In the media scrum before UFC 265, legendary UFC two-division champion Daniel “DC” Cormier gave the following advice to interim heavyweight title hopeful Derrick Lewis: “Every time I felt pressure, I just made sure somebody was always with me. It’s when you’re by yourself, then your thoughts get the best of you.”

DC’s advice really resonated with me. Thinking back to the best competition season I’ve had in my weightlifting journey, I was surrounded by a team of incredibly mutually supportive friends and training partners, many of whom came to my competitions to cheer me on, even including out of town travel to see me compete at the national championships. Conversely, some of the worst competitive seasons I’ve ever had were ones where I was training alone, either thinking that I can hack it on my own, or forced to as a result of lockdown. I’ve always sustained the worst injuries and had the greatest training setbacks when I was alone. Training alone, there was nothing, and no one, to play interception between me and my lack of motivation, undisciplined movements, and cutting corners in training. Training itself, it seems, has become a glass prison.

I’m not trying to say that it’s not possible to train by yourself and still attain great performance outcomes. What I am saying is that no one ever gets there alone, and it’s a fool’s errand to think that you can. This is different from having the grit and the resilience of having the Garage Mind where your toughness and resilience helps you weather the austerity of any environment. This is the conceit in which you think you can do it on your own, without guidance, without community, and without support. It is entirely possible to be a lone-wolf athlete training in your own garage or one bedroom condo, while still having a community of individuals around you, in the form of coaches, fellow lifters, and physical therapists to provide feedback and guidance.

In the folly of my youth, I thought I could have done with none of the above. I had the necessary equipment set up in my office at work. From a technical standpoint, I had enough self-awareness to know when my technique was breaking down and the adjustments I can make. I was doing enough self-study and continuing education in Olympic weightlifting to add to my own repertoire of knowledge. I truly wanted to become self-reliant and pull myself up by the straps of my own bootheels. What I experienced during this time was the classic pride comes before the fall.

As much self-study as I was doing at this time, my own conceit prevented me from knowing what I didn’t know. As much as I learned the mechanics and the techniques of weightlifting, I was missing the big picture of long-term athletic development, periodization, nutrition, mobility, activation, and recovery. I had been so focused on the immediate present that I was seeing the forest for the trees. But as long as I was stubbornly relying on myself at this time, there was nothing I could’ve done to patch up those blind spots, because any one of these areas take years of study to understand, master, and apply. There was always going to be an opportunity cost for my own time, on what I can conceivably absorb and take in, and what I have to forego. But maybe if I had just put my ego aside, and learned to ask for help at that time, I wouldn’t have spent two of my prime athletic years missing out at the National Championships due to entirely preventable injuries.

In retrospect, one of the most important lessons I learned from this experience is that even though Olympic weightlifting is an individual sport, it is not a sport of individuals. As with all things in life, every successful weightlifter stood on the shoulders of giants. It takes a village to raise a weightlifter. The inescapable fact is that we are social animals and that even the most individual of human endeavors requires the support of the community. For those of us who steps up onto the competition platform, our presence at the very venue is only made possible by the collective efforts of many volunteers and staff. Every single lift we make on that platform is done for the gaze and validation of others in our community to whom we have imbued authority and discern. Even though we take up the sport for our own individual reasons, have our own unique motivations, we nevertheless see and want to be seen by others. So, ask yourself, when the lights shine on you the brightest, who were the people that stood behind you? And at the same time, when the shine and luster of those lights have faded into darkness, who is left to stand with you? In Olympic weightlifting, no one is an island, so never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for all of us.