Well, here it is. My final Performance Menu article. I’m not going to lie. This is a little freaky.
 
As I’ve mentioned in previous issues, I wrote my first article for this magazine in October 2008. This is December 2021, and I’ve never missed a month. Thirteen years of thoughts, ideas, and words about the life of a weightlifter. It’s been a wonderful honor to contribute to the Catalyst Athletics mission of educating and supporting the Olympic weightlifting community.
 
With my final three articles over these last few months, I’ve been writing about the biggest lessons I’ve learned during my three decades in the sport. In October, I wrote about my first ten years (1990-2000) and how I learned that weightlifting is a “stand in line and wait your turn” sport where you have to slowly work your way up the competitive ladder. And then in November, I wrote about the lesson I learned the hard way in my second decade (2000-2010), which was how to rebuild your career after devastating setbacks, like injuries that threaten to end it all for you.
 
Now, here we are in December, and I’m going to tell you about the biggest thing I’ve learned in my third decade (2010-2020). And since these are going to be my final words in this magazine, I obviously want them to be special.
 
So, I’ll start out this joyous farewell lesson by telling you about something awful and miserable. About a month ago, I got the news that Steve Gough died. Many of you don’t know who he is because his main years in weightlifting were in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Steve was a coach who ran the Marin Weightlifting Club outside San Francisco. He’s also the father of Tom Gough, who’s one of the best lifters we’ve ever had in the United States.
 
Steve was one of the legendary coaches in American history. His production of elite US athletes was incredible, and he specialized in transforming average kids into top international competitors through sheer work ethic and determination. But if you talk to anybody who was around Steve back in the day, the first thing they’ll tell you about is his personality. He was a Vietnam veteran and former cop with an intensity level that filled up the warmup room. Loud, forceful, aggressive, foul-mouthed, and hilarious. I’m very grateful that I was on the national scene during Steve’s big years.
 
Why am I telling you about him? Because the last lesson I’m going to write about in this magazine is something I’ve learned more and more as the years of my career have rolled onwards.
 
This sport brings a lot into your life. Work ethic, passion, resilience, joy, pain, dedication, success, failure, commitment, etc. My personality has been shaped by these things, just like yours, and I’m grateful every day for it. But when I think about the 30 years I’ve spent in the game, do you want to know what often stands out most in my mind?
 
The people.
 
Your weightlifting career gets shaped by the people you go through it with, and the relationships you develop will often lead to the opportunities that come your way. Let me share a couple of stories with you.
 
Not just your average friends
 
Steve wasn’t my coach. John Thrush was. But the two of them were extremely close friends, and most of Steve’s top lifters were guys my age who were competing on the national scene at the same time I was.
 
When you compete at the national level for several years, many of the coaches and competitors start to feel like your family. Even if you live in different parts of the country and you only see each other five or six weekends per year, you still develop a tight bond with them. You share warmup platforms at the meets. You grab meals together before you compete and party together afterwards. You stay in touch throughout the year, constantly gabbing about training and lifting gossip.
 
What makes all of it so special? The fact that you’re sharing your weightlifting life. I mean seriously, stop and think about it. This is one of the biggest things most of us are ever going to do. It’s an amazing adventure, really. Going to school, working a career, making friends and taking vacations and going to barbeques at the lake, these are all terrific. But these are things everybody does. They’re important, and they bring a lot of joy into your life, but compare them to that feeling you get when you nail a PR clean and jerk on your last attempt in a weightlifting meet. That unforgettable “white moment” that Yuri Vlasov wrote about. Nothing else will ever feel like that, and the people involved in it will have a special place in your life forever.
 
One of Steve’s greatest lifters was Jasha Faye, a former Junior American record holder who competed in the 1996 Olympic Trials. Jasha and I have been friends since we were 17 years old. He now runs the Marin Weightlifting Club, carrying on the tradition that Steve started. I just saw Jasha at the American Masters Championship in Reno last weekend, and we fell straight into the old camaraderie we’ve had since we were kids. And when I think about all the other lifters and coaches I’ve known since I was a teenager, like Ursula Garza and Mike Gattone and Cara Heads and Sean Waxman, I realize that these people are family. I’m closer with many of them than I am with some of my actual family members.
 
Listen, I know many of you won’t spend your whole life in this sport. But even if you’re only in it for a few years, you’ll still experience this. It’ll add something to your life that very few things can equal, and you never know what might happen down the road.
 
The 2008 California State Games
 
In 2008, I was 36 years old and competing as a master. I had already been in the sport for almost twenty years at that point, and I’d built up a lot of the friendships we’re talking about.
 
I went out to San Diego that summer to compete in the California State Games, which was being run by my old friend Pat Cullen-Carrol. While I was in the warmup room stretching out, a brown-haired girl I recognized came over to talk to me.
 
“You’re Matt Foreman, right?” she asked.
 
“Yeah, and you’re Aimee Anaya. How’s it going?” I replied.
 
And we started to chat. Aimee and I had competed on the national scene together in the late 90s, but we’d never really been introduced or anything. We both knew who the other one was, but we’d never broken the ice.
 
“Hey, my boyfriend is lifting in this session. Want to warm up with him?” she asked.
 
“Yeah, that would be cool!” I said.
 
That’s when I met a guy named Greg Everett. We warmed up together, talked, kicked ass in the competition, and had a blast. After it was over, they asked me if I wanted to meet up for pizza and beers later, which I did. That’s where Greg told me he was planning to move to San Jose in a few months and start his own weightlifting program. He said it was going to be called Catalyst Athletics.
 
The rest is history. Greg asked me to write an article for his magazine shortly after this meeting. I wrote one, people liked it, and he asked me if I wanted to keep it going. As time went on, the Catalyst Athletics name got more recognizable and respected. I started showing up at national meets to help out the Catalyst team, the success continued to roll, we all grew closer, and everything just skyrocketed.
 
And look at where we are now. The Catalyst Athletics women’s team won the National Championship in 2016. I’ve published four books through Catalyst Athletics. Catalyst Athletics lifters have competed at the Olympics and the Pan Am Games. I’ve been able to share the lessons of my weightlifting life through the Catalyst website articles. It’s one of the most successful weightlifting programs in the United States. When I go to meets these days and introduce myself to people, they often say, “Oh yeah, you’re the Catalyst guy, right?”
 
This is how it often works, brothers and sisters. If you hang around this sport long enough and develop enough relationships, exciting opportunities can pop up where you least expect them. You might not even think they’re going to turn into something special. It might just feel like you’re saying yes to a weekend job or a one-time thing. And many times, that’s all they’ll be.
 
But there might also be times when something life-changing starts with a moment as simple as warming up with somebody at a meet or grabbing pizza and beers afterwards.
 
It’s been a good run
 
I don’t know where your weightlifting journeys are. I don’t know what your goals are, how long you’re going to push it, or anything else. But I know you’re looking for valuable information. That’s why you read this magazine. You want something that will help you develop as an athlete or coach.
 
For the last 13 years, I’ve sat down at my computer every month and tried to deliver some of those things to you. Sometimes, you need to learn about technique. Other times, you need to learn about training programs. But many times, it helps to simply learn more about the internal things that shape your daily experiences with the barbell. Dealing with the struggles, knowing that the hard things you’re going through are normal, trying to make the right decisions when you reach the crossroads moments of your career, etc. Over the years, many people have told me their favorite articles are the ones that focus on these areas.
 
And so the last thought I want to leave you with is encouragement. Keep working. Keep learning. Keep developing. Keep reading. Keep watching videos. Keep helping out. Keep refereeing. Keep supporting the athletes you coach. Keep cheering for random lifters you don’t know when you’re at meets. You won’t believe how satisfying it is to look back on a long, meaningful weightlifting career when you’re older. I hate to use tired old cliché phrases, but the best one I’ve ever heard is, “The goal isn’t the end of the road. The goal is the road.” Truer words have never been spoken.
 
My eternal gratitude goes out to Catalyst Athletics for giving me the opportunity to write for this magazine, and all our readers over the years who have supported it. It’s been a terrific experience that’s made my weightlifting journey richer. Best of luck to all of you in everything you do.