I’m writing this article on October 8^th, 2018. Believe it or not, I published my first article with Performance Menu in October 2008. Yup, you read that right. This is my 10^th anniversary with Catalyst Athletics and Greg Everett.
 
A few months ago, when I realized this landmark was approaching, I started thinking about putting something special together. A 10^th anniversary is a big deal, so I wanted to give our readers an article befitting the occasion. I tossed around several ideas before deciding on the one you’re going to read about in the next few pages.
 
Right from the beginning with that first article in ’08, I knew what I wanted to do with my contributions to Performance Menu. I wanted to use my experience and the stories of my weightlifting life to deliver useful material to our readers. I was never interested in writing about research, scientific theories, or data. That stuff is valuable, obviously. I’ve studied a ton of it, just like many of us. None of you academic types need to work yourselves up into a lather, because I’m not speaking negatively of your efforts.
 
However, one thing I’ve realized throughout my time in the sport is, to quote Malcom Gladwell, “Stories are an incredibly effective way to communicate ideas.” I’ve personally learned more from stories I heard in gyms and bars than I have in any research article, so that was the approach I decided to use in my writing for this magazine: sharing the lessons of my career in a way that brings valuable content for coaches and athletes. For ten years, people have been saying they like my stuff and Greg hasn’t fired me, so I’m going to stick with the old if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it philosophy.
 
I want to use two particular stories to drive home this month’s lesson. Interestingly enough, they’re ten-year bookend stories that involve me and Greg Everett. One is from 2008, and the other is from 2018. However, I’m going to do something just a little different from my usual procedure. Normally, I always tell you the main lesson of the article in this first introductory section and then expand on it in the following pages, so you know the fundamental gist of the whole shebang right from the beginning. This time, I’m going to wait until the end to hit you with the big knowledge bomb. A ten-year anniversary is a huge thing, so it’s proper to do something distinct. Let’s go back to 2008, shall we?
 
Then
 
I met Greg Everett at the California State Games in San Diego in 2008, where we were both competing. I didn’t know who he was, but I was invited to share a warmup platform with him by his girlfriend Aimee Anaya, who I had known back in the old days.
 
I liked him right away. We both lifted well that day and hit it off great, so he and Aimee invited me to join them for pizza and beers afterwards. I don’t think I’ve ever turned down a pizza-and-beer offer (I actually think that’s unacceptable conduct in weightlifting), so I showed up. I asked Greg what he did for a job, and he told me some stuff about how he ran a website. That didn’t make any sense to me because I had no idea how you could make a living from a freaking website, but I didn’t pry. I just figured he was a drug dealer and the website thing was a cover.
 
He and Aimee were living in the San Diego area, but he told me they were getting ready to move north to San Jose to start a gym and their own weightlifting program. He told me they were going to call it Catalyst Athletics. Now…if you’ve been in this game as long as I have, you’ve heard a zillion big plans from guys you don’t know who were revved up to open their own gym and blow the doors off the weightlifting world. Some of them become something important. Most don’t. So I chatted with Greg and wished him luck, not knowing if I would ever hear the name Catalyst Athletics again.
 
A few months later, they made the big move and opened their gym in the Sunnyvale area of San Jose. Greg contacted me and asked if I would write an article for his online magazine, which I accepted. The article was a hit, he asked me to continue, I committed, and that’s how the Performance Menu component of the whole thing developed. And over the next couple of years, Catalyst Athletics started rising through the field of US weightlifting programs. They had a dynamite website, Greg started publishing books, my articles helped build the club’s profile, lifters flocked to their gym, and the buzz just continued to grow. The coming-out party for Catalyst was the 2012 American Open, where we coached together all weekend and our women’s team won the 2^nd place trophy.
 
To make a long story short, Catalyst Athletics became one of the most popular weightlifting programs in the country over the next four years, culminating in our women’s team winning the 2016 National Championship. The Catalyst Facebook page is followed by over 180,000 people all over the world, Catalyst lifters have broken American records, Greg’s books have been translated into multiple languages, and the list goes on. One of the lifters I coach took a business trip to Thailand a few years ago and he found a gym to train at while he was there. He told the owner I was his coach, and the guy replied, “Matt Foreman?! The Catalyst guy?!” People know who we are everywhere.
 
It started as an idea, a dream. Nothing more. And it turned into a formidable global presence in the sport of weightlifting. So that’s the first story I told you I was going to share…the creation and rise of Catalyst Athletics. Now I’m going to transition to the second one. Once again, you have to hang in there with me until the end if you want the lesson. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.
 
Now
 
As I mentioned, I’ve been in weightlifting for over three decades. I’m 46 years old now, and my career took a fun little detour a couple of years ago.
 
I had four major surgeries between 2010 and 2016. Pretty bad, I know. When I made it through them, I decided to compete in powerlifting for a little while instead of Olympic lifting. My body didn’t feel quite ready for the boom-snap-pow impact of the Olympic lifts after my final surgery, so I thought it would be a hoot to do powerlifting to get my muscles and joints strengthened up again. It was basically part of my rehabilitation process.
 
This was only supposed to be a short jaunt into squat-bench-deadlift territory with a couple of meets before I quickly got back on the Olympic platform. However, the lifting gods had different plans. In 2017, I won the National Masters Powerlifting Championship and got selected for the US Team to compete in the Masters World Championship in Sweden (you have to be specially selected for international competition in PL, it’s not like OL where you can go to Masters Worlds just by making a qualifying total). I accepted the invitation and spent the year training for Sweden, but then I withdrew from the team two months before the meet.
 
The main reason I pulled out was a back injury that slowed my training down to a standstill for a few weeks. However, I also have to admit something I’m not proud of. When I saw the start list for the meet, I realized I would be nowhere near medal contention. In fact, I would most likely place near the bottom. Powerlifting obviously isn’t my primary sport. And although I’m a good powerlifter, I’m not good enough to beat the best guys in the world. The idea of going all the way to Sweden and getting crushed sounded awful, so I bailed on it.
 
After I sent my withdrawal email to the team manager, I didn’t sleep for a week. I regretted it immediately. I had passed up an amazing opportunity to travel overseas and represent the United States in a world championship, all because I was afraid of getting beat. It was a cowardly decision that went against everything I’ve ever stood for as a competitor.
 
The mental torture drove me to enter the Masters Nationals again in 2018, hoping for a shot at redemption. Fortunately, I lifted well and, once again, got an invitation to compete in the Masters World Championship in Mongolia, which I accepted in the blink of an eye. Just like in 2017, the start list came out six weeks before the meet and I was completely out of contention for any kind of medals, but I got my mind in the right spot this time and decided to go over there and battle anyway. I traveled overseas, slugged it out on the platform, had a good day, and placed 6^th. Being on that stage and competing for the United States was one of the best experiences of my career, and I’ll be forever thankful for the second chance I got. Not getting called up to receive a medal at the end was a bummer, but that didn’t ruin it for me. It was exciting, rewarding, and fun.
 
That’s my second story. Now it’s time for the lesson I promised. I’ve talked about Catalyst and I’ve talked about myself, so let’s talk about you.
 
Taking your shots
 
There’s an old axiom you hear a lot with basketball coaches. They say, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” I don’t like to resort to overused catch phrases very often, but that one hits hard with the point we’re obviously moving towards.
 
Greg’s move up to San Jose to open his own gym was a gamble. A gym is a business, and it’s very common for businesses to fail in the first few years. When you start your own business, you’re rolling the dice with your livelihood. If your gamble doesn’t work out, you can easily lose your ass. Some people do irreparable damage to their financial lives this way.
 
My decision to go overseas for Masters Worlds wasn’t the same kind of professional gamble as Greg’s, but it was still a situation where I had a special opportunity that was a little daunting when I first considered it. I let my first shot at this opportunity slip through my fingers because I didn’t want to take the risk, and it ate at me internally for a long time afterwards. I didn’t take my shot because I was worried about how it might turn out. I saw a potential negative outcome, so I held back. Lucky for me, I was able to get a second chance, and I jumped on it. So it all worked out in the end.
 
There’s a common idea with Greg’s Catalyst story and my own Masters World thing. In both situations, we had a chance to do something important. There was a little bit of fear involved, because neither of us had a guarantee that things were going to end well. But we took the plunge anyway.
 
This is where you come in, because I’m completely confident each one of you has something hovering around your life that entails risk. You’re athletes and coaches, which are paths that don’t have guaranteed outcomes. When you lift weights, each workout is a moment when things might go bad, physically or mentally. Some of you could have deep-seated fears that hold you back from taking the required steps to move up to a higher level of performance. Maybe you’re worried about failure. Maybe you’re worried about getting hurt. Maybe you know you’ll have to make some big life changes if you want to go all the way in this game. There are a million ways to be scared in this sport. Even if you’re a turbo badass maniac animal, there are still things out there that rattle you, whether you talk about them openly or not.
 
If you’re a coach, it’s the same basic story…only with different particulars. There’s nothing about being a weightlifting coach that guarantees a positive end. Things can go bad in a variety of ways. Athletes can quit, get injured, or betray you. You can start having problems paying your bills because the job just doesn’t bring in enough damn money. Or you could simply have a lack of success. Your athletes don’t perform at a high level, either because they’re not talented enough or you’re not a very good coach.
 
And I’ve lived long enough to know this isn’t just a weightlifting-related concept. Many people live their whole lives holding back, or hiding in fear. Every single one of us has things we would like to accomplish. The bigger those things are, the more risk involved with trying them. Some people sit in the same place for years thinking about it, talking about it, wondering about it, and fearing the risk of it. Before you know it, the time has passed and it’s no longer an option. The window is closed. This is when you enter a life filled with regrets. You get to sit in your rocking chair when you’re old and wonder what it would have been like if you’d just given it a shot.
 
I’m not the owner/operator of Catalyst Athletics, but I’ve been a part of the organization since its birth moment, so I think I have a strong understanding of its core values. One of those values is courage. Catalyst’s entire creation came from a spirit of bravery, and a willingness to dare the odds for great rewards. We understand that you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, and one of our main goals as a coaching education company has always been the simple desire to instill courage in the people we come into contact with. This sport doesn’t always reward guts, but it definitely always punishes cowardice. You don’t have a guarantee of success if you take risks, but you will always have a guaranteed lack of success if you don’t even try.
 
And I think that’s the core message we want to continue as we head into the next 10 years of helping athletes and coaches develop better careers, and better lives. Obviously, we’ll continue to provide quality content about programming, technique, recovery, nutrition, and all the other nuts and bolts that build a successful weightlifter. I’ve written tons of stuff about these things, and I’ll do more in the future. However, it doesn’t take long in this sport to figure out the truth: it’s 50 percent physical and 50 percent mental. The nuts and bolts don’t matter if your spirit isn’t right. The stories I shared with you here are about spirit. You have to build your snatch technique if you want to be great, but you also have to build your soul. Catalyst Athletics is committed to giving you resources for all of the above. Here’s to the past, and the future.