As weightlifters, we are familiar with popular athletic adages such as “Put your head down and work,” “Get it done,” and “Nobody cares; work harder.” These phrases resonate with many of us because they capture an essential element of weightlifting: grit, focus, and discipline are often what separate an elite from a casual weightlifter. Success is sometimes determined by talent, but it is also found by those willing to sacrifice everything to achieve their goals. As another popular adage goes, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”
 
This notion of dying for what you love is inherently dark. But there is a darkness to the discipline required to be a weightlifter. Sometimes our suffering doesn’t translate to success. Even when we train tirelessly, we have only six minutes per meet to demonstrate our capacity. This can read as a bleak ratio for some. However, this intensity is the sweet spot for so many of us who call weightlifting our sport. We do not set the sport aside when we leave the platform. Rather, we continue to live it as we tend to our nutrition, sleep, and recovery. Yet another athletic adage: “Anybody can focus for an hour in the gym; it takes true discipline to control what you eat for the other 23 hours in the day.” This illustrates the all-consuming nature of weightlifting.
 
The capacity to relentlessly pursue a goal, to put your nose to the grindstone, to tune out suffering and focus on the task at hand, can impact success in many domains of life. However, in many such domains, there is reprieve from this intensity at regular intervals. That is often not the case with weightlifting. We are so often called to leave our problems at the door and off the platform. While it is useful to be able to set distractions aside when we train, what happens if we forget to pick them back up?
 
While a highly technical sport, weightlifting has an elegant simplicity to it. It has often been called the ultimate individual sport. Unlike sports such as wrestling or rowing, where you work alone but face an opponent, or perhaps row a sweep where you have several teammates and a coxswain pulling along with you, in weightlifting you are truly alone. There is nobody else with you on the platform, not even your competition. Pursuing this sport, and pursuing any sport at an elite level, is sometimes seen as selfish. People who don’t engage in a similar lifestyle often misunderstand our discipline; they may feel unseen when we put our heads down and work. While it is not our burden to alter our lives or ignore our goals for the comfort of others, as weightlifters we do sometimes need reminders to pick our heads up, to pick our distractions back up as we leave training.
 
For two years, I lived in a very rural part of northern New England. There were few resources and few cultural outlets. There was poverty and relentless winter. It was there that I found weightlifting, though I pursued it alone. The landscape of this area reflected the lifestyle; it was beautiful, stark, and bleak. It was also, at times, sublime. In such a place, it was easy to dive into weightlifting and place it at the center of my life. I pursued my training, my diet, and my recovery with precision and accuracy. My goal was perfection, 100 percent on 100 percent of the time. But I forgot to look up. Until one day, I did.
 
When I looked up, I found that I was unhappy. I loved weightlifting and still do. I regret nothing about pursuing it as a sport. And indeed, weightlifting didn’t make me an intense, singularly-minded person. I found and loved weightlifting because I was already an intense person and athlete. But weightlifting, unlike my other sports such as rugby, enabled me to dig into my solitary nature, to fold in on myself until I had only the barbell.
 
Since moving away from my gloriously bleak northern landscape, I have more stimuli in daily life that remind me to look up. I have also instituted some daily practices which remind me to engage with the other domains of my life and to nurture myself as a fully-rounded person. My ultimate goal now is to live fully and purposefully, and weightlifting is a primary part of that.
 
A huge shift occurred when I finished graduate school. As soon as I did so, I was able to read for pleasure again. I am a voracious reader, and much of my graduate school reading was fascinating and fulfilling. But it was also assigned. Having the freedom to pick up a book of my choosing was liberating. As weightlifters, we so often glue ourselves to recent comments about training techniques, the latest research on conditioning, and so on. However, novelty enhances the human experience, and I found joy in reading for pleasure again. (Though, of course, I’ve started counting the number of books I read so I can calculate a weekly average. Sometimes, concern with numbers never leaves you!) I encourage others who may be relying on their grit and discipline to keep moving forward to seek out reading beyond their typical material or fields. Poetry and short stories are an easy way to transition back into reading. Novelty is fun, so try something new!
 
Novel experiences enrich our lives in other domains as well. Another daily practice which has enhanced my life is experimenting in the kitchen. I count my macros, weighing and tracking everything I eat, so experimentation is tricky for me. However, the payoff is also immense. When I’m able to discover new flavors, foods, and recipes that fit into my macros, I’m elated. Coming up with new recipes on my own also fulfills a creative impulse that doesn’t really exist for me in weightlifting. If the idea of shifting away from the same daily meals is intimidating, trying to implement novelty one day a week, or one meal in a day, might be a comfortable place to start. It might even be as simple as substituting your typical coffee for a different blend, or swapping Gala apples for Granny Smith apples (which I recommend, because Granny Smith apples are the best).
 
Most significantly in my journey away from the darkness of discipline, I have adopted daily journaling practices that have helped keep my mind light so my barbell can be heavy. I’ve always been a writer, so focusing my journaling practice was an easy step for me. However, there are snappy and effective exercises that can be implemented even by resistant writers. Regarding my training, I take time every day to reflect on my sessions. Indeed, I follow Greg Everett’s suggestion on daily journaling after every session, details about which can be found here.
 
Notably, I make sure to write down something about which I’m proud from each day’s session. Sometimes this is something substantial, like “I PRed my snatch!” Other times, it’s something subtle, like “I got to the gym and focused despite not feeling well.” Whether substantial or subtle, write it down. Acknowledge it fully. Let it sustain and motivate you. Most athletes are already recording their lifts, their training details, their bodyweight, or something regarding weightlifting, which makes this practice an easy one to introduce into your daily practices.
 
Beyond Greg’s journaling suggestions, I also follow a gratitude practice. Each day, I write down a brief list of things for which I am grateful. I try to center this gratitude around intangible things, such as, “I’m grateful for the dawn,” “I’m grateful for my tiny dog,” or “I’m grateful for my capable and strong body.” However, there are also moments where I am grateful for things like my reliable car which gets me through the Maine winter, and I’ll write that down as well. Anything that is improving your quality of life and making you feel fully alive can go on the page. Research has shown that this type of practice has a cumulative effect; the more you acknowledge things for which you are grateful, the more grateful you become. And the more grateful you become, the happier you will feel.
 
Lastly, I practice what I call “bookmarking.” This is essentially a mind-dump, where I write down anything occupying my conscious thought so I can get it out of there! If I’m stressed about finding the time to buy new tires, I make sure buying tires goes on my to-do list, and then I write down “I’m stressed about buying new tires.” Then, I can leave that thought behind me. This practice takes…practice! Leaving your thoughts with the words on the page can be tricky. If you’re a weightlifter who is already highly capable of leaving your distractions off the platform, this practice might come naturally. The key, however, is to release the stress, the distraction, and the pain, not to suppress them.
 
That is the ultimate lesson from all this: Our discipline becomes dark when it is a tool of suppression, rather than one of catharsis. To release our woes, we must acknowledge them. That may involve writing them in a journal, telling a significant other about them, or shouting them to the firmament. However you approach it, I encourage all weightlifters (and athletes!) to pick up their heads, acknowledge their afflictions, and then let them go. Then, we can employ our discipline to return to training with that quintessential weightlifter intensity.