2020 was a whirlwind for many of us, be it in our professional, personal, or athletic lives. For those of you looking to hit the hard reset button to tackle 2021 as a new year resolution, might I offer you a practical guide to mindfulness that can make your navigation in this stormy ocean just a little bit smoother. Join me in the first of this three-part series on how to practice mindfulness when it comes to your training and maybe Olympic weightlifting will bring you more reprieve than you previously thought.
Mindfulness is a buzzword we hear a lot these days. Attend any yoga class and you’ll hear the word repeated ad nauseum. We are constantly told that we should be “in the moment,” and “exercise mindfulness” in all that we do. A bunch of you probably have all kinds of nifty apps on your phone to help you with it. I would even hazard a guess and say that a great many of you probably use your training as the vehicle to a mindful and meditative state. I know I do. More importantly, why we as coaches and athletes care about mindfulness is that we know it can improve athletic performance.
When it comes to Olympic weightlifting, mindful execution of positions and movements is something coaches drill into athletes. There is a lot of debate about the locus of focus, whether internal or external, for athletes and its effect on motor pattern integration. The fact is, in Olympic weightlifting, you need both, and you need to master the control of that focus when it needs to be internal and when it needs to be external. The challenges however, are two-fold. The first is that the word mindfulness itself has been too generally applied, and often used interchangeably with words like “focus” and “pay attention.” This does mindfulness practice a disservice, because it cannot be used to mean everything, otherwise it will mean nothing. Hell, I’ve been guilty of this very offense, often telling my athletes to “be mindful in position x or movement y” without actually specifying what it means to be mindful in those moments.
The second challenge flows from the first: because of the non-specificity of its use, there is a lot of confusion as to how to be mindful. Some articles out there will give some general guidelines, but remain vague about what to actually do. So if you’ve ever wondered what mindfulness in Olympic weightlifting actually look like and how you can know if you’ve done it correctly, then this article series is for you. My goal is to make the practice of mindfulness in this sport accessible, systematic, and simple.

Before we get started, let’s just establish a common definition of mindfulness that we are working with: it is the intentional living with awareness of the present moment, without judgement, rejection, or attachment. The goal of mindfulness for us as coaches and athletes in this sport, is to increase control of our mind and emotions, experience our journey as it is, and ultimately, increase our happiness and performance in our sport. So if you’ve ever said the words, “I missed this lift because it got in my head,” or “I can’t do this because I’m in my head right now,” you need to keep reading.
Now, in this article, let’s tackle the first question: what can I do to  be mindful in Olympic weightlifting? Try following this simple three-step process below.

1.OBSERVE

Before you execute a movement, pick a physical sensation to take note of. Maybe it’s something you’re seeing at the wall in front of you (sight). Maybe it’s the sound of your coach’s voice or the music at the gym (sound). Maybe it’s the feeling of the bar against your chalked up hands (feel). Maybe it’s the odors in the immediate surrounding (smell). Or maybe it’s the lingering taste of your supplement drink in your mouth (taste). If there is a specific cue you are working on in a certain position, observe that feeling or sensation: maybe you are observing the fullness of your trunk to brace your core, maybe you are observing the tightness of your upper back as you try to keep it flat, or maybe you are observing the tension in your posterior as you’re staying over the bar.

Whatever you choose, just observe it without clinging to it, or pushing it away. They’re just there. Control your attention to that sensation in the current moment. Here’s a challenge: try to observe without putting words to the feelings just yet (way harder than you think), because that’s coming next.  

2. DESCRIBE

Once you’ve observed the sensation, now it’s time to put words to the experience. This is the process of acknowledging a feeling or a thought and putting a label to it. The key here is to describe your experience WITHOUT interpreting it or casting any value judgment. You are simply observing the facts. For example, “the knurling on the barbell feels rough in my hands” and not “I don’t like the roughness of the knurling on the bar.” Or, “the coach just yelled ‘CHEST UP!’” rather than “’Chest up’ is not a cue that works for me.” If you are working on a cue, describe in words that makes sense to you, what that experience is like, such as “I can feel my trunk expanding against my belt when I brace my core” or “I feel a stretch in my hamstrings and glutes when I stay over the bar.” Similarly, you can describe your thoughts in the moment as well, for instance “a thought of doubt on this lift has just crossed my mind.” Even something as simple as, “I am breathing in, and I am breathing out” is good practice of description. Remember, it’s very important in the describe stage that you merely stick to the facts that you can observe from the first stage, and free yourself from any opinions you have on those observations.

(Note: if you find yourself describing with thoughts of doubt or judgment, simply observe that you have judged or doubted, without judging the doubt or judgement. More on this in the next article.)
 
3. PARTICIPATE

In other words, execute the movement. You are completely throwing yourself into the execution and becoming one with the movement. You are letting go of the self, and attending only to the position and movement that is in the moment. At this stage, you are letting your intuition take over and going with the flow. This way, you really connect yourself with the bar, the positions, and the movements. This is the part of the practice where you are focusing on the execution of the cue you or your coach gave and performing it with intentionality.

Once execution is complete, go through the entire process again for the next rep in your set. Or if the set is complete, debrief with your coach or with yourself on the quality of the movement, and restart the process. Keep in mind that mindfulness is not a technical diagnostic skill. It’s a skill of focus and attention, of simultaneously letting go and remaining in control. In effect, what is happening when you go through the observe, describe, and participate process is that you can control your focus and attention when it needs to be internal, i.e., for muscular activation, and shift it when it needs to be external, for exerting force on the barbell. Most importantly, remember that like any skill, mindfulness requires consistent and systematic practice to master. These three stages may feel clunky and awkward at the start, but probably so were all of your snatches in your first three months of weightlifting. Once you can systematically and routinely integrate them into your training, they will be seamless and you’ll be able to “get out of your head.” All it takes is repetition and practice.