I don’t need to give you a lengthy description of this global pandemic situation. We’ve all been talking and thinking about it endlessly since it exploded a few weeks ago. It started small, and then it grew, and then it flipped our lives upside down. This morning, I heard on the news that the next few weeks (mid-late April) are projected to be the worst stretch so far. Lots and lots of people are getting sick, and many of them are going to die. It’s absolutely horrible.

We’ve all had to adjust and adapt our lives. Many people have lost their jobs or watched them slow to a crawl. Thousands have been ordered to work from home by their employers. Every time you walk out your door, the main thing on your mind is social distancing, not touching your face, and avoiding this awful disease. It’s been like this for a month, and the experts are projecting that it’s going to continue for a while. Will it end? Yes, it will. When? We don’t know for sure.

Every facet of global life has been affected by this, and weightlifting is no exception. First, gyms were ordered to close down, which sent a shockwave though the strength community. Gym owners are hoping for miracles while they worry about their businesses failing, and their clients have been scrambling to put together some kind of lifting setup in their homes. Thousands of people who hold weightlifting as one of their top life priorities have seen it scrambled into chaos and uncertainty.

Then, meets started getting canceled. The lifting world has been watching the calendar since this whole mess started, wondering how far the cancellations/postponements are going to stretch. At first, there was a collective mentality that March competitions would be wiped out…and maybe early April, at the worst. Then, April basically got canned, and everybody kept their fingers crossed that May would be okay. Now, I think we’re all settling into the depressing idea that we don’t really know when we’ll be able to get back on the platform again. The Olympics, which was supposed to be held later in the year, got moved to 2021. There’s a definite possibility that weightlifting meets, coaching courses, and any kind of group gathering with close physical proximity might not happen for a very long time.

I’d like to see if I can offer some thoughts to help us though this dreadful time. I’m 47 years old, and I’ve never seen anything like this. The closest thing I’ve ever experienced in terms of sheer horror was 9/11. But that was one bad thing that happened on one day. This is different. This is an ongoing, daily darkness that doesn’t let up.

Obviously, I’m not going to write some kind of social or political analysis of the coronavirus crisis. This is a weightlifting magazine, so we need suggestions for your life with the barbell. We want to train. We want to compete. We want to be with our coaches and teams, and we want the sport to keep giving us the thrills and excitement we’re used to. But for the moment, none of that is happening. Let’s see if we can find some optimism somewhere.
 

Loss of Goals

Different people are motivated by different things. Olympic weightlifting is a competitive sport, so most people do it because they want to get on a competition platform and test themselves. But this doesn’t apply to everybody. I’ve known plenty of people throughout my career who simply love working on the Olympic lifts to improve their skills and increase their personal records. They don’t care about competing.

I’ve always been one of those “whatever floats your boat” people when it comes to the goals of others. I don’t want anybody telling me how to live my life, and I extend that same mentality to the people I meet. Personally, I think anybody who trains the Olympic lifts with any level of seriousness should jump in a meet and compete, regardless of their level of talent. Lifting in a weightlifting meet is one of the most thrilling experiences you’ll ever have. For myself, I’ve always seen meets as the whole point of doing the Olympic lifts. If I wasn’t planning to compete, I probably wouldn’t even train the snatch and clean and jerk. It would seem like doing all the work for no reward.

But that’s just my opinion. Others feel differently, which is fine. However, I want to say a few words to the lifters out there who have had their competition plans wiped out by COVID-19.

Some people have a tough time staying motivated if they don’t see a big goal moment at the end of the road. I can’t even imagine how difficult this must be for the Olympians who had already secured their spots for the Tokyo Games. A whole year of waiting? Good lord. There are so many question marks in a full year when you’re competing at the elite level. Will you be able to hold your form for that long? Will the Olympic Committee change the rules and redo the qualifying system, putting the spot you earned in jeopardy? You’ve dedicated your life to this thing and you’ve given up everything to chase the dream, and now…it’s all floating in space with no certainty.

And let’s take this down to sub-Olympic level. The National Championship was supposed to happen in May, and now it’s been moved to December. The National Masters Championship went from April to August. Local meets are getting postponed until…whenever, or just canceled outright. Local meets might seem like small potatoes compared to the Olympics, but they’re extremely special and important to the local competitors who train their guts out for them. Everything has been getting pushed back several months, and we’re all wondering about the white elephant in the room. What if the coronavirus pandemic continues to escalate? Aside from the death and horror the world is experiencing, does this mean these big competitions might never happen? Will the six-month postponements eventually turn into outright cancellations?

Right away, I want to address what many of you might be saying as you read this. “Jeez, Matt! People are dying by the hundreds every day, and you’re worried about weightlifting meets? Shouldn’t we be focused on the things that are really important? Staying alive? Keeping our jobs? Paying our rent? How can you focus on lifting competitions at a time like this?”

Here’s my response to that. First of all, YES. We should unquestionably be more concerned with the important human element in this crisis. Saving lives is infinitely more important than weightlifting competitions. Reviving the economy, getting people’s jobs back, getting kids back to school…those are the things that really matter right now. Absolutely, 100%.

However, we shouldn’t feel guilty for thinking about the other parts of our lives as well. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you’re stressed and frustrated about your weightlifting life. We all know the seriousness of this, and we all understand the need to focus on what really matters in life. We’re adults. We get it.

But our passions count for something too, don’t you think? Different things can exist at the same time. You can be focused on lives and jobs while still thinking about weightlifting, and you can keep them in a ranking list with the most important stuff at the top. This situation is huge and terrible, so I think it behooves us all to figure out a responsible mental outlook on it. Plus, for many of you, weightlifting and your career lives are intertwined. Some of you are coaches and gym owners. So when we talk about weightlifting, we ARE talking about your job, and your livelihood.

In a nutshell, we all know how heavy this thing is, and we’re all looking at our futures with the same mixture of fear and frustration. So, what can we do? How can we stay motivated? How are we supposed to move forward?
 

Getting back to the basics

Actually, something occurred to me the other day when I was sitting at home watching a movie and self-isolating. It’ll take me a second to make this point, so just stick with me.

I was watching the movie “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” which many of you have probably seen. It’s Quentin Tarantino’s latest film about the Hollywood scene in 1969, along with the story of the Manson murders. I’m a huge lifetime Tarantino fan, so obviously I loved the movie. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.

When this movie came out six months ago, I saw an interview with Tarantino where he talked about his career as a filmmaker. I’ve always enjoyed listening to him talk about his work, because I’m continually blown away by his love for what he does. This guy eats, sleeps, and breathes movies. He’s in his 50s now, and he still sounds like a little kid on Christmas morning when he talks about the films that have inspired him, his own tradecraft, and the development of his projects. He’s literally one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever seen.

And that’s where I think we find the strength to make it through the COVID-19 crisis. I’m talking about relying on your fundamental love for what you do.

If you love lifting weights, you might have to find a new way to do it for a while, with the understanding that it’s not going to be perfect, and that’s okay. If you’ve got a home gym setup, and the only sacrifice is you don’t get to be around your coach and teammates every day, that’s not an enormous amount of loss. You still get to train. You still have equipment. Many people aren’t that fortunate.

Let’s say you don’t have a home gym setup, and you’ve had to piecemeal together some stuff through Amazon shopping and trades, like a ramshackle squat rack and a power bar that doesn’t spin. All you’re going to be able to do through this time is squats, deadlifts, presses, and bodyweight exercises. Is this perfect? Far from it. Can you keep your weightlifting alive with a setup like this? Absolutely. Same goes for those of you who have NOTHING at home and are looking at air squats and pushups until your gyms open back up.

No matter how many accommodations and inconvenient exceptions you have to make throughout this time, you can survive if you’re determined enough. And that determination will come from the deep love you have for lifting weights. Hell, you could rummage around in the forest and find a big rock and use it for stone lifting, overhead pressing, and Zercher-type squats. Would this make you a better Olympic lifter? No. Could you stay physically strong training like this? Yes, you could. Would it give you a chance to maintain a physical life, keeping you from going nuts? Yes!

We’re talking about imperfect conditions. We’re talking about lousy circumstances that vaporize your normal routine and force you to improvise, adapt, and overcome. For many of us, this is what we’ll be up against for the foreseeable future. It’ll be a huge test of your resilience and toughness, and that leads me to my final point.
 

50% Physical, 50% Mental

We’ve all heard it. Weightlifting is 50% physical and 50% mental. It’s an old adage in the sport, and it’s the truest thing you know.

The coronavirus crisis will be a hellacious test of your mental toughness. For many of you, the ease and convenience you’ve gotten used to is out the window. You used to worry about your snatch technique and how your butt looks in workout tights. Now you’re worried about keeping your house and avoiding a deadly disease that’s floating in our midst every second of the day.

Your goals have been temporarily put on hold, so now you’ll have to make new goals. Maybe your new goal is simply being able to work out three times a week, using any exercises and equipment you can manage under the circumstances. You can survive if you stay hungry and refuse to give up. That’ll be your test for the coming months.

Look at your life like it’s a book. It has a lot of chapters. The circumstances of this crisis will be one of those chapters, and that’s all it will be. This chapter will end, and then the story will move forward.

And above anything else, don’t lose the proper perspective about what’s going on around us. Thousands of people have died from this thing. That’s thousands of families suffering the worst kind of loss. Millions of Americans have filed for unemployment. The global economy has collapsed. People are sitting up against walls in hospital hallways because they can’t get a bed, coughing and wondering if they’re going to live another day.

If you’ve got a roof over your head, a squat rack, and a healthy respiratory system, you’re much luckier than they are. So stay strong, stay hungry, and don’t mentally defeat yourself. This is one of those rare times in world history when our inner strength will be tested to the maximum. As always, the toughest people will be the ones who survive and go on to future triumphs. Make sure you’re in that group.