat? How many weightlifters have come out of crossfit? How many people did crossfit until they were taught to snatch and jerk and then said, "see ya later crossfit guys, I found what I'm lookin' for, I wanna be a weightlifter".? What if every gym class in the United States taught a unit on weightlifting and everyone got exposed to snatch and jerk? How many would do that first snatch or jerk and think Eureka! or Aha! My guess is not as many as you'd think, maybe because weightlifting is difficult, maybe more difficult than we'd like to think and maybe it's those select few who weightlifting happens to come easy for because they just maybe are built for it, made for it, born to do it, and are wired in the brain for it. I've shot a basketball before and made it go SWISH! it felt awesome, but am I a basketball player? No. What makes a weightlifter do weightlifting? I have my suspicions that it's a body type, a certain flexibility, coordination, and more importantly it's some way a person is wired in the brain, wired for weightlifting.