No lifter is an island.
 
Though weightlifting is the quintessential you vs. you sport, a better fit for those of us who didn’t play well with others on the volleyball court, chances are that you train with a team comprised of other human beings in close proximity. Our progress and success in the iron game is primarily determined by our own will—the time we dedicate, the mastering of the mind, cultivating a love and an appetite for competition—and the remainder is entrusted in the hands of our coach. Our teammates, as they are valuable to these efforts in their own right, can present themselves as clutter in the paths we carve to be the best lifter we can be.
 
We may very well have individualized motivation behind our reasons for lifting or our own unique rituals on the bar, but our relationships with our neighboring lifters have more to do with our lifting than we might think. They can propel us constructively—someone to chase or be chased by—or they can make way for friendly competition to escalate into full blown rivalries; a bad atmosphere in the gym for everybody.
 
Given that competition is a hallmark of our sport, we have shared goals of glory, and shared resources by way of coaching. That means that we have inherent reasons to rift with our comrades in order to advance our own opportunities. It’s like playing a game of knock out on the playground. Ever compete alongside a teammate in your weight class, where you wish them luck as they walk out to an attempt, but secretly and sickeningly hope they get pinned under their clean? Yeah, me too.
 
So what’s a guilty conscience to do? Go inward, and fight the temptation to feed the beasts of envy and jealousy. Put your headphones in, blinders on, and PICK UP YOUR OWN DAMN BAR. So what if my teammate is throwing a fit, and their belt is flying across the room in unnecessary rage? So what if coach hasn’t even graced my platform? The new lifters are really the ones who need the attention anyway. My teammates suck, my coach sucks, but it’s okay. I’m in my own Under Armour campaign fantasy in my head, where I am in the arena, and the barbell is my lion to slay. No one and nothing else matters.
 
It’s just about the lifter on the platform, right? Better to eliminate external distractions and stimulation that could send us into a mental spiralling of sabotage and conspiracy, inevitably distracting us from our one and only duty—making the lift.  
 
Mistakenly, we assume that our choice to excuse ourselves from the training hall’s atmosphere—where mayhem is lurking everywhere—takes us out of the running from negatively impacting it ourselves. Your teammate’s temper tantrum does not exist in a vacuum, and neither does your above-the-influence attitude. The gym is a delicate ecosystem, and we all play an integral role. We are wrong to assume that our efforts, the subtle to the extreme, go unnoticed.
 
I learned this first hand.
 
In hopes of advancing my own performance on the barbell, I thought it necessary to cut out all facets in the gym that weren’t serving me or my goals. Decidedly, I forfeited competing for attention, for kilos, and top dog of the team, and began to look through my teammates as they walked by. I unfollowed them on social media, limiting my exposure to anyone else’s success other than my own. The brain can only process so much, right? So I saw myself out in the name of healthy limited exposure, which only bred total self involvement.
 
The misstep here that did not become evident to me until much later in this story is that I consulted no one about my plan or the reasoning behind it. I moved full speed ahead to the most extreme response to my environment. I cut out the cancer and succeeded to my own little litfting island—perfectly lonely.
 
To cut to the chase, this did nothing to improve my lifting or my lifting experience. I was guiltridden. I agonized obsessively behind closed doors more so than when when belts were being launched across the hall. I was rude and on edge. My noble cause showed itself for what it was: an immature inability to thrive and even cope with my feelings of inferiority amongst my peers (speaking as a team’s captain, I might add!). Feelings of inferiority do not discriminate.
 
But as I prefaced, in this delicate ecosystem, nothing goes unnoticed.
 
Now, before I go into the resolution and the lesson in all of this, allow me to take a moment to give major kudos to coaches everywhere, as their profession ranges far beyond cueing to push your knees back in the pull. My coach, the eyes of they gym, took notice that I was off in some way. My nature as the team’s “welcome wagon” had worn off and a streak of isolation and affliction emerged. I was honest about my need to mentally remove myself from the competitive arena that training had become; the kitchen was too hot for me and I felt I was out of options. He reminded me that it was not a good look for a veteran teammate, let alone the team’s captain, to be beefing with their peers. My lifts-made to lifts-missed ratio at the time could attest to that, too.
 
There is enough that we are up against when we approach the barbell; a day where our joints move as designed is a blessing among it all. But when the space in which we expose our most authentic self is compromised by bad vibes, we overwhelm the system and further stack the odds against us. Elimination is not simplification, and neglect is not a solution. Coach offered to mediate and facilitate an honest and dignified dialogue, which cleared the gym of jealousy, misunderstandings, and disconnection.
 
I’ve come to believe wholeheartedly that any decisions we make in relationships without consulting our counterparts will most often fail to give us the result we want. Rather than put the conflict to rest, we default too easily to means of self preservation, leaving us feeling unsettled, unproductive, and unresolved.
 
The barbell has a knack of bringing forth all kinds of dysfunctions that lie beneath the surface of a lifter’s life. If you begin to pay attention to the clues and conditions that make for crap quality lifting or a crap experience in training—like a social person no longer desiring to be social—ADDRESS IT HEAD ON. Take ownership of your role in the ecosystem; respect your coaches’ place of business, elevate the sanctuary of your peers, and at the very least, make way for every advantage to make the lift.