I had a pretty good idea for an article recently. It was mainly a training-centered topic, about all the physical stuff you can do throughout a day to get prepared for lifting. I thought of it while I was on a plane, flying back to Chicago for my grandfather’s funeral. Long flight, so I got a lot written down.

After the funeral weekend was over, I flew back home. I didn’t have anything to read on the plane, so I bought a copy of Rolling Stone in the airport. Rock legend Lou Reed died a couple of weeks ago, and the issue I bought was mainly a tribute to him. While I was reading it, a different article idea occurred to me. It’s another one of those things I can’t believe I’ve never written about.

Probably because of the combination of my grandpa’s funeral and the memorial articles about Lou, I started thinking about what it’s like when things come to an end. These thoughts went in a weightlifting direction, and that’s where the idea for this article started. We’re going to talk about times when you have to end your lifting relationships. These are the situations where something isn’t working right, and a big change is necessary. You have to leave your gym (or your team) and join a different one, or it could be when you have to make a coaching change…splitting from somebody you’ve been with for a long time. These are hard predicaments because something very big in your life is coming to an end. Even if you’re doing it for the right reasons and the change is going to give positive results, the separation is still difficult. There’s a lot of potential for ugliness and hard feelings.

These thoughts got pretty strong as I sat on the plane, because I’ve had to do this before and I’m pretty sure most of you will have experience with it at some point (or maybe you already have). You might be the athlete who has to break away, or maybe you’ll be the coach who loses one of your lifters. During my flight, I borrowed a pen from my wife and wrote down this whole article in the margins of Rolling Stone issue 1196, with a big picture of Lou Reed on the cover. What you’re reading now is just a typed transfer of the scribbled notes I made throughout the magazine. I have to admit, it was pretty cool the way it came together.

Break-ups suck, for the most part. Occasionally they feel really good because you hate the person you’re splitting up with, and it’s enjoyable when you kick them to the curb. But most of the time, these things are awkward and painful. We’ve all had to go through it in our romantic lives, and the next few pages are going to explore what it’s like to go through it in your athletic life. Break-ups happen for different reasons. Sometimes, it’s a “no harm, no foul” situation where everybody walks away without any bad blood. More often, it happens because somebody is unhappy or dissatisfied and there’s fallout afterwards.

Almost every lifter I’ve ever known has had to switch teams or coaches at some point, and I’m pretty sure every coach in the world has felt what it’s like when an athlete walks away. There are some definite good and bad ways to handle these moments, and that’s what we’re going to examine here. Thank god for boring plane rides, I guess.

Why it can happen…

We’re talking about the situations where a relationship is over, between a coach and an
athlete or maybe a whole gym. Because this whole area mainly deals with human interaction, there are literally countless factors and reasons that could be the cause. First of all, there are some times when the split has to happen because of simple life stuff. These are a little easier to manage because they don’t involve any tension or resentment. If you live and train in Atlanta, and your employer is going to transfer you to Sacramento, there’s not much you can do about that. It’s disappointing and painful when you leave your gym, but everybody knows that it’s not happening because of anything bad. Nobody is screwing anybody over and you all get to leave things on good terms. Great, lickety-split.

However, those aren’t really the kind of predicaments I’m talking about here. We’re looking at the break-ups that happen because there’s some kind of problem. Common ones are:

• Betrayal. Some kind of major wrench got thrown into the works. Somebody lied to somebody, or there was some behind-the-back activity going on. Maybe the athlete was secretly working with another trainer behind the coach’s back. Maybe the coach was talking crap about the athlete with other gym members. Maybe somebody screwed somebody else’s boyfriend or girlfriend. You get the point. These are the really ugly ones, the big SNAFUs.

• Bad coaching. This happens a lot, unfortunately. When athletes stop making progress, they often blame their coaches. The thought process is, “I’m not getting any better, so my coach must not be training me correctly.” At this point, the athletes usually notice other lifters who are having huge success, and they say to themselves, “Why are they all kicking ass, and I’m not?” If the athlete has the kind of personality that leans towards finger-pointing, the coach can easily get blamed. These are the first seeds of a problem that could grow into a full-blown disaster.

• Toxic atmosphere. Here, the overall gym environment is the problem. It’s usually not one specific thing you can put your finger on. More often, it’s an assortment of dysfunction, adversarial personalities, weak leadership, etc. There might be one primary cause of the whole thing, like a prima donna athlete who contaminates the whole team dynamic. But it usually spills over into a lot of other areas, and you wind up with a place that’s not much fun to train at.

• Uncoachable personality. This one is from the perspective of the coach. Here, the coach is thinking about dismissing an athlete, and it’s probably because the athlete has become too difficult to deal with. For whatever reason, it’s just not working out. You’re a coach, but this is a person you simply don’t want to have around.

What you should do…

Now, you’re at a point where you’re thinking about jumping ship. If you’re the athlete, you’re considering leaving your gym or switching to another coach. If you’re the coach, you’re thinking about cutting an athlete loose. Here are the factors that need consideration:

• Spend plenty of time making sure you have a good “plan B” before you pull the trigger. In other words, don’t leave your coach or your gym until you’ve got someplace else to go. This might take a while, and it might create a situation where you have to stay with your current coach/gym longer than you want to while you’re shopping around and putting your new arrangement together. Somebody once told me, “Monkeys don’t let go of the branch they’re on until they’ve got ahold of another one.” Long story short, don’t have your big bridge-burning moment until you’ve covered your ass and found a new coach/gym that’s an improvement over the one you’re leaving.
• When it’s time to finally cut the cord, do it face-to-face. You need to show the other person some respect. When you break up with somebody through a text message or a phone call, it’s cowardly. Arrange a sit-down, explain yourself, and give the other person a chance to respond. It’s the right thing to do.

No way around it…

Once you’ve made the decision to do this, you have to accept the fact that feelings are going to get hurt. You can’t avoid it. Somebody is going to feel like they’re getting screwed over, and that’s understandable.

This is where one of the prickliest concepts of the weightlifting life is revealed to us. I’m talking about the fact that the athlete’s first loyalty has to be his/her own career. There has to be some selfishness involved. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s okay to manipulate others and stomp all over people in your road to the top. Regardless of anything, there are basic principles of respect and decency that have to be honored in life if you don’t want to be a complete scumbag. However, athletes shouldn’t stay in bad situations simply because they don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. If you’re a weightlifter and your career is going nowhere, or if you’re in a crappy relationship with your coach that’s making you unhappy, you have to think about yourself first. It’s okay to be this way. At the end of the day, you’re the one who has to live with the results you get on the platform. Those numbers are attached to your name, not anybody else’s.

This creates a situation where you might have to be self-centered and walk away from somebody who you’ve previously built up a lot of loyalty with. Obviously, this sets the stage for all kinds of hard feelings. If you’re a coach, you have to learn to be a professional about it. First of all, you enter into this profession knowing that situations like this are always a possibility. It’s a risk you take when you decide to become a coach, because your lifters can take off at any moment. You’ll get angry with them, and you’ll probably think they’re making a mistake. But you have to handle it like a grown-up. It’ll still hurt, no doubt about it. Even if you have ice in your veins, you’ll feel like somebody is sticking a dagger right in your chest because the coach-athlete relationship is incredibly powerful…and personal. When it ends, it’s emotional. If it ends badly, it’s painful and bitter.

But here’s the bright side…

Your career as an athlete (or a coach) has a lot of chapters and phases. If you’re going to be committing a large part of your life to this business, you’ll have multiple seasons throughout the whole thing. Athletes are going to come and go. Coaches are going to come and go. Teams are going to come and go. It’s all part of the game.

Here’s a different way to explain it. I saw a movie once called “That Thing You Do.” You might have seen it…Tom Hanks movie about a young rock band that makes it to the big time with a hit song. Anyway, there’s a scene in it where a young drummer is in a bar and he meets one of his idols, an old jazz player who’s basically a music legend. The old legend invites the drummer to sit down for some drinks, and they spend the night talking about the road you have to travel in your career. At one point, the young drummer tells the legend that he’s worried because his band is about to break up and he thinks it’ll be the end of his big chance. The old dude says to him, “Bands come and go. What you’ve got to do is just keep playing, with whoever.”

The point he was making is basically the same one I’m giving you about your weightlifting life. It’s a long journey you’re on, and the faces will change from time to time. Most relationships don’t last forever, and you shouldn’t expect them to. If you curl up in a ball and contemplate retirement every time somebody lets you down or screws you over in this sport, you’re not going to last long.

Having said that, make sure you also understand that a lot of thought and consideration has to go into a big decision like leaving a team/coach or firing an athlete. Most of the really successful people in the world don’t live on impulsive, hasty moves. You can very easily throw away some great opportunities and situations if you have a habit of leaping before you look. I’m a pretty big believer that you should always give plenty of consideration to your options before you make a big switch.

Remember how I told you I got the idea for this article while I was reading about Lou Reed? Well, here’s a final thought for you. Lou’s career in music lasted from the mid-60s until his death in 2013. He played in a great band called The Velvet Underground, eventually went solo, collaborated with countless other artists, and took his music in several different directions over the course of thirty-something years. Decades passed and they brought a lot of changes, but he kept the focus on his music and the vision he had for what he wanted to accomplish. Your career in weightlifting will be the same way. It probably won’t be permanently attached to any specific coach, team, gym, or program. Some of the phases you go through will end well, and some of them might involve some heartbreak. Ups and downs, you know? What you’ve got to do is just keep playing, with whoever.