As the title states, not all competitions are meant for personal records (PR). While clearly we want the lifter do “well”, that doesn’t mean that the weightlifter needs to PR. I know that sounds weird but give me a little time to explain down below and you’ll get it.
Here are a few things that I believe are important for a weightlifter that can only be reached by competing:
Learn to Control Your Nerves
A PR during training is a lot more comfortable for most weightlifter than a competition. Mainly because they know their own surroundings and are comfortable with everyone there. Now take the weightlifter out of that environment, place them in a new gym in front of a crowd with 3 judges and who knows what will happen… This is why it’s important for the weightlifter to be exposed to a competition setting so that they can learn to control their nerves and start to get “comfortable” in a competition environment.
This also gives the coach a better understanding of how the weightlifter adapts. Each weightlifter will have their own way to adapt to their surroundings and it’s the coaches job to accommodate that. This may mean to leave them alone, hype them up, keep their head clear of what is going on etc… how you’ll find out these small intricacies of your weightlifter will only come through experience in a competition environment. It’ll not only allow you to adapt your approach to each lifter but also allow you to better prepare them in the future.
Making Weight
While you can cut weight through your own mock meet, I don’t believe a weightlifter will truly put in their full effort unless they are signed into a meet. There’s just something to filling out an application, writing in your weight class, and having a judge weigh you in vs. a practice “mock” meet. With that said, it’s not to say that it can’t be done, I just believe that there’s a lot more accountability when a weightlifter signs on to a competition.
Cutting weight for a competition will also give the coach and weightlifter a better understanding of how to cut down and how the weightlifter adapts. The more practice we have at it the better off we’ll be. For instance, this past weekend, we had a lifter compete for the first time in the 77k class. One of the many purposes of the meet was to see if he could cut down and how he’ll perform at the lower weight class. It worked out pretty well, since he ended up placing 3rd in the 77k despite the focus not peaking for this competition.
Work Out the Kinks
If the lifter previously had a bad meet, this could cause a little doubtin the back of their mind. While training will obviously make the most impact, learning to apply that practice to a meet will be the true test. For example, one of our lifters had developed a weird rack position in his previous meet, he never had this problem prior, and it caused him to nearly pass out. We had to hammer that out of him during training but the true test would be when he stepped out on the competition platform, would he throw all our focused training out the window or trust the positioning we worked on. Fortunately it paid off and I’m sure that this had built even more confidence with the positions despite the weight “feeling” heavy or if anything else was to happen.
Maintaining Composure
Just like any other sport, the athlete must be prepared for anything. For a weightlifter that’s competing for the first time, this may mean skipping a warm up attempt to be ready for their attempt on the platform, doing a pull instead of the full lift to stay warmed up, a longer rest period than they’d like, the tense environment in the warm up area, other lifters or coaches getting in your wayand so on. Getting adjusted to this to of environment can only happen through competing.
Truly ANYTHING can happen, for instance this past weekend we had five lifters in front of us, so I told the lifter to take a light warm up attempt. As I rechecked the cards, all five lifters moved up (it was hard to hear the microphone), so when we thought we’d have more time to take a warm up it significantly shortened our rest, clearly not ideal. However she handled it well and just went with the flow. The lifter easily could’ve had a melt down and freaked out but she composed herself, walked on the platform and did her thing.
On a side note, I could’ve changed the attempt to give her more time but because this was for practice I didn’t think it was appropriate to the others lifters to keep extending the time. It worked out well and really tested our lifter.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this had shown a few sides of competing besides just reaching for PR’s. While obviously the end goal is to make bigger numbers, it’s nice to point out that there are many beneficials aspects outside of just reaching for bigger numbers that you can achieve through competitions. It also allows the lifter to keep training through and not necessarily lose ground by having to take too much time off because they peaked.
Proud of Our Team
I also wanted to post how proud I am our of our two lifters, James and Kass that competed this past weekend. While it was a “practice competition” they did everything we sought out for and even more. James placed 3rd as he cut down to compete in the 77kg weight class for the first time. This was Kass’ first time competing in 4 years and she did AMAZING. She hit all the numbers we wanted and fought valiantly for a her 3rd attempt in the clean and jerk.
Also they both were sick this past week but despite that, they made weight, fought hard, stayed composed, and kicked ass on the platform!
Train smart,
