We’re going to start this month’s article with an odd little task, and it involves you thinking about something that probably bothers you a bit. Here’s what I want you to do: think about the worst insult that somebody could give you. I’m talking about a name or a phrase that would practically drive you into a homicidal rampage, or at least make you frown strenuously, if somebody used it on you. Many people have “trigger words,” which are specific things that carry some kind of bad memory or really negative connotation. It’s a word that might seem ordinary to many people, but it’s like ice picks under the fingernails to you. Here’s a personal example. When I was little, the kids in my neighborhood who picked on me used to call me a baby. That was their word for me…baby. They usually called me that right before they hit me in the face or threw my bike over somebody’s fence. Eventually, they stopped picking on me and my life went on normally. But until I was probably in my mid-twenties, I was ready to fire up a chainsaw if anybody called me a “baby.” It was just one word that I wouldn’t take from anybody because of the crappy memories from my youth.

Do you have one like that? Anything come to mind? The answer might be no for some of you, which is probably a good thing. But let’s apply this to weightlifting and competing in general. As an athlete, I’ve always thought the worst thing you can possibly be called is a “choker.” You probably all know what a choker is, but in case you don’t… A choker is somebody who doesn’t perform well under pressure. It’s an athlete who always seems to find a way to blow it and screw up in the most important moments, those times when your back is against the wall and you need to shine the brightest. Chokers crap the bed in these situations, they just don’t get the job done. The common idea with chokers is that they have some kind of weakness in their personality, a flaw in their character that keeps them from doing great things when they need them the most. Most of the athletes I’ve met in my life detest the idea of people thinking of them as chokers.

Now, let’s quickly turn around and go back in the other direction. Can you think of the best compliment somebody could give you? Aaahhh, now we’re talking. This is a really awesome little piece of praise that makes your whole day. As much as the insults we just talked about make you want to bludgeon somebody with a summer sausage, these compliments have the opposite effect. These are the kudos that are so kind and flattering, they commit to your long-term memory and you can recall them as some of the coolest things anybody has said to you. As with the trigger world insults, these compliments are special because they have some kind of particular meaning to you. Unfortunately, I don’t have any rock-solid personal examples to use for this. When it comes to commendations, I’m easy to please. Just tell me how funny or handsome I am and I’ll be as happy as a tick on Tuesday.

As with the example of “choker” being one of the cruelest blows you can deliver to an athlete, I think the term “competitor” is a compliment that will usually make a sportsperson feel excellent. When you hear phrases like “He’s a competitor” or “That girl is a born competitor,” it basically means the exact opposite of being a choker. Competitors are people who rise to the occasion instead of stumbling over it. They do their best work when the pressure is the highest. Certain athletes have become universally recognized as competitors over the years, guys like Michael Jordan and Joe Montana. Because of the way they always seemed to come through in the clutch, we respected them more than others. Competitors are winners, plainly stated.
This is a subject that you’ll deal with a lot as an athlete or a coach. Let’s take a closer look at the whole thing. Whaddaya say?

GAG! SPUTTER! COUGH!

First, we’ll go deeper into the concept of choking. Being a choker, as we said above, is a condition that shows itself through weak performance. The choker is often somebody who gets right to the threshold of success, and then crumbles like a dry muffin. They have their chance at greatness. They have an opportunity to win a championship or break a record, but they just can’t step up and close the deal. And being a choker means that this pattern of catastrophe becomes a habit. Chokers aren’t just people who lose or fail. They’re people who lose or fail over and over, and it often seems to happen when they’re in a position to reach some kind of ultimate glory if they just perform and do their job.

I think the reason why being known as a choker is such a terrible insult to athletes is because it says something about their nature. Most people take it pretty hard when somebody slams their character or their heart. It’s a higher level of offence than if somebody criticizes something about your physical makeup. If you have bad elbow lockout or a flat butt, that’s a different matter. Those are things that you can’t really control and they aren’t reflective of your personal courage or nerve. But when people think you lack the ability to be a champion because you’re fearful and weak-spirited, it stings a lot harder. They think you don’t have any guts, and that’s tough to deal with.

I hate to have to admit it, but I did my share of choking in the early years of my weightlifting career. I started competing when I was a teenager and there were definitely some moments when I blew it in big situations. My coaches told me from the beginning that I had a lot of physical potential, strength and athleticism and that kind of stuff. Because of this, I had extremely high expectations and goals. I was a hard worker and I wasn’t afraid of competing against anybody, but I was a bit of a head case. There were unquestionably some competitions where I had the chance to accomplish something big, but I choked. I didn’t get the job done. For a while, it was happening regularly. I remember once when I was training to compete in a big national meet, and I was in the gym talking to a former athlete who still worked out with our team occasionally. This guy was older than me and he had a pretty abrasive personality, but I respected him because I knew he had been to a high level when he competed. I was running my mouth to him about my goals for the upcoming meet and I was being a little cocky about how much I planned to lift. He listened to my bravado and then he said, “Well, you’ll probably choke like you always do.” I couldn’t believe he just came right out and said it! And you know what? I did choke at the meet. This happened about twenty years ago and it still pisses me off to write about it. In fact, I think I need to move on to something more positive before I get sad and curl up on my couch with a big bowl of pudding.

Go to a happy place, go to a happy place…

Being known as a competitor is a much nicer thing to think about. When people have this notion about you, that you have an innate level of inner strength and mental toughness, it’s a special feeling. Most of you have probably heard the term “gamer” at some point in your life. “Gamer” is just another term for a competitor. It’s somebody who gives their highest level of performance on game day, when it really counts the most.

It’s a funny coincidence, but right now as I’m writing this article, there’s an NFL playoff game going on between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Denver Broncos. I know that many of you aren’t football fans, but just stay with me for a minute. The quarterback of the Broncos is a young man named Tim Tebow. For those of you who don’t keep up with mainstream sports, Tebow has grown into something of a cultural phenomenon. People have developed this idea that Tim possesses an almost mystical level of competitive ability. His exciting, come-from-behind winning performances on the football field have caused the sports world to view him as the ultimate gamer. When he gets in the huddle, everybody stops what they’re doing to watch because they think he’s going to deliver a miracle, a football feat of brilliance that single-handedly elevates his whole team to victory. On top of that, he’s a very devout Christian who prays on the field, points to the sky after a touchdown, and generally makes it clear to you that Jesus is his number one homeboy.

Tebow is being perceived as a consummate competitor. This perception has grown so large that it overshadows any shortcomings he has as a quarterback in regards to his passing accuracy, fumbling the ball, etc. It will be interesting to see how his career pans out in future years. We’ve seen some weightlifters who have this same aura, this sort of magic halo that surrounds them when they compete, making people believe that they can do the impossible and they’ll always come through when things go down to the wire. Naim Suleymanoglu was like that. Pyrros Dimas was too. You found yourself never doubting these guys, and you were shocked if they ever failed.

And that brings us to you…

One of the interesting things about all of this is that people sometimes think that these qualities are born into you, like your eye color or your fast twitch muscle fiber ratio. I’ve heard that a lot from coaches over the years. You’ll be watching some aspiring young athletes and you’ll catch little comments like “That kid is a born competitor.” Likewise, you’ll also occasionally hear some negatives that come across, such as “She just doesn’t have the heart to make it to the top, period.” I have to admit that there have been times when I thought these concepts made some sense. There’s a perception that an athlete’s level of courage and toughness is simply a part of their DNA, and that’s all there really is to it.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is wrong. Mental strength and competitive skill are qualities that can be developed, just like muscle density and technical expertise. The reason I know this is that it happened to me. Earlier I told you that I was a choker in my initial weightlifting years. As much as it bothers me to have to tell you that, it makes me equally pleased to tell you that I changed over time. As years went by, I grew out of the choking habit the same way a teenager grows out of an acne phase. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I can say with pride that I was a pretty tough cookie on the competition platform. At most of the national championship meets I competed in, I was in dogfights for medals and higher placement. There were times when I didn’t come out on top, but there were more times when I did. And I often had to pull out some big lifts in situations that would have been prime choke territory in my younger days.

Listen, chokers are usually people with really high self-expectation and shaky confidence. That’s the whole story. Chokers want to succeed, but they don’t really believe that they can because of things in their personality that lean them towards self-doubt. As with many things, it’s probably rooted in childhood. I firmly believe that one of the main reasons I was a choker in my early years is that I was picked on and bullied as a kid, and that made me insecure. When I became an athlete, I was very uncertain about my capabilities because my rough upbringing left me still thinking of myself as a weakling. I knew I was strong and physically capable, but I didn’t think I had that X-factor that qualifies somebody as a competitor. That’s why I wet the bed at high-tension moments throughout my beginner years.

What changed everything? You’re waiting for me to tell you about some kind of self-hypnosis I discovered that altered my brain, or a book I read that transformed me? It wasn’t anything like that. It was just time, maturity, and experience. There wasn’t one specific magic moment that I can point at. I didn’t visit the Dalai Lama or Tim Tebow. Basically, I just started to get more relaxed and confident as time went on. I grew up. Then I had some good meets where I hit big lifts under pressure situations. After I had done it a few times, I started to believe that I could do it over and over. Sometimes, one big performance can open up the floodgates.

So then there’s you, the coaches and athletes who are reading this. Obviously, any athletes who fear that they might have a little choker inside of them can use this article as a source of hope. Even if you are a head case, that can all change with experience. You’ll make it through these crappy days of failure and gradually grow into a competitive machine if you just hang in there and keep working for it. But the people who really need to examine this subject are the coaches, because your job is to find ways to help your choker athletes in their growth. Obviously, the first thing you’ll need to do is develop an ability to gauge the confidence level of your athletes. This will take some time and some get-to-know-you interaction, but you’ll eventually be able to see how strongly your athletes believe in themselves. For the ones who see themselves as pond scum, you’ll have to make sure you’re constantly working to empower and reassure them. When they fail, make sure they understand that their failure was just one step in the road, and they’ve still got many steps ahead of them that will be more successful. Don’t ever let them get the idea in their head that you don’t believe in them, because then they won’t believe in themselves. Athletes are perceptive and they know when their coaches think they’re pieces of crap.

Also, let’s make a quick mention of the athletes who have self-confidence problems, but their problem is in the opposite direction. These are the ones who have ten times more self-confidence than they should have. They think they’re just pretty damn special, and they expect to be treated as such. Sometimes it’s fun to work with athletes like this because you can make it a personal project to keep their egos in check. If they’re so full of themselves that they can’t take it when you pop their balloon and put them in their place, then they’ll probably leave on their own and that’s a good thing. But those will be rare. Most arrogant athletes will be able to handle it when the coach reminds them that they’re not gods and that they have to follow the same rules as the rest of the gym. That’s really all you have to do. Make sure they know that they’re no better than anybody else, even if they can lift more.

To quote the great Rocky Balboa, “If I can change, you can change! Everybody can change!” And remember, as I’ve said before, your athletes will take on your personality over time. They’ll act like you act. Nervous breeds nervous, and alpha breeds alpha. Just try to keep yourself on the winning side of that equation and the world will be your own personal candy store.