Think of the two or three smartest people you’ve ever known. Seriously, take a second and come up with a few names. The sharpest cookies you’ve come across.
 
Now, ask yourself this question: what made you think they were intelligent? What did they say or do that made you identify them this way? Was it some kind or measurement, like IQ or something? Was it a huge level of accomplishment in a brainy field, like astrophysics or internal medicine? Or maybe it was none of these. Maybe it was just somebody who lived a daily life with remarkable decision making, analytical skills, and ability to understand complicated situations much clearer than everybody else.
 
Regardless of the specifics, we all know what smart looks like and what stupid looks like. So let’s start directing the conversation towards weightlifting. When I think back on my three decades in this sport, I ask myself if there’s a correlation between high intelligence and weightlifting success. Are the best weightlifters usually smart people? Can I think of any great lifters who didn’t have a lot of brain power? Do you HAVE to be smart to be good at this sport?
 
The answers to these questions are a mixed bag. I’ve known great lifters who were very smart people. I’ve also known great lifters who were NOT smart people (I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but we can have an adult conversation about this). Brain power doesn’t guarantee you success or failure in weightlifting. There’s no 2 + 2 = 4 equation for the whole thing.
 
However, I want to narrow this down to a finer point. Let’s talk about highly intelligent people who can’t seem to figure out weightlifting. Recently, a coaching friend of mine was telling me about some interesting conversations he’d been having with a mutual acquaintance of ours. This mutual acquaintance is a lifter/coach with a pretty impressive list of professional accomplishments. Multiple advanced degrees in a challenging scientific field, PhD, research and development experience…the whole thing. By any standard you want to use, this is clearly a very smart dude.
 
And his weightlifting life is basically a dumpster fire. He’s been in the sport for quite a long time and he had some decent success on the platform in his early years, mainly because he’s a fairly talented strength athlete. But his lifting has been stagnant for quite a while now because he keeps getting injured from making stupid decisions with his own training and programming. He coaches himself, and the training he sets up for himself is the equivalent of walking headfirst into a woodchipper. He also coaches a gym full of lifters who all have terrible technique. They train like crap, miss lifts constantly, and usually compete poorly.
 
Interesting situation. We’ve got an obviously intelligent person who can’t figure out weightlifting. He doesn’t know how to train successfully, and he has almost no ability to teach or guide others.
 
And this guy isn’t the only one of these I’ve known over the years. Let’s take a look at what’s going on with a situation like this, and let’s see if we can come up with some useful ideas about it.
 
Types of intelligence
 
Many things in life get easier to understand once you remember that there are different kinds of intelligence. Saying somebody is “smart” or “dumb” can often be extremely misleading.
 
Mathematical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, etc. If you’ve ever taken a psychology class, you’ve probably heard of this stuff. Different people have different levels across the spectrum. Joe might have phenomenal linguistic intelligence and struggling mathematical intelligence. That means he can write an essay that would dazzle even the snootiest college English professors, but he’s couldn’t figure out calculus if he had Jesus teaching it to him. Betty could have musical intelligence that’s off the charts, but awful interpersonal intelligence. She can pick up a violin and play it better than anybody in the world, but she struggles mightily with relationships because she’s horrible with people.
 
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is one of the recognized types. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Somebody with high levels of this intelligence is going to be exceptional at figuring out how to control their bodies, master athletic movements easily, and handle objects. If you’ve ever watched a group of people learning the snatch, you’ve seen what I’m talking about. One guy learns the basics, practices the movement for a while, and has almost perfect technique. Another guy works his ass off trying to do it correctly for six months, and he still looks terrible. One of them has a lot of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, and the other one doesn’t. Every sport has its examples. A basketball player who can make 95/100 free throws, next to another one who can only hit 40/100. Case closed.
 
It’s entirely possible for a person to have elite levels of bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, but low levels of almost everything else. These are the freak-of-nature athletes who can beat almost anybody at almost everything, but they’re practically non-functional in the rest of life. So let’s say somebody like this gets a coaching job. Everybody thinks he’ll be a great coach because he’s a great lifter. But he has poor interpersonal intelligence, which means he’s not very good at working with people. The result? He’s not a good coach.
 
Or let’s say he’s got great kinesthetic intelligence and decent interpersonal intelligence, but terrible linguistic-verbal intelligence. With this combination, you’ve got a great athlete who’s a likeable coach that people enjoy being around, but his athletes have shoddy technique because he can’t explain things to them in a clear way they can understand. He doesn’t have the verbal skill.
 
Great athletes usually have a combination of two types of intelligence: bodily-kinesthetic and intrapersonal. Intrapersonal intelligence is “having a deep understanding of the self; what one's strengths or weaknesses are, what makes one unique, being able to predict one's own reactions or emotions.” This translates into a strong ability to get motivated, stay calm under pressure, and rebound from failure. (And obviously, they also need to have the requisite physical characteristics…fast-twitch muscle, agility, flexibility, etc.).
 
Think about all this stuff, and then think about people you’ve known in the sport who show it to be true. We’ve all seen them. There are plenty of them out there. You’ve likely known several people who fit one of the descriptions I’ve given you, or maybe several. This is one of the main reasons why you can’t just be a good weightlifter or coach by being SMART. You have to be the RIGHT KIND OF SMART.
 
And there’s arrogance, too
 
Another factor I’ve noticed in this is simple ego. I’m talking about people who are smart, and they know they’re smart, so they don’t think they have to listen to anybody else.
 
Highly intelligent people often have big egos. We all know this. People with big egos have a hard time asking for help, especially from those they regard as inferiors. Ego is one of the biggest roadblocks to progress you’ll ever see. I’ve seen a lot of casualties in this department over the years.
 
Let me tell you a little story. Many years ago, I knew a coach with a pretty successful track record. He’d been producing top weightlifters for years, but he was on a cold streak. Most of his lifters were injured or plateaued to the point they were thinking about quitting. It was wearing on him, and we were chatting about it one day. Do you want to know what he said? I swear I’m not making this up, and I’ll never forget it. He told me, “I’ll figure out the problem. I’m smarter than everybody else, so I don’t need any help.”
 
When you hear a statement like this, it’s obviously a turnoff. But with this guy, it wasn’t really like that. He was well-liked by everybody and generally pretty humble. We were friends, so he was able to speak freely with me, knowing I would get what he was trying to say. He wasn’t a total egomaniac who thought everybody else was stupid. He just regarded himself and highly intelligent and had a lot of faith in the strength of his own mind.
 
But there’s some truth behind his words, you know? His ego was obviously a big part of what made him successful. I’ve never known an elite performer in my life, in any area, who didn’t have a healthy ego. But it’s a fine-line situation, because it’s so easy to fall into a trap where you don’t think you have anything more to learn. Coaches often say, “I’m always still learning.” It’s a nice catch-phrase kind of statement. But many times, it’s just talk. Deep down inside, the coach has a strong confidence in his/her methods and ideas and isn’t as open to new stuff as it sounds.
 
Before you know it, you wind up in a situation like that mutual acquaintance guy I spoke about earlier. You’re sticking to your guns because you’ve got confidence in your brain, but at the end of the day, the good results aren’t coming in.
 
Can you relate to any of this from a personal perspective? Stop for a second and take inventory. Are you still working to improve yourself, or do you feel like you’ve got enough expertise accumulated to reach the heights you’re shooting for? Does your ego ever get in the way? Honestly…does it? And if so, when and where? In what areas? See if you can narrow it down to a specific instance or pattern that you need to improve.
 
At the end of the day…results
 
The results you’re getting are ALWAYS the bottom line. If you get injured, okay. Injuries are part of this sport. There’s no such thing as a healthy weightlifter, unless your training is almost completely recreational and you’re not pushing your physical limits to new heights. But if you’re continually getting injured to the point where you can’t even train, something is wrong.
 
If you’re a coach, how do your lifters do? Are they making progress? Do they have good technique? Do they compete well? And when we ask these questions, you have to look at the overall picture, not just isolated incidents. Let’s say you coach seven lifters in a meet. Five of them do great, one does so-so, and one does horrible. Overall, things went well, so you should feel good about what you did to get them ready. Obviously you need to look at what went wrong with the one who did poorly, but you shouldn’t throw out your plan. It worked, for the most part.
 
And listen, one of the main things you need to remember about this sport is this: successful lifters don’t miss many attempts. They don’t miss much in training or competition. Look at the superstars at the top of the sport. Do you see them having a lot of 2/6 days in competition? When you see their training videos on YouTube, do you see failure after failure? No, you don’t. Missing attempts is going to happen, obviously. It’s unavoidable when you’re constantly trying to break new ground. But the misses should be few and far between. If you miss a lot of attempts, or if your athletes do, you’re not doing this sport right. End of story.
 
There’s a lot that goes into this business. Athletic ability, toughness, brains, ego, humility…none of these things can exist on their own. You can’t just have one or two of them. You need them all. And in the brains department, it’s not as simple as smart cookie = good weightlifting. There’s plenty of evidence to show that it’s more complex than this. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where the results aren’t good, and they haven’t been for a long time…do yourself a favor and back away. Look at things with new eyes, and don’t be afraid to acknowledge your own shortcomings. You might be able to turn them around if you simply start by realizing they’re there.