In weightlifting, it’s not like that. When you look at two weightlifters and you want to figure out which one is better, it’s extremely easy…just look at how much weight they can lift. Let’s say you’ve got two lifters in the 81 kg class. One of them totals 300 kg, and the other one totals 265 kg. There aren’t any questions at that point. It’s cut and dry. Personally, this is how I like it.

This also factors into goal setting. When you look at my football example, you can see I was picking a goal that was ultimately going to rely on the opinions of a selection committee. In a way, it’s almost like getting judged in a bodybuilding contest. But in weightlifting, you don’t have to worry about that. If your goal is to snatch 100 kg, you’re never going to have to deal with subjective determinations. When you put 100 kg on the bar and snatch it…mission accomplished.

Athletes are usually goal setters. When we start a sport, we quickly look at the higher levels of performance, and then we find a level we want to reach. Maybe it’s that 100 kg snatch I talked about. Maybe it’s qualifying for a National Championship. Maybe it’s the big kahuna…winning the Olympic gold medal. One way or another, we instinctively find a target to lock in on. We identify it as our goal, and then we work our asses off to reach it.

There are two different kinds of goal setting, and that’s what I want to explore in this article. The first one is singular goal setting. This is when you pick out ONE specific thing you want to get, and that becomes the whole reason you’re doing the sport. The goal is everything. When things get tough and you start to get discouraged, you always go back to thinking about the goal, and that’s what keeps you going. Those measurable things I mentioned are perfect examples of this. If you finally reach the goal, you smile and say, “I DID IT!!”

The other form is non-specific goal setting. This is where your goal is simply to go as far as you can in the sport. It’s not about one particular championship you want to win or weight you want to lift. It’s about pushing as hard as you can for as long as you’re able, trying to reach the best heights you’re capable of. It’s not a mentality of “I have to get this ONE thing!” It’s more like “Let’s go for broke and see where I end up!”

Neither of these is a superior method. They both have positives and negatives, and it’s entirely possible to reach greatness using either one. Your job as an athlete is to figure out which one is best for YOU, and that’s what we’re going to do here.

Specifics of each one

Singular goal setting

One of the interesting things about singular goal setting is it involves a definite end of the road. Let’s go back to that Olympic gold medal example. If the gold medal is your entire reason for doing the sport, you’re most likely going to retire after you get it. Makes sense, right? I once saw an interview with former world heavyweight boxing champion Riddick Bowe where he talked about this. Winning that world title was his entire goal as a fighter. After he won it, he basically lost all his motivation. He continued to fight, but his performances got shaky because his heart wasn’t really in it anymore. He had one goal he wanted, he got it, and then he wanted to be done.

One of the main positives of this method is it gives you permission to center your whole life around the pursuit of the goal in a total kamikaze way because you know it’s only temporary. Take 2008 Olympic gold medalist Matthias Steiner from Germany as an example. After several years of competing in the 105 kg class, Steiner moved to the superheavyweight class and bulked his bodyweight up to 320 lbs. in pursuit of Olympic gold. He wasn’t naturally a 300+ lb. man, but he knew he needed to weigh that much to lift the weights that would win as a super. He won the gold in 2008 and then competed four more years to try again at the 2012 Games. It didn’t happen, so he retired, walked away from the sport, and dropped over 100 lbs. to get healthier and move on with his life.

In other words, you structure your life with the idea that you can put yourself through hell for a limited period of time. When you reach the goal, that time is over. Then you can stop putting yourself through hell and relax. Some people like this approach. They want to get in, get what they want, and get out. I’ve trained with some lifters over the years who have said things like, “I just need to clean and jerk 400 lbs., and then I can quit.” This is singular goal setting.

Obviously, the biggest negative of this method is the feeling of complete failure if you don’t reach the goal. If you were only doing the sport to pursue one thing, and then you never get that thing…you might see the whole experience as a waste of time. Missing that goal could make you look at your whole career in a negative light because you’ll always feel like it was mission NOT accomplished.

Non-specific goal setting

With the non-specific approach, you don’t have the risk of feeling like this. To understand this method, think of that old saying, “The goal isn’t the end of the road. The goal is the road.” That’s the best way to sum this up.

Non-specific goal setting is more like a lifestyle choice than a temporary commitment. You’ll still have goals in your career, like numbers you want to hit or medals you want to win, but none of those things have an end-of-the-road association attached to them. The goals are just highlight moments in the long journey. Even after you’ve achieved these goals, you’ll still keep banging away because you want to see if you can eventually go further.

This was always my approach to my weightlifting career. I always had goal numbers in my mind, but I never liked the idea of quitting after I hit those numbers because I didn’t want to rule out the possibility that I could eventually lift even more. In my first weightlifting meet, I snatched 80 kg. I was obsessed with snatching 100 kg for my first year, which I eventually did. Then I got obsessed with 110. After I hit 110, I got obsessed with 120. You get the point. This approach eventually led me to a career personal record of 155 kg. So from 80 to 155…that’s 75 kg improvement from my first meet until my career best, just by continually thinking, “Let’s keep working and see if I can do better.”

Are there any negatives with non-specific goal setting? Potentially. The main one is pushing it longer than you should and not knowing when it’s time to walk away. Listen, we all know there are masters lifters out there who have been training and competing for 50 years without stopping. They show up at Masters Nationals in the 75-79 age group and have a ball out there. It’s definitely possible. But these are rare cases. More often, Olympic weightlifters reach a point where they need to call it quits. It usually happens when the injuries start piling up and making it more destructive than productive. If you’ve lived with a non-specific goal approach, it’s possible to turn into one of those lifters who can’t stop, even when they should. It’s so deeply ingrained in your life from so many years, and you can’t imagine living without it.

Which one should you pick?

This is where I make the obligatory “it’s not my job to tell you how to live your life” comment. I don’t know you, so I don’t know what’s right for you. Yadda yadda yadda.

However, I have some thoughts about which approach is best suited to different situations. For most of you, I honestly think the non-specific goal setting approach is probably the right one. I say that because most of you are older, which means you’re not in contention to make the Olympic team or something huge like that. In other words, you’re doing this for fun.

That means you probably want to stretch the fun out for as long as possible. If you’re reading this magazine, you’re in love with the sport. You’re trying to soak up as much information as possible because it’s your favorite thing. Maybe you’ll only be doing this for a couple of years. Who knows? But if you really like it, you’ll probably want to do it longer than that. That’s why I think it’s better to have a goal system that doesn’t involve a cutoff date.

If you reach a point where it’s obvious your weightlifting days are over, either because of injury or simple lack of desire to do it anymore, it’ll be obvious to you. It might take you a long time to settle up with calling it quits. For some lifters, it takes years. They just love it too damn much to stop, even when it’s doing nothing but hurting them.

Still, I think you want to give yourself plenty of time to see how far you can go. Remember, most of you also have careers and/or families. That means you can’t really go into the kind of complete tunnel-vision lifestyle that we see with singular goal setting. The singular method is more of a “balls to the wall, no distractions” approach. It’s tough to pull that off when you’ve got a mortgage payment and two kids.

That’s my two cents. As I always say, the world is way too complex to apply one set of rules or ideas to it. You’ve all got your own aspirations, challenges, and life plans. Weightlifting is something you’ve chosen to incorporate, and you want to know the best way to do it. Based on my experience throughout a lifetime of lifting and working with other lifters, I think the old “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” mindset is the one that’ll lead you to the most fun.

Plus, I can tell you for certain that it’s pretty terrific when you reach the “seasoned veteran” stage, when you’ve been in the game for ages and you’ve earned a level of mastery that people respect and admire. You don’t get that kind of respect without traveling the road for many miles. So if you really love this sport you’ve chosen, make it more than a sport. Make it part of your life journey. You never know where you might end up, and not knowing is one of the best parts of the whole thing.