This is one of those articles where the title basically explains the main idea. We’re going to take a look at two of the most significant factors in a weightlifter’s success: programming and training environment. And we’re going to figure out which one is more important.
 
Stop for a second and think about your own weightlifting life with these two things. First, think about your training program. Do you get your program from a coach, or do you program for yourself? How long have you been following the same program, and what kind of results have you had with it? If you’ve been doing the same thing for two to three years, you’ve got enough time invested with it to answer the only question that really matters to an athlete…does it work?
 
Ask some additional questions. Are other athletes using this same program and having success? Is it battle-proven? If you’re getting it from a coach, does the coach have a legitimate track record of athlete production? Have you been injured on this program? If so, how many times? I know, I know…so many questions to think about! But take a second and analyze all of them. You’d be surprised how much you can figure out just from looking at the answers.
 
We’ll get back to this stuff later. Let’s take a hard right turn and do the same kind of Q&A thing with your training environment. Do you train in a gym with other lifters, or do you train alone? If you train alone, do you like it that way? If so, why?
 
If you train with other lifters, what’s the daily atmosphere like? Is there a good team vibe in the gym? Is your coach a good leadership figure? Do you like the people you train with? Are there any toxic twits in the place? Anybody you’d like to light on fire? Is it a hard-working program where toughness and discipline are expected? Anything about it you have a problem with?
 
It’s amazing how valuable it is to stop every once in a while and really take a hard look at questions like this. Weightlifting is a routine sport, and it’s very easy to get sucked into a routine for years without ever stopping to analyze if it’s a good one. I’ve had moments in my career where I realized I’d been in a crappy situation for a very long time, without even really noticing it. The crappy stuff wasn’t really visible because it was so normal. I didn’t snap out of it and realize how lousy it was until I branched out and saw some different situations and realized how much better they were. And this applies to both programming and gym environment.
 
I’m not going to give you some fence-sitter “Well, they’re both important, and neither is more important than the other” answer at the end of this. I absolutely think there’s a clear winner in the programming vs. environment matchup. But you’ll have to read on to find out what it is.
 
Programming first
 
Let me give you a little personal experience to illustrate this part of the equation. I spent two years training for a certain coach when I was a junior (18-19 years old). This coach was one of those guys with a good sales pitch, you know? He sold himself as a veteran expert, breeder of champions, that kind of thing. It was all bullcrap, basically. Truth be told, he had very little experience with training an Olympic weightlifter. But I didn’t know any better. I was a teenage kid and he had a strong authoritative presence, so he seemed like the real deal to me.
 
For two years, I progressively got worse. My total plateaued for a long time, and then it actually started going down. On top of that, I was getting injured all the time. I was completely obedient to his programming every step of the way. Everything he said to do, I did it. And it basically put my results in the toilet. No improvement and getting hurt all the time. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, especially when you’re talking about a young kid with talent.
 
Eventually, I made a switch. I joined a different program with a different coach, and the programming was totally different from what I had been doing. In the first year with this new coach, my total went from 265 kg to 300 kg. That’s 35 kg of improvement in eleven months, at the same bodyweight. No more injuries. No more frustration. I went from a scrub ass national lifter to a silver medal at the American Open under this new coach’s approach. So yes, programming is important.
 
However, I learned something interesting as I became a regular on the national scene and started making friends with other top lifters from around the country. Not everybody trained the same way, but we all had success. The club I was training for (Calpian Weightlifting Club in Washington) had lots of elite national lifters, and we all trained using the same basic program. But on the other side of the country, the Gayle Hatch Weightlifting Club in Louisiana also had a big gang of top national competitors, and their programming was different from ours. Then you had the Wesley Weightlifting Club in Missouri. They were cranking out tons of national medalists, and they had their own unique style of programming that was different from anybody else’s.
 
The list goes on. The longer you stay in this sport, the more you’ll realize the fundamental truth of programming: there are many ways to skin a cat. Lifters can be trained using a wide range of approaches, and many of those approaches will produce success. Anybody who tells you there’s only ONE way to train great weightlifters is an idiot. You can even branch this out to the international level. Chinese lifters train vastly different from Russian lifters. And guess what? The lifters from both countries win gold medals and break world records.
 
But it’s very important that you stop short of thinking EVERYTHING works. Think about the beginning of my personal example. Good programming can look a lot of different ways, but there’s definitely such a thing as BAD programming. The programming looks different at the Calpian club, and the Gayle Hatch club, and Wesley Weightlifting, and East Coast Gold, and Team Florida, and on goes the list. But each of these programs produces great weightlifters. Then you’ve got the situations like my two years with my first coach. Athletes who have the ability to do well in this sport, but they never go anywhere because they’re not being trained properly.
 
If you’ve been using the same program for three years and you’ve been kicking ass and staying healthy the whole time, you’ve got a solid methodology. If you get hurt a lot and your total won’t budge, something is wrong. Think about these things.
 
And then there’s environment
 
Let me return to my personal example for a moment. Remember when I was training with that bad coach for two years? Oddly enough, I was the best lifter in the state at the time. It wasn’t because I was anything remarkable. There just wasn’t a lot of high-level weightlifting going on in my state. I was in the old 90kg weight class with a 265 kg total. Nothing amazing, but I was the god of my local scene.
 
Then I moved to Washington and joined the Calpian club, and my time of dominance went flying out the window. All of a sudden, I wasn’t even the fifth best lifter in the GYM! Almost everybody on the Calpian team at that time was competing for national medals and international teams, so I was basically the bottom-feeder as soon as I joined the program. Every day, I came to the gym and the other guys lifted more than me (and talked shit to me about it every step of the way). And every few months, they got to go compete in national meets I couldn’t qualify for.
 
Needless to say, this wasn’t much fun. And I went on a kamikaze mission to work my way up to the top of the pack. Yes, the programming was outstanding. Yes, that made a world of difference. But when I think back about that time, I realize the main reason I put 35 kg on my total in that first year was simply my desire to be one of the best lifters in the gym on a daily basis. It was peer pressure, plain and simple. Everybody else was good, so I had to be as good (or better) than they were.
 
We were also a family, which is a huge part of the environment conversation. Aside from the competitive atmosphere that drove us all upwards, we were also having a lot of success because our team was something special. Sure, we had squabbles. It wasn’t always one big happy family. But at the end of the day, we were a true team. We supported each other. We liked training together every day. We had each other’s backs. Lazy people and toxic twits were pushed out of the mix. They just didn’t fit in. The strength of our program wouldn’t allow it.
 
So let’s think about your environment. How competitive is it? How supportive is it? Is your coach a good leader? These are big questions, and they’re big players in your own personal results as a weightlifter. At this point, I’ve been in weightlifting for over 30 years. I’ve been a part of many programs, both as an athlete and a coach. And obviously I’ve had a good look at lots of gyms, coaches, and teams. You don’t really understand this sport until you truly understand the power and potential of a winning environment. It can literally be the difference between greatness and failure.
 
BUT what about those elite weightlifters who train alone in their garage full time? They’re out there, for sure. They don’t need a team to be great. They don’t need daily atmosphere to train well. You can just put them in a room with a platform, bar, and bumpers, and they’ll win championships. This is possible, but it’s rare. Most of the time, lifters are going to do their best work when they’re training with other people. That’s why most lifters do it that way.
 
The answer is…
 
In my opinion, environment is more important than programming. Why do I say that? Because 99% of the time, a lifter with mediocre programming and a great environment is going to be more successful than a lifter with great programming and a mediocre environment.
 
Notice I said the word “mediocre.” That was very intentional. You can’t really go anywhere with BAD programming. If you’ve got bad programming and a great environment, everybody is just going to get hurt. They all love and support each other, but they still wind up broken because the plan they’re following is destined for failure. They want to get better, so they push hard, but they’re pushing hard with poor methodology. Recipe for disaster.
 
Likewise, you can have the best programming in the world, and if you drop it into a gym full of wet noodles, nothing is going to happen.
 
I’ve seen these scenarios play out in real life. Over the years, I’ve seen several gyms with the following combination: a competent coach with adequate basic programming, and hard-charging lifters with team spirit and hunger for progress. Trust me, this is a lethal equation. Gyms like this often turn into powerhouses. Work ethic and hunger outweigh genius in this sport.
 
A lot of it has to do with leadership. Many of you are coaches, and this is where you come in. Brilliant programming doesn’t make a great coach. It’s part of the package, but it’s not the whole enchilada. The ability to inspire, motivate, and drive athletes to new heights is where the greatness comes from. And let me throw in a cautionary note as well. I’ve seen some good gyms with good people that turned into toilets because the coach was a dysfunctional loser. It’s entirely possible. If the leadership is bad, absolutely nothing is going to be accomplished, no matter how much talent is in the room.
 
When you have great programming, great coaches, and great athletes, it’s not hard to see what kind of results you’re going to get. Medals, records, and championships will flow from that combination. But when you’re ranking the components for success and trying to figure out which ones are most important, my experience has taught me that the daily atmosphere and gym environment are the top of the list. You just can’t beat a collective vibe of enthusiasm, camaraderie, and hunger. Keep this in mind as you continue your journey, and especially if you’re ever the one in charge.