Not too long ago, I was listening to a speech from Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Kurt Warner. For those of you who don’t know anything about Warner, he’s got a pretty interesting history. He had legendary success throughout his career, winning the Super Bowl and league MVP award twice, along with setting several all-time records for passing yardage. But the aspect of his story that grabs the most attention is the fact that he originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent. The Green Bay Packers took a risk and signed him to a rookie contract after every team in pro football passed on him. In other words, the entire NFL believed he wasn’t worth the effort or money, so he was left behind until one team decided to throw him a bone and sign him up. 23 years later, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
 
Needless to say, his story has been a huge source of inspiration for every athlete who’s ever been rejected, defeated, or disrespected. It’s a lot like the Michael-Jordan-getting-cut-from-JV-basketball-in-high-school thing, those great underdog tales about starting in the gutter and making it to the top. 
 
While I was listening to Warner speak, he said something that caught my ear. He told us how he made up his mind at the beginning of his career about what KIND of player he wanted to be…how he wanted to be identified. This sparked my interest because it was different from the standard “it’s important to set goals” conversation you normally hear when you listen to elite athletes. Legendary champions often sound the same when they do public speaking. They rattle off a list of motivational phrases and ideas we’ve all heard a million times, and you don’t walk away with anything new or useful.
 
But Warner spoke about how essential it was for him to have a clear understanding about the type of athlete he wanted to become. It wasn’t about which championships he wanted to win, or which records he wanted to break. It was about the identity he wanted to have, the way he wanted to be regarded by the people around him. It wasn’t about what he wanted to DO; it was about who he wanted to BE.
 
This made me think about myself, and weightlifting, and all of you. It occurred to me that I did this same thing when I was a young lifter, without even knowing it. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was one of the best things I did when I was getting started in my career. I wanted people to look at me in a specific way. If my name came up in conversations between other lifters or coaches, I wanted them to say things like, “Matt Foreman is a hell of a competitor” and “Oh yeah, I know Matt. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen.” It wasn’t really about the titles I wanted to win or the records I wanted to break. Those things mattered, obviously, and I definitely had concrete goals about competing in the Olympic Trials, medaling at Nationals, and snatching over 150 kg. Those were my dreams, for sure. But I didn’t want my weightlifting career to be defined only by my accomplishments. I also wanted my career to be defined by my competitiveness, my toughness, my work ethic, and my resilience. When I look back at it now, I realize those things were every bit as important to me as my list of medals and records.
And I didn’t truly realize this until I listened to Kurt Warner talk about it. That’s why I want to extend the conversation to you. You’re all lifters and coaches, and you’ve got goals. Are your goals limited to meets you want to qualify for, and weights you want to lift? Or do you also have goals for the kind of person you want to be, and how you want to be remembered? This is next-level stuff, and it can take your career to greater heights than you ever imagined if you approach it the right way. Let’s dig deeper.
 
A Weightlifting Lesson…From Boxing
 
Anybody remember Riddick Bowe? He was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world back in the 90s, famous for his historic fights with Evander Holyfield. Bowe is regarded by boxing fans as a legitimate world champion with fantastic talent who never quite became what he could have been. He was a great fighter, but he isn’t considered one of the all-time greats, even though he had the tools to rise to that level.
 
Why didn’t he live up to his potential? Because after he won the world championship, his hunger and desire dropped off. He didn’t work as hard after he made it to the top, and he paid the price as his career floundered. I once heard an interview with Bowe where he openly spoke about this, years after his retirement. He talked about how his entire life had been dedicated to becoming world heavyweight champion. From the time he started boxing as a teenager, winning that title was the focus of everything he did. And then, after he won it, he lost his motivation. He had a dream, he worked hard and got it, and then his mentality became “mission accomplished.” He no longer had the same discipline and determination after he achieved his goal.
 
This can sometimes be a problem when you dedicate your entire life to one single, solitary achievement. The pursuit of that achievement is all-consuming, and it drives you to greater heights every day. This is all well and good, but there are two risks to this approach. 1) If you never accomplish that one big goal, you look at your entire career as a failure. 2) If you do accomplish it, you have nowhere to go afterwards.
 
Let’s take a minute and analyze your goals, shall we? Is your weightlifting life dedicated to one big target? Like a specific lifetime weight you want to lift? I’ve known athletes who say things like, “I have to snatch 100 kilos someday. After that, I can quit.” Or maybe your goal is a particular competition, like competing in the National Championship. And if you eventually get there, you can look at your whole weightlifting life and say, “I DID IT!”
 
I suppose there’s nothing wrong with this mentality. It’s not like there’s anything corrupt or malicious about it, and it’s certainly a powerful example of goal setting. The potential problem with it is the “one and done” aspect. If you commit your whole life to chasing one specific thing, you basically have to be prepared to retire after you get it. Because if you stay in the game after you’ve hit your big goal, you become like Riddick Bowe. The fire isn’t there anymore. And it’s pretty damn hard to be a successful athlete once you’ve lost your fire.
 
Granted, there are plenty of examples of athletes who travel this road, and their stories are wonderfully successful and fulfilled. They start out in a sport as little kids, put in years of hard work as they rise up the ladder, and then one day…BAM! They win the Olympic gold medal, or the Super Bowl, or the World Heavyweight Championship. And then they walk away from it all, life goes on, and their whole athletic journey was like a great novel that reached THE END on the last page. All is right with the world. Not a damn thing wrong with it.
 
But here’s where you come in. Most of you are older athletes who aren’t doing this sport because of one big top-of-the-mountain goal you’ve got locked in your head. Most of you are doing it because you love it. That means you’re going to want to do it for as long as possible. You don’t want there to be an end point on your career. You want it to be a part of your life for the long haul. If this is the case, it’s wise to adopt a different mentality than the one Riddick Bowe used. Instead of focusing on what you want to DO, maybe you should think a little more about what you want to BE.
 
Two Names
 
I want to tell you about two lifters who exemplify the concept of athletic personality…of being defined in a particular way. The first one is David Rigert. Rigert was a Soviet lifter from the 1970s who left an amazing mark on the sport. He was an all-time great: Olympic gold medalist, world champion, world record-holder. His track record of accomplishments is legendary. However, if you talk to anybody who knew about David Rigert back in the old days, I doubt if many of them would talk to you about his championships and titles. They would talk to you about WHO HE WAS more than WHAT HE DID.
 
Rigert was simply an animal. Physically, he looked like he was carved out of granite, and when he was on the platform, the look on his face would send a pack of wolves running in terror. The level of intensity he competed with was startling, and he was widely known for his complete lack of fear with weights that had never been attempted by anybody before. He once snatched 170 kg (8 kg below the world record) in a training hall with no warmup, completely cold. Rigert was more physically intimidating, mentally focused, and competitively courageous than any lifter in history. Most people don’t even know that he bombed out of two Olympics. He bombed in 1972, won gold in 1976, and bombed again in 1980. The kind of athlete he was mattered more to people than those bombouts. THIS is what Kurt Warner was talking about, when people see something special in you that’s bigger than any medal or world record. 
 
US lifter Norbert Schemansky was another example of this concept. I’ve written about Norb before. Hell, people have written books about him. Physically, he was a lot like Rigert. His muscularity and intimidating presence were frequent topics of conversation when his name came up. But the thing Norb was known for more than anything was his toughness and longevity. He was a four-time Olympic medalist, winning gold in 1952, silver in 1948, and bronze in 1960 and 1964. He snatched a world record when he was 37 years old, after back surgery. Despite having to work in factories his whole life to support his family, Norb just never quit. He kept coming back year after year, injury after injury…winning championships and breaking records. He was still winning medals at the US National Championship when he was 46.
 
Lifters like Rigert and Norb are special. People idolize them while they’re active, and then remember them with fondness long after they’re finished. Sure, they’re remembered for their championships. But there are lots of other athletes who win those same kinds of championships and never get the same level of reverence and inspiration as the Rigerts and the Norbs. Both of them won Olympic gold once. Other lifters have won Olympic gold twice, or even three times, but they aren’t remembered in the same way.
 
WHO THEY WERE is bigger than WHAT THEY DID. Muhammad Ali was like this. Henry Rollins is like this. So…where does that leave you?
 
It Can Be You
 
The important thing to remember about this mentality is that you don’t have to be a world champion to implement it. Sure, high-level accomplishments will get you greater public esteem and fame. We don’t remember Norb and Rigert ONLY because of who they were. Their Olympic gold medals and world championships elevate them to a special level of recognition, just like Kurt Warner’s Super Bowl MVP. And realistically speaking, most of you are never going to reach that level of achievement. We’re not being pessimistic by saying this. We’re just acknowledging reality as adults.
 
However, that doesn’t exclude you from this conversation. Think about the people around you. Think about your teammates, your training partners, your coaches, your family, the competitors at the level you lift at, etc. Whether you’re in the big time or the small time, you’ve still got a community around you. How do you want to be regarded by these people? What do you want them to say about you when you’re not around? What kind of values and qualities do you want to embody?
 
I had a specific list in my mind throughout my career. These are the things I wanted to be known for:

• Work Ethic- Nobody would train harder than me
• Toughness- Injuries and setbacks wouldn’t stop me
• Competitiveness- I would do my best lifting when the pressure was highest
• Integrity- I would never cheat or take drugs

 
Kurt Warner’s speech was the first moment I actually realized that I had spent my entire athletic life with a set of ideas in my head about WHO I WANTED TO BE. And yes, I obviously had specific accomplishment goals, too. I was going to compete in the Olympic Trials someday or die trying. There was no way I was quitting this sport without clean and jerking 400 lbs. I wanted to have enough national-level medals to call myself one of the best weightlifters in the United States.
 
You need to have both: the accomplishment dreams, and the identity dreams. Warner wanted a specific kind of athletic identity, but he obviously also wanted to win the Super Bowl. Personally, I think most athletes focus entirely on accomplishment goals. They lock in on what they want to do, never even thinking about who they want to be. That’s where our final thought comes in.
 
Take another look at my personal list of identity qualities. Work ethic, toughness, competitiveness, and integrity. If you stop and think about it, living your athletic life with those kinds of guidelines will almost certainly LEAD YOU to great accomplishments. If you make it your mission to outwork everybody else and never let setbacks stop you, you’re most likely going to rise up several levels on the competitive ladder. Making up your mind about your identity can be the driving force that produces achievements.
 
People always say this sport is 50% physical and 50% mental. When they talk about that mental part, they’re not just talking about coming up with the right psychological cues for your snatch technique. It goes much deeper than that. Don’t just decide what you want to do. Decide who you want to be.