Let’s talk about comebacks, shall we? A comeback is any situation where you return to success after being knocked down to the bottom. Those knockdowns can take many forms…defeat, injury, or any of the various types of failure we can all experience as we’re traveling the joyous road of life and occasionally getting sledgehammered in the face. When you make a comeback, you survive whatever kind of knockdown you got hit with and then you work your way back to triumph.
 
Weightlifting, for anybody who does it, is a sport of comebacks. Have you ever sat down and really thought about it? This sport is one of the hardest things in the world to do because regardless of what level you’re at, you’re going to experience those aforementioned defeats, injuries, and various forms of failure. Even if you’re just a garden-variety local lifter, you’re not immune to this rule. Nobody has a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to getting kicked in the teeth by the Olympic weightlifting gods. After you’ve gained some experience and been in the game for a while, it can sometimes seem like you’re always trying to bounce back from one knockdown or another.
 
There are micro comebacks, and then there are macro comebacks. Micro comebacks are the smaller ones we have to do after we’ve been through some crap that’s not on the Defcon-5 level of catastrophe. Examples of this might include minor injuries or lousy performances at meets. Macro comebacks are the situations where we have to fight back from serious disasters, like an injury that requires surgery, or bombing out at the Olympics, or a prolonged absence from being driven out of the sport for a while.
 
Whether big or small, we all get to experience the process of reaching our own level of success, getting stomped down from that level, and then having to fight and claw our way back to the top again. As I write this article, I’m approaching my 30^th year as a competitive lifter. At this point, I think I can safely say I’ve made every kind of comeback on the list at some point in my career. Having lived through so many of these ups and downs, I now have a clear understanding of what needs to happen when a weightlifter wants to make a comeback.
 
And because I’m an organized thinker most of the time and my brain works best when I have lists, we’re going to make a comeback checklist in this article. I want to set up an actual sequence of rules and guidelines you should take into consideration when you have to make a comeback, whether it be macro or micro sized. I can guarantee you’re going to need this if you pursue weightlifting for any extended period of time. This sport can really whack the hell out of you…physically, psychologically, spiritually, financially, whatever. I apologize if I’m making it sound dreadful, because it’s not. We’re all in weightlifting for the same reason; it’s one of the greatest sources of fulfillment, excitement, and joy we’ve ever found in our lives. But it’s not easy. All the wonderful feelings can have some awful ones right around the corner. I suppose that’s one of the main things that makes the big picture of it so terrific.
 
So we know you’re going to take a few knockdowns in this sport. That’s certain. And we also know you’re most likely going to want to fight back after those knockdowns. That’s certain, too. Therefore, here’s a comeback checklist that can help you do that.
 
Step 1: Are you mentally ready?
 
Listen, I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but it isn’t. My friends, you have to make sure your mind is right before you attempt any kind of comeback. I’m mentioning this for several reasons, and one of them is the simple fact that your mind can sometimes play tricks on you. First of all, it’s entirely possible for an intelligent, rational human being to turn into a desperate, impulsive fool during a weightlifting comeback. Ask yourself a few questions that sound something like this:
 
Are you sure you still want to do this?
 
I’m not talking about what other people want, or your desire to make them happy. I’m asking YOU. Do you want to go back to the gym and continue the daily grind? If you’re in weightlifting for somebody else and it’s not a source of joy in your life, the clock is ticking on how long that’ll last. This sport is hard enough to do when you want it more than anything else in the world. When you don’t really want it deep down in your heart, there’s almost no chance for a good ending. And if you’ve determined that you really do still want it, how confident are you that you’ve got it in you? Do you believe it’s possible to accomplish the things you had your eyes on before you got knocked down? If the answer is no, that’s not a deal breaker. It’s okay to start a comeback with tons of desire and not much confidence. As long as you want it enough to stay committed to it, things will happen over the course of the comeback that will inject that confidence back into your heart like the big adrenaline needle in Pulp Fiction. Faith in one’s self isn’t a static thing. It can come and go.
 
Do you have a clear idea where the knockdown came from?
 
This is a really important one. You’re making a comeback because something went terribly wrong. Have you stopped and thought clearly enough to figure out WHY it went wrong? What caused it? Why did it happen? Was there anything that could have prevented it? Because the most important question is the one that follows these: what can you do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? If you got injured, are there physical things you can be doing in training in the future to make sure the same injury doesn’t just keep popping up? If you bombed out of a meet, why did it happen? What were the specific factors that led to the bombout? You have to pinpoint these things as best you can. I know sometimes you wrack your brain looking for answers and the best you can come up with are some guesses. But you have to try your best, and you have to set up a roadmap for the future that steers clear of these potholes.
 
***That roadmap thing actually connects with Step 3 on the checklist, so just keep it in the background for a few minutes.
 
Step 2: Are you physically ready?
 
This one is a little simpler than the mental side from Step 1. Are you physically prepared to go back to training? This mainly deals with the injury department. If the knockdown happened because you got hurt, are you healed up? There’s a phrase you need to remember when answering this question. It’s “pain-free range of motion.” I’ve been injured quite a few times, and this phrase has always been my gauge for when I’m ready to get going again. Can I go through the movements of the Olympic lifts without pain? Keep in mind, there’s a difference between “pain” and “tightness” or “sensation.” Pain is where you try to sit down into a full squat and you flinch at some point like somebody jabbed an ice pick in your tit and you go, “Ow!! F**K!!” That’s pain. Tightness and sensation are feelings that you notice when you’re going through the movement, but it doesn’t hurt. These are usually okay, normal parts of the healing process. You’ll really have to listen to your instincts and use good judgment when it comes to returning from injuries. It’s one of those parts of weightlifting where nobody from the outside can really tell what’s going on, so it’ll be up to you to handle it responsibly.
 
Another part of being physically ready is the issue of being rested and recovered. For example, let’s say you just finished the toughest training cycle of your life and you bombed out of the competition you were preparing for. When the meet is over, you’re going to need to let your body recover, even if your performance was terrible. If you bombed out on Saturday and you decide you’re going to start your comeback on Sunday before maxing out again on Wednesday…congratulations. You’re officially a walking hard-on who’s cruising towards an even more disgusting moment than the one you just had in the bombout. Trust me, I know you’re pissed and you want to get revenge. But you have to let your muscles and joints repair themselves before you’re ready to lift the weights that are going to make you happy.
 
Step 3: Do you have a plan?
 
This goes back to our earlier point about a roadmap that steers clear of future potholes. I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is to approach a comeback with an organized plan that will bring you back to your former level of success, before eventually propelling you even higher than you’ve ever been before. Most likely, the plan that gets you back to the top will be some kind of slow build that starts light and gradually works back up to the heavy stuff. This brings up a sub-question to this step.
 
Are you willing to start over with very light weights and slowly build back up to the heavy stuff?
 
This question, in my opinion, is actually the most important one in this article. Let me give you an example. Whenever I’ve had a minor injury, I’ve always been very deliberate about the steps I needed to follow to make my comeback. First, I needed to heal the injury. This meant working around the injury and letting it recover. Second, I needed to test the movements and make sure I was okay. This meant moving first with bodyweight, like air squats to make sure a pulled groin muscle was healthy, for example. Then the empty barbell. Then some barely-noticeable weights, like 40 kg snatches (when I was snatching 140 kg). This would all tell me if I was basically okay. Third, I needed a written-on-paper schedule of progression that would lead back to my top weights. For a minor injury, that schedule might only need to be a week or two long before I was ready to go 100 percent again. For a bigger injury, the schedule might be several weeks before 100 percent. (If we’re talking about surgery, the schedule will be largely dictated by your doctor and physical therapist.) The exact details of what you need to do will depend on your personal situation, but the point I’m trying to make is that you need to use patience and structured planning when you make a comeback.
 
And feel free to ignore me if you want to
 
Trust me, I’ve spent much of the last three decades watching weightlifters attempt to defy every guideline on here as they shift into turbo overdrive immediately after the knockdown and try to make the whole comeback happen instantaneously. The overwhelming majority of the time, they’ve pushed themselves even farther down the toilet.
 
In many cases, this is the dividing line between the lifters who have longevity and consistent success and the flash-in-the-pan lifters who have a short run at the top before they vanish into the mist. You have to travel a long road to get good at this sport, and there will be knockdowns along the way. There’s an old Frank Sinatra song with a line that says, “Do you remember the famous men who had to fall to rise again?” I think that line sums up the life of a weightlifter. The only way you can really experience victory is by experiencing defeat first. Every champion has to go through it. What I’ve come to learn in my career is that there’s a right way and a wrong way to bounce back from defeat. Yes, you must have some junkyard dog in you if you want to battle back, and you have to be willing to train like a maniac. But there’s a big difference between training like a maniac and planning like a maniac.
 
When you hit the ground after your knockdown, get up and THINK. How did I get here? What happened? What did I do wrong? How do I come back from this? How can I keep from making the same mistake again? What’s the smartest way to plan out my comeback? Ask yourself these questions, go through this checklist to help answer them, and then just do the best you can with your instincts.
 
You might have to suffer several knockdowns to truly understand how to keep them from happening. That’s how it was for me, and now I’m trying to help you. I can’t give you a plan that will keep you completely free from knockdowns. That doesn’t exist in weightlifting. You’ll have them. But whether you come back from them or not…that’s the real question. Use some of these tips, and I promise you’ll have a better shot at it.