About a week ago, I found out this magazine is going to be ending in a few months. Today is July 7, 2021, and December will be the last issue.
 
I’m not letting the cat out of the bag by announcing this. The news has gone public. For some of you, this might be the first you’re hearing about it. If so, now you know.
 
Performance Menu has been running for sixteen years, which is drastically longer than the lifespan of most magazines (especially in the weightlifting world). I wrote my first PM article in October 2008, and I’ve never missed a month since. So, we’re coming up on 14 years of my life, cranking out content every thirty days and doing my best to make it valuable and interesting. It’s been a great run, and we should all thank Greg Everett for putting in the time and effort to keep this thing rolling.
 
I’m not going to make this article a big farewell song, since we still have a few more months to go. But ever since I heard the news, I’ve been thinking about that old “all good things must come to an end” concept, and how we can find a connection with your weightlifting lives.
 
I’ve been in weightlifting for 31 years, and I’ve seen the rise, fall, and disappearance of many things. Programs, teams, athlete careers, coaches, manufacturing companies, gyms, political situations, etc. You name it, and I’ve probably seen its birth, lifespan, and demise.
 
Sometimes, there’s sadness when things end. If you’re talking about a person or entity that had a big positive impact on the sport, it’s a bit of a tragedy when the final moment comes. Other times, it can almost be cause for celebration, if we’re talking about something dysfunctional and ugly.
 
How does this apply to you? Let me tell you a quick story to answer that question. During the 1988 Olympics, NBC did a short bio segment on Soviet superheavyweight Alexander Kurlovich, who won the gold that year. They interviewed Kurlovich’s wife, who talked about the occasional difficulties and challenges of being married to an elite athlete. I’ll never forget what she said about the tough times: “This is the way it is, and the way it should be expected.”
 
This is the way it is, and the way it should be expected. I want to use this article to build on that statement, in a way that has some relevance and value for your own weightlifting journey. You see, there’s often a lot of sadness and fear that comes with the end of things. Sometimes, we’re talking about legitimate emotional trauma. I’ve known weightlifters and coaches who literally experience a downturn in their lives when the end of something comes. The feeling of loss is so great, they develop an internal struggle that puts them in a dark hole. Maybe you can relate.
 
Let me give you a few pages of perspective, and maybe you’ll be more equipped to handle your own endings when they pop up down the road. Because believe me, they’re coming.
 
Obvious and not-so-obvious ones

The easiest scenario to think about when we talk about endings is an athlete’s personal lifting career. Almost everybody who does Olympic lifting eventually stops and walks away from it. Sure, you’ll occasionally hear about 80-year-old masters lifters who have been doing it since their twenties, but those are extraordinarily rare. The vast majority of the time, weightlifters eventually reach a point where they hang it up and retire.
 
This is often an unbelievably difficult experience. We’re talking about letting go of something that was probably one of the best parts of your life. It gave you more fulfillment, excitement, and joy than anything else you’ve ever done. Walking away from it is downright scary.
 
The biggest advice I can give you in this situation is this: it takes time, it’s a process, and you can expect reversals and freak outs along the way. Sure, I’ve known lifters who do their last lift, or compete in their last meet, and then they wave goodbye and sail off into the sunset, happy as a clam. They’re ready for the end, they’re glad it’s here, and they’re all smiles when they take off their shoes for the final time. They never think about going back, and their whole career is just like a great novel that they finished, enjoyed, and put on a shelf forever.
 
That might be you, or you might be like the rest of us—the ones who struggle to deal with retiring. You’re terrified of losing it and you don’t want it to end, but the signs are staring you in the face like one of those huge inner-city murals you see on the wall of a building. It’s completely obvious that you need to walk away. This can all result in inner turmoil that rivals the most difficult moments of your life.
 
I’m not going to hold your hand and guide you through a therapy session in this article, but I’ll give you a few tidbits to remember.

1) Even after you’ve stated your decision to stop lifting, you can expect multiple moments when you think about starting again. Think about the old boxer who retires, walks away for a few years, and then decides to make a comeback. And let’s be fair, it’s entirely possible that you might make a comeback that works like gangbusters, leading to a new era of success and fun. If it goes that way, all is right with the world.

2) But if you try to make a comeback and it becomes completely obvious that it’s a bad idea, listen to what the universe is telling you. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s awful. Yes, you want to continue. But you can really screw your life up by living in fantasy land of denial. Don’t put yourself in that position.

3) The letting-go process might take years. I’m just coming through a six-year stretch of it. Those “completely obvious” signs have been flashing in my face in bright red neon since I was 43. I’m 49 now, and just beginning to feel peace inside about maybe never Olympic lifting again.
 
It’s a rough life, brothers and sisters. And the crazy thing is, all of these ideas can relate to parts of your weightlifting life outside your personal athletic career. You can take the entire conversation we just had and apply it to the relationship between an athlete and a coach, running a gym, publishing a magazine, serving in an administrative position, coaching a team, etc. Everything we just said can be the same experience in each of these areas. And ALL of you will deal with it, in some way, at some point.
 
And if you’re a coach, this still applies to you because you might have to lead/guide athletes to their own end of the road. Hard-charging weightlifters never want to quit. Sometimes, they need leadership to take them in the right direction. So, when you decide to become a coach, you have to assume this as part of the responsibility.
 
A coping strategy that’s guaranteed to work…

This is the best part of the article because I get to hit you with an idea that makes it all better, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. You want to know how to effectively deal with the internal struggle of quitting weightlifting? Find some other awesome thing to dive into.
 
Everybody, and I mean absolutely everybody in the world, needs something in their lives that they’re passionate about. Something that gives them drive, enthusiasm, and motivation. Something that gives life meaning. Human beings don’t function well when they don’t have something like this. Once you have a complete absence of anything that gives you this kind of meaning and passion, you’re one step away from depression and mental illness.
 
For some of you, it might be a different athletic endeavor. That’s what it was for me. I love lifting weights, but my body doesn’t cooperate with the Olympic lifts anymore, so I switched to powerlifting. Now, I’m basically getting to have a whole second career on the platform…doing squats, benches, and deadlifts instead of snatches and clean and jerks. Some of you might switch to cycling, swimming, judo, hiking, or whatever.
 
For others, it might be another activity. Shooting guns, designing websites, having kids and raising them, immersing yourself in a new job you love, coaching, riding horses, learning to play an instrument…WHATEVER. It literally doesn’t matter what it is. It only matters that it’s something you love, something that pushes you, something that brings new experiences and new people into your life. In other words, something that opens up a whole new world you can explore, learn about, and develop in.
 
Trust me, this new thing won’t completely kill the longing and love you feel for weightlifting. That’ll never go away. But your new passion will make it okay, and possible to live with. It’s really hard to be miserable and depressed when you do something awesome that you love every day.
 
Final thoughts

Listen, I don’t know where you’re at. Many of you are probably still on the way up in weightlifting, and retirement is a distant speck on the horizon that you don’t even have to think about. If that’s the case, GREAT! But do yourself a favor…file this article away somewhere and save it for later.
 
Catalyst Athletics has gone through changes, beginnings, and ends of certain things. Most of you know Greg and Aimee used to run a very successful gym in San Jose where the Catalyst team trained every day. That part of their business had its beginning, rise to power, prime years, and end. They closed the place down back in 2016 and moved to a cabin in the woods in Oregon.
 
And where is Catalyst Athletics now? At the National Championship, winning medals. Greg and Aimee have just kept rolling through the journey we’re all traveling. Certain aspects of your life just come and go, in weightlifting or whatever. Sometimes the changes are planned and calculated, and sometimes they’re accidents. Amazing things can just get dropped in your lap, or they can be the end result of years of work.
 
You understand the main ideas we’re trying to convey here. Things change. Things end. Curveballs get thrown at you. And no matter what you’re into right now, chances are you’ll eventually be in a position where you have to move your life in a different direction. This is often difficult, and scary. Loss and uncertainty aren’t pleasant words. But you’ll encounter these things in life.
 
This is the way it is, and the way it should be expected. Just remember: it’s really hard to feel sad and miserable when you’re engaged in some kind of exciting adventure that fills your life with fun and enthusiasm. When you have something like this and you eventually lose it…just find something else. It’s easier than you think.