As weightlifters, we are always chasing numbers; our weight on the scale, our state or national ranking, and most often we are consumed by the weight on the bar. Let’s just take a moment to be sure we’re all on the same page and allow me to state what is painfully obvious: weightlifting is not a linear sport. In the beginning it sure may prove to be so as we leap from personal record to record seemingly easily, even predictably! What a glorious road it would be if it were always this way…
 
For those of us who have had a fair dose of changing coaches, jumping weight classes, and all the mediocrities of life getting in the way of our training blocks, it might be a while until we set a personal record overhead. We have stats for all phases of life considering all kinds of variables: body weight, training frequency, injury management; So how do we keep moving upward and onward?
 
My first coach called it a “potential PR,” the weight we may have secured overhead but failed to stand up or the jerk that was lost behind but may have locked out in its rainbow trajectory. The lifts we could have made—rather the weightlifter’s equivalent to the sun being in one’s eye. We can also look at is as an investment it our potential: what could I be lifting if it weren’t for x, y, and z?
 
What’s a few extra kilos anyway, right? If the most I’ve snatched is 73kg, a handful of times, and have taken a stab at 75kg, give it a few months, and 75kg is pretty much in the bag. I’ll be there’s some really simple math to prove it! I was warned that working off of a potential PR any higher than a 5% increase might give me a head too big beyond delusion, but rather than a big head I became incessant on rounding up. 73kg would always be 75kg and 98kg would always become 100kg. Sure, we all experience the laziness in loading, or we are sharing a bar with a teammate who is slightly stronger every now and then, but over time I began to reject what it was that I could solidly lift overhead and aimed higher. 
 
Expecting higher. 100kg will always sound better than 98kg.
           
Knowing coach had enough to worry about, I could always count on him forgetting what my personal best’s even were—I simply overwhelmed him with competing in three weight classes that one year—so I’d bet he never notice if loaded a few more kg’s. I aspire to snatch 80kg, I probably could snatch 80kg, and Joe-Schmo over there added 10kg to his snatch in like four months so why the hell couldn’t I rise to the occasion?! Totally disregarding all of the obvious factors (like testosterone and training age), I adjusted all of my working percentages to what I aspired to lift, which I believe will be looked back on as a fault of my generation of weightlifters in the same spirit of participation trophies. 
 
It played out just as you thought it might. Training was murderous and missed lifts became a normal day-to-day. All the while, I failed to realize that the gap between what I wanted to lift and what I could lift began to drift further and further apart a degree or two a day. I’d curse the bar and find myself distressed and confused as to why 85% felt that scary kind of heavy. As adaptable humans, I had completely forgotten that these working sets were based on numbers I hadn’t even touched yet and I began to believe that this is just how training was: a high bar and a frustrating road ahead. I had no successful lift to refer to. No visual, no feeling to replicate before taking an attempt at my heavier lifts. There was no confidence behind these attempts. 
 
In the world of weightlifting, we state and identify with our stats like military ranking: best snatch, best clean and jerk, best total. We often forget to recognize that there is fine print behind these numbers, or even fine print that is completely disregarded: I had a baby this year, that was when I was a 69kg lifter, or I took three months off this summer. For better or for worse, we cling to the best of our body of work. 
 
Only until I began working with my most recent coach did I learn the concept of PR shelf life, which I have come to find is the weightlifter’s equivalent of asking a woman her age. As a sport we have little shame in reporting our bodyweight out loud—it’s need to know stuff! I forget this sort of exchange is uniquely ours only until I’ve elicited the look of horror on prospect’s face when I ask for both their age and weight before they’ve even tied their laces. 
 
“How old are those numbers?” he asked and immediately my face turned hot as I was trying to reverse engineer the math of my increases, the weight I had lost over the year. “What is the best you’ve lifted in a meet?” he rephrased, cutting me off, and to my surprise, I was relieved! To train based off of what I had successfully lifted in meets made total sense. Sure, I’d lose a few kilos as my real training makes were sitting around 7kg higher than my competition makes, but it was recent, on record, and even consistent.
 
As an individualist’s sport, we are own fiercest competition. We are absolutely subject to comparing ourselves against our peers like any other arena, but above all we are more readily comparing ourselves to our own best work. Think of the last time you made a lift and shook your head. Yeah, THAT time. 
 
Lifting is an art, it’s a discipline and a chosen path, but we are not defined by what’s on that bar. Our bodies change, our careers take over, and maybe we needed a break for a while. You are still you. At one point in time, you aspired to lift the weight that you are lifting now. Get real with where you are now. Not at your prime, not when you just began, but right now—the most current representation of all the incredible work you have put in over the years. Celebrate your progress and take comfort in your maintenance. Congratulate yourself for coming back from the injury, having a baby, or changing coaches. Honestly stoke the fire and trust in times of smoldering embers and full flames.