Many of you are on social media, and some of you might be on my Facebook friend list. If you are, you probably read a little post I wrote on my page a few weeks ago. I called it my “Weightlifting Thought of the Day” because I wanted it to sound fancy. It was basically just a quick observation about a problem I’ve been seeing over the last few years in weightlifting competition, and I thought I would put it out to the public. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had an opinion about this problem, because my post set off a small firestorm of comments and reactions from coaches and athletes who had the same feelings I had. So, because my little thought hit home with so many people, this article is going to be a continuation of it.
 
First, let me show you what I wrote on Facebook. This is a word-for-word copy of it:
 
WEIGHTLIFTING THOUGHT OF THE DAY:
 
Sometimes I think warmup rooms at weightlifting meets have become the new home for people who never learned to share with others when they were children.
 
If you’ve competed in weightlifting, you know how warmup rooms work. You’ve got a bunch of platforms, bars, and plates. All of these things are for EVERYBODY to use. I’ve been competing and coaching for 30 years and I’ve never walked into a warmup room and seen a platform with a “Reserved” sign on it.
 
Over the last five years, I’ve noticed a big change in warmup room behavior at meets, especially national ones. Lifters nowadays act like you’re asking to have sex with their spouse if you want to share a warmup platform with them. Many of them get aggressively territorial at the idea. I swear to god it reminds me of the scene in Forrest Gump when little Forrest is trying to find a seat on the bus to school and all the redneck kids are barking “This seat’s TAKEN!” at him.
 
It wasn’t always like this. I know that makes me sound old, but it’s true. Back when I was competing on the national scene in the 90s, it was different. People shared.
 
I don’t know why it’s changing. Probably social media. People live in their own little worlds where they’re the center of the universe, and then they take that mentality to meets. Maybe that’s not it. Makes a bit of sense though, don’t you think?
 
Please challenge yourself to share and help other people out when you go to meets. It won’t negatively affect anything you’re doing, unless you simply can’t function with somebody else on the same warmup platform as you. But if that’s the case, you’re mentally weak.
 
Take care of all of us!
 
That was it. This post got 273 likes, 17 shares, and over 90 comments. People were coming up to me in gyms and talking about it for days. It wasn’t President-Trump-Stormy-Daniels level controversy, but it definitely stirred the pot in the weightlifting community.
 
We’re talking about athlete/coach behavior in the warmup room at meets, and the new wave of refusing to share warmup platforms. As I said in the post, this situation has changed a lot in recent years…in a bad way. So in this article, we’re going to go a little deeper with the subject. Trust me; it’s much more of a problem than it looks like on the surface. If you get sucked into it, you might pay some awful prices. I don’t want that to happen to you, and I don’t want our sport to get contaminated and dragged down by this crap. Let’s take a look inside.
 
Experiences of Others
 
As I mentioned, dozens of people responded to this post. Agreement was unanimous and frustrated. Lots and lots of athletes and coaches have noticed the epidemic, and many of them have had to go nose to nose with the MINE-MINE-MINE mentality in the warmup room. Let me share a few of the comments that were written.
 
One coach wrote, “I deal with this at 100% of the National events that I attend. I have a strict ‘don’t-back-down’ policy that I instill in my athletes. In particular the beginners who don’t know warm up room etiquette that get bullied by the coaches and athletes you are describing.
I had words with an OLYMPIAN at the Arnold who had straight bullied two of my girls off of a platform so her girl could warm up alone IN THE D GROUP.”
 
From another coach, “jesus christ, at juniors i walked up to a girl (69B) and asked if ‘she minded if we shared platforms’ and she legit, LEGIT said ‘Yes i do, i like to be by myself’ and put her headphones on... lol. I said ‘oooook’ and walked away. she bombed out... karma....”
 
From a master lifter I know, “More prevalent than you might think, especially when ‘teams’ or clubs take over (reserve?) entire platform areas.”
 
From another master, “I had a bad experience this past Masters National. I was really surprised at the terrible rude behavior over sharing a platform.”
 
These were just a few of many. Interestingly, some people posted comments where they tried to blame the problem on CrossFit. I understand the thought process behind that. The problem has developed in recent years, the influx of new lifters into the sport has happened in recent years and the vast majority of them have come from CrossFit, so it must be CrossFitters who are causing this. Logical, right?
 
I don’t think so. Personally, I see the non-sharing behavior coming from plenty of weightlifting people who aren’t CrossFitters. As the first coach mentioned above, two of his lifters got bullied off a platform by an Olympian, not a CrossFitter. I’m sure you could find plenty of examples of this happening at the hands of CrossFit lifters, but there’s no way we can lay the whole blame on them. Trust me; I’ve been in warmup rooms for decades, including the recent years when this problem has developed. I can tell you for sure; it’s not just coming from CrossFit.
 
The other tendency is to blame it on young whippersnappers, right? Kids are selfish and immature, so are they the culprits? Well, we had comments on my post from older athletes who ran into this problem at Masters Nationals, too. I do think you’re generally going to see a better sharing attitude from older lifters, but we can’t say it’s 100 percent a youth-related problem. Old people can be self-centered too.
 
We could talk all day about why this problem has developed. Everybody can come up with their own ideas about the cause of it. As I mentioned in my Facebook post, I think it’s a cultural thing that can largely be connected to social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have allowed people to immerse themselves in their own little worlds where their personal thoughts and life events are the center of the universe. Without even noticing it, their own sense of importance expands as they broadcast their lives to the rest of the world. They take this mentality to weightlifting meets, and the idea of letting somebody else penetrate their little self bubble by using the same warmup platform as them is a Defcon-5 threat. As that young girl said at Junior Nationals right before she put her headphones on her ears and pushed the outside world as far away as possible, “I like to be by myself.”
 
So Why is This a Problem?
 
Let’s acknowledge something. There are obviously a lot of people doing this non-sharing thing now, so that means a lot of people think there’s nothing wrong with it. Hell, you might be one of them. I might be describing something you do every time you compete. So, I think it’s fair to ask the question, “Is it okay to act like this? Is there anything wrong with claiming your own warmup platform and blocking anybody else from using it?”
 
From my perspective, there are two main problems with it. First of all, it simply doesn’t work in terms of meet logistics. If you’ve competed, you know what I’m talking about. When you have a session of 15 lifters competing and there are five platforms in the warmup room, there’s no way around it. People are going to have to share. It’s basic math, and it’s something you have to accept when you decide to compete in a weightlifting meet. At the time of this article, I’ve competed in 113 meets in my career. That’s more than most people anywhere. So, I’m not offering a hypothetical opinion. I’m telling you from experience: sharing warmup platforms is a basic part of the sport.
 
However, the second problem is the big one that needs the most attention. One of the comments I shared above nailed it right on the head. Remember that young girl at Junior Nationals who refused to share her platform because she wanted to be by herself? How did her day end up? She bombed.
 
Now I don’t know anything about that situation beyond what the coach commented, so I don’t know this young lady or what happened when she missed all her attempts, but I don’t think it’s difficult to read into this. Why did she insist on having the warmup platform to herself? Because she wanted to keep her environment totally controlled, like she probably does every day in training. Okay, great. Now ask yourself: what happens when you step onto a competition platform? Answer: you don’t control the environment. Lots of things are happening in the room around you when you’re up there. There are noises, sights, distractions, bright lights, voices, etc. You can’t stop any of them. At that moment, your environment control goes out the window. And guess what? You have to make your lifts in the middle of it all.
 
Simply put, many lifters crumble at this point. They can’t deal with it all, and they fail their attempts. I don’t want to sound cruel by saying this, but they weren’t mentally tough enough to handle it. And mental toughness starts somewhere. There are a lot of little things that go into building it.
 
One of the main things that makes an athlete mentally tough is the practice of not getting rattled by distractions or curveballs that take you out of your normal element. When you’re in the warmup room at a meet and a lifter you’ve never met before wants to share a platform with you, it’s out of your norm. It’s a curveball from your usual element. And if you’re a mentally tough weightlifter, it shouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. In fact, I think you can make a solid argument that you’ll be psychologically stronger if you actively confront curveballs and train yourself to ignore them. That other lifter has absolutely no control over your snatches or clean and jerks. If you get shaken out of your groove by the mere presence of another athlete on the same platform as you, you have NOBODY to blame but YOURSELF if you fold up like a cheap card table when the pressure’s on. You couldn’t even handle it when another lifter warmed up with you. How could you ever expect to handle the pressure of the competition stage?
 
THIS is what’s wrong with not sharing platforms. It shows a lack of ability to stay composed in the face of distractions. The young girl in the coach’s Facebook comment paid the price with a bombout. She probably doesn’t recognize this, and I’m sure she would argue against it. But it’s the truth. Hopefully, you won’t step into the same trap.
 
If You Ever Make It Far Enough
 
You probably don’t know this, but if you ever make it to the World Championship or the Olympics, you’ll be given your own platform in the warmup room. You won’t have to share. That’s part of the organizational plan at those competitions.
 
However, every other meet below those will require sharing in the warmup room. Another interesting question is this: should elite athletes still get their own platforms at lower level meets? For example, if an Olympian is competing at the American Open (where sharing is a necessity), should the Olympian still get his/her own platform? Should elite status place you above the rules?
 
I don’t think so. Personally, I couldn’t think of anything cooler than seeing an Olympian who was willing to share a platform with a lower-level lifter. Those types of things are great for the sport. I never made an Olympic Team, but I was a top US national lifter for many years. At most of the meets I competed in, I was one of the best lifters in the warmup room. And I never had a problem with sharing. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever even got the option. My coach made those calls. He would tell me, “Jeff is gonna warm up on the same platform as us.” It wasn’t a request. It was an order. And it never bothered me. It was just a normal part of going to a meet.
 
To tell you the truth, I always thought it was pretty cool to warm up with other lifters I didn’t know. In fact, I made some lasting friendships that way. It was one of the fun parts of competition. When you share your competition experience with somebody in this way, it’s good bonding. As a 45-year-old man now, I still go to national meets these days as a coach and see the guys I competed with back in the day. We shake hands, hug, and talk about the old times. You see, we shared those old times. We were in it together. That’s a big part of what made it so great.
 
If you’re already in the habit of sharing your competition experience like we did, that’s a good thing. The sport will be more fun for you because of it. And if you’re not in the habit, and you’ve gotten sucked into your own little bubble, make a change. You’ll be a better weightlifter if you do.