A microcosm or a metaphor would never do it justice. The beautiful mind-mess that is weightlifting often depicts life’s universal truths. Lessons on the platform parallel lessons in life in an accelerated fashion. You’ll be lucky to apply them to your lifting, but you’ll be wise to apply them off of the platform. There is a progression to a weightlifter’s evolution, and I can speak to my current position on that trajectory, five years competing in the sport.
 
First, the basics of motor function and coordination, rather, knowing how to eject yourself from a barbell about to bash your head open onto the platform from overhead. We learn, sometimes the hard way, how to bail and that straps are ONLY to be used for snatches and pulls.
 
Then comes consistency. It is inevitably accompanied by the contemplation of breaking up with your runner boyfriend, dedicating half of your earnings to protein sources, and reaching for the oil can to get up and out from furniture. This is followed by a slowing, slogging, misery pit where a single kilo is your general margin for gains. Still gains, but seriously, I should have made that last lift. Though you may have nailed down the necessary hours where the bar no longer feels like a foreign object, the consistency in your technique is the next hurdle—and the longest lasting phase thus far.
 
You digest the same cues lift after lift, dissecting and translating your coach’s words until you hear the relieving “YES, that’s it.”  Hopefully, you’ve retained what it was that you had corrected and are able to repeat for every lift to infinity and beyond. Not bloody likely.
 
I am a diver. It is always a race to the bottom between me and that barbell, resulting in snatches for distance and crashing cleans.
 
“Get tall!”
“Long pull!”
“Stay connected!”
“Wait for it!”
“Keep pulling!”
“Be patient!”
 
I’ve heard them all.
 
Fast feet make for a fast lift. Fast to fall in love, fast to pass judgment, and fast to make decisions—these are the makings of a quick barbell receipt. Believe me when I say that coach is not the first to preach the virtue that is patience.
 
Patience, you ask? You mean waiting around, right? No. I go at the gunshot, doing everything I can to get under this bar as quickly as possible.
 
This is because I’ve already bought into a different belief. I can squat just about anything, or anyone for that matter. For a while there, my go-to party trick was to pick a person in the room, throw them over my shoulder and back squat them while in a dress. I’ve got to get under that bar because I know I can stand it up.
 
Weightlifting is cutthroat, both man to man and man to bar. It’s easy to throw reason out the window when all you see is red.
 
But the go-getter (in this case, the get-underer) is backed up with angst and ego. They abandon advantageous form, winding up with over-corrected turnovers and the weight of the world crashing onto their shoulders.
 
But patience takes trust, and trust takes realization. Having only lived on this planet for 27 years, there are few long-term efforts I’ve seen come to fruition. By default, I am armed with faith in the process.
 
So, I loosened my death grip on the bar and boiled it down to the main objective: get the bar to the hip crease. I know what the looks like; I know what that feels like.
 
I knew I had to let go of the rip n’ grip life. But rather than tapping into my higher virtue, I began to manipulate the situation even more. I set a tempo from the floor-break to the hip, overlooking that lighter and heavier weights respond to this differently. Next, I followed an audio cue, which turned into the greatest sounding clang as a result of banging the bar out in front and superficial bruising. I was Lenny, and the barbell was the mouse—I loved it too much. I was doing too much.
 
When we act hastily, our decisions are fueled by fear and a need for agency. As weightlifters, we have identified the sole responsibility for a made or missed lift as our own. Yes, we need to be present on the platform and in control of the weight, but there is a marriage of movement between the iron and the athlete. The two move together in unison, just as we do in our own lives where we learn to accept that there is only so much we can control.
 
Attempting to control everything is an easy fault, and to think the bar won’t knock you down from time to time would be naive.
 
Lengthening my pull off the ground felt like standing at the edge of a cliff. Would I make it? Would my body to know what to do? With trust in my coach and trust in the mechanics, I attempted to just keep pulling until I felt the bar in home base. It felt obnoxiously slow. It’s been five seconds! What am I still doing here pulling!? But what initially felt like a plunge into murky water (belly butterflies and all), resulted in a controlled and connected clean. I was finally able to meet the bar high and recovered with air still in my tank. Oh, so that’s what a good clean feels like!
 
A change in any process can shift the results for better or for worse, and in this case, I improved my lifting in timing and intention. But what was really learned here is that the barbell has rules to be respected, and that it does not bend to my will. It moves relative to my stature, form, and speed, but the success in synchronicity awaits upon meeting it in the middle. When all of the elements are in concert—the technique, the timing, the power, and the strength—it is a beautiful display of that proficiency, respect, and a lesson learned.