WHY DO WEIGHTLIFTING COMPETITIONS?

Competing in weightlifting can be exhilarating. It can also, however, be disappointing. What I believe it is always is an opportunity to grow.

There is a lot of pressure when competing. You only have 3 chances to make the best Snatch you can make and then 3 chances to make the best Clean and Jerk you can make. This means you need to have a coach timing out your warmup attempts as best as he/she can to get you into a position to get to your best possible weight on the 3rd attempt out there on a platform where all eyes are on you. It is very nerve wracking. Some people thrive on this sort of pressure. I have always enjoyed this part of competing. It’s scary, but it’s also what I believe is the main reason we even do competitions as weightlifters. We train hard for months then we put it all on the line on competition day. Aside from beginners doing their first few competitions where the goal there is usually, and rightly so, to have a positive and hopefully successful experience, the more one competes the more I would think competitions are where we ‘go for it’ and see what have in us.

This is what I find so exciting about competitions. We do all this grueling training week after week where we are trying to build on our technique and build on our strength to do more weight. Competitions are where we get to put everything to the test. We train hard. We bring ourselves to the brink of exhaustion over several weeks of volume and intensity building. Then we start to taper. Soon we start to express newly acquired strength in ways that we haven’t in a while or maybe ever. We start to get ideas about what we want to do at the competition. Our minds start to visualize our goals and our training more and more reflects that. If the taper went well (it almost always does unless the coach doesn’t taper the athlete or there’s an injury or the athlete is sick) then on competition day things feel lighter than usual. The speed seems better than usual. It feels like nothing can go wrong!

Then you miss your 1st Snatch.

Wait, but it felt so light! How? Who knows. Nerves. Got distracted by going from the warmup area to out there in front of everyone and now you don’t know where to look. Maybe the bar felt so much different than the bar you warmed up on. Doesn’t matter why. What matters is you need to pull yourself together and make the next attempt. This is a tough spot to be in. But what happens when we miss in training? We collect ourselves and we make the next rep. We need to be confident when competing. This is why it is typical for a lifter to open at a weight they feel confident with; perhaps the lifters best Snatch Double. If the lifter happens to get into this predicament where he/she misses the first attempt they know they can double this weight and with a 2 min clock or worst case scenario the clock gets burned and they only get a 1 min clock the lifter knows they have done this before.

It’s exciting to think about opening big (~95%) so you can then have a shot at a big 2nd and 3rd attempt, but this approach is likely only for confident beginners, someone who is stretching themselves for a qualifying total, or someone who is coming out of a very successful training cycle where PRs seem very likely. So, this means what’s more common for an opener is ~90% of the lifters best 1RM. Opening less than this typically won’t allow for the 3rd attempt to be 97-102% unless the session works out in such a way that the lifter can take a heavier lift in the back making it seem like they are taking a big weight increase for the next attempt or if the lifter is able to make big weight jumps from that opener. Typically in Snatch we will see 2-3% increases or up to 5%; in the C&J 4-5% increases are more common. Usually no more than 5% increases, and that’s on the higher side. So, in Snatch this is why if a lifter opened at 85% while it would be reasonable to increase 5% to 90% for the 2nd attempt that would only allow the lifter to hit 93-95% on the 3rd. This might be a good strategy for a lifter having a hard time with Snatches, but it’s not ideal if the goal is to get 100% or attempt a PR on the 3rd attempt. 90% is about as safe as you can go without being too safe if you really want a heavy 3rd attempt. At the end of the day sometimes it might be better to just get the lifter on the board with a lift, and in these cases opening at 85-89% might be what’s best, because once the lifter hits a lift and feels great then they might feel confident for bigger jumps or a lift in the back. My point here is opening heavy isn’t the only pathway to a heavy 3rd attempt, and depending on the lifter and training leading up opening lighter might be the better plan of action.

Watching competitions with commentary (not international, but the AO Series) I hear lots of comments about how great it is to go 6 for 6 or I have heard athletes talk about how going 6 for 6 is their goal. Basically I hear this idea that competitions where the lifter goes 6 for 6 is so great and it’s the perfect competition. Is it though?

I don’t feel that going 6 for 6 should be the usual goal in a competition. Now hold on I am not saying that missing a lift is a good thing. My point is that trying to set up the day so that 6 for 6 is a definite outcome is not my idea of a good competition, unless it’s what the lifter needs in his/her current state of mind. I said in the beginning that sometimes competitions can be disappointing and that’s because sometimes a lifter misses their 1st Snatch. And the 2nd Snatch. And the 3rd. This is what many call “bombing out”; there is no total if the lifter doesn’t make 1 successful Snatch and 1 successful C&J. It’s a very defeating blow. It might make a lifter feel like they never want to compete again because they don’t want to feel that let down again. Maybe for someone like this a comp where they hit all 6 lifts might light a fire back in them. At the very least a lifter who bombed out previously should open at a weight they know they can get in 3 tries because nerves might get the best of them when competing again. Going 6 for 6 is only the goal in so far as if you make all your lifts leading up to that big weight you had in mind then 6 for 6 could be a perfect competition day. But in my opinion if you open at 85% and then go 90% and then 92% and in training you’re typically getting 95% then I think your next approach to competition should be to learn how to be confident and aggressive in front of people and with the pressure on you. I believe if you can do it in training then the ultimate goal is to do it in competition where it counts and goes on record.

Which brings me to the last thing I said in the first paragraph: we learn and have the opportunity to grow after each competition. We learn where our confidence wavered. We learn what we need to fix in a lift so we don’t miss or we don’t have to save a lift. We learn that we need to get better at shorter rest periods, or get better at being able to do waves up and down so we can handle long breaks in between platform attempts. We learn that we don’t do well opening heavy. We learn that we are wasting our time opening so light. We learn that it’s more fun when we just go out there and give it our all and accept that we might mess up. We learn not to get so down with ourselves when we mess up. And, among other things I am sure that can be learned from competing in weightlifting we learn whether or not it’s something we truly enjoy.

Don’t do it if you don’t find it fun. But, what’s not fun about experiencing triumphs with your friends and your coach, or learning what you need to do to be better and then going back to training and working on that only to come back 3-6 months later to see how you’ve improved? For me competitions have always been a part of training. As I said above, we do all of this training day after day, week after week so that we can put it all to the test. Then after the test, we do what it takes to grow.