I’m surprised that I’ve never written about bombing out before. It’s a juicy topic for competitive weightlifters, but I think it’s also something you can apply to any area of your life. I just recently realized that I’ve never explored it in an article, so here goes.

First, I need to explain what we’re talking about. In Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, a “bombout” is the common description of missing all three competition attempts in a meet. In competitive lifting, each athlete is given three official attempts in each lift. In OLifting, you get three snatches and then three clean and jerks. In powerlifting, you get three squats, three bench presses, and three deadlifts. I’m talking about the attempts that happen on the competition platform. There’s a warmup room backstage at every meet, which is where the lifters prepare themselves, but the only lifts that actually count are the three official attempts.

You have to successfully complete at least one attempt in each lift to finish the competition and be eligible for overall awards. And you have to be pretty precise about the weights you pick on these attempts, because you can’t lower the weight if you fail. So let’s say you attempt 200 lbs. on your first snatch in a competition and you’re unsuccessful. You can’t go down and attempt a lighter weight. You have to make the 200 lbs. on either your second or third attempt, or you can go up and add more. But you can’t ever move down.

If you miss all three of your competition attempts in any of the lifts, it’s referred to as a bombout. You won’t finish the competition with a total, which basically means you have no shot at placing in the overall standings. In other words, it’s the worst possible result you can end with. Bombing out, simply stated, is every weightlifter’s worst nightmare.

Fortunately, bombouts are relatively rare. Most lifters avoid them because they (and their coaches) select the right competition attempts based on sensible training and preparation. They aren’t frequent, but they do happen occasionally.

A bombout really screws with your head. It’s the ultimate badge of shame, and there’s nothing worse than having to explain it when you go home after the meet and your friends start asking you, “So, how did you do?” Bombing out basically means you completely failed. You trained your ass off and prepared for this competition, and you walk away with nothing to show for it.

Because of this, bombouts usually produce a feeling of extreme disappointment in both athletes and coaches. They’re very tough to swallow, and it’s not uncommon to start asking yourself some really terrible questions if it ever happens to you. That’s why I want to write about them. If you’re not a competitive weightlifter, you should still be able to get something out of this article because we’re essentially talking about how to handle a moment of complete failure. Hell, this kind of moment can happen in any sport. It can happen in your professional life. It can happen when you’re raising your family. Like it or not, most of us are going to have big defeats at some point, the kinds of things that can make you consider quitting.

I don’t want you to quit. You don’t want to quit, either. So let’s examine the best strategies for handling a bombout, whether it happens in weightlifting or life.

Examples usually help…

Here’s my personal experience in this department. At the time of this article, I’ve competed in 109 meets, and I’ve bombed out five times. All of them were in the early years of my career.

I’ve had a very successful run as a competitive lifter, I’m fortunate to say. My record stacks up pretty well against the most athletes. However, I’ve tasted failure more than once. All of those five bombouts were crushing defeats. Two of them were at the American Open, which is the 2nd most prestigious competition in the United States. I bombed out of the Open twice in a row (1994 and 1995). Yup, you read that right. I also bombed out of the Olympic Festival, which used to be one of the main spotlight competitions in the country. Without a shadow of a doubt, I can tell you these things sting much worse when they happen on the big stage.

As I said, this all happened when I was young, very much in the intermediate stages of my development as a lifter. Each of these bombouts was my own fault. My coach wasn’t to blame, there wasn’t any kind of freak situation that knocked me for a loop…nothing like that. I just didn’t get the job done, plain and simple. I tried my best, but I blew it. What caused the crappy performance? Mainly it was just a combination of nerves and immaturity. Looking back at it now, I understand that. It took me a while to figure out the right way to compete mentally. During that “figuring it out” process, I screwed the pooch a few times. I was a head case for a while, but I grew out of it.

You probably don’t know this, but almost every high-level weightlifter in the world has bombed out at some point. You can mention the names of the greatest studs in the history of the sport, and I can probably point out a bomb somewhere in their careers.

Ever heard of David Rigert? He was a Soviet lifter from the 1970s, and he was the weightlifting idol for most of my generation. He’s generally regarded as one of the best ever, a true icon in the sport. 1976 Olympic Gold Medalist, six-time World Champion, 68 world records in his career. Rigert was an animal with a body and physical presence that made your jaw drop. And do you want to know something interesting about him? He bombed out of the Olympics twice. That’s right, folks. He bombed in 1972, won gold in 1976, and then bombed again in 1980.

Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey is probably THE greatest weightlifter of all time. Three Olympic Gold Medals, seven World Championships, six European titles, and 46 world records. 152.5 kg snatch (336 lbs.) and 190 kg C&J (418 lbs.) at 60 kg (132 lbs.) bodyweight, which is pound-for-pound the greatest performance ever. And do you want to know something interesting about him? He bombed out of the Olympics in 2000.

Vasily Alexeev, the Soviet legend who did the first 500 lb. C&J in history back in 1970…remember him? Two-time Olympic Champion, 80 world records, bombout at the 1980 Olympics.

I could go on. Seriously, I could. I was amazed when I progressed throughout my weightlifting career and learned about all the champions of the sport. These athletes seem like they’re inhuman. Their performances and victories are the stuff of legend. They stand at the top of the mountain, while the rest of us struggle to rise to their level. And almost every single one of them has bombed, at some point. Some of you have read my book Bones of Iron, where I told a story about the time I bombed out of the 1994 Olympic Festival. After I missed all three of my snatches, I was ready to throw myself on a spike. I walked back into the warmup room and saw Mario Martinez standing there, who was a three-time Olympian and one of the greatest American lifters of all time. Despondently, I walked over to him and asked, “Hey Mario, have you ever bombed out of a big meet?” He just smiled and said, “Yeah, sometimes. It happens.”

After 20 years, I’ve still never forgotten that he said that to me. Mario is an iconic figure in US lifting, and he basically explained one of the most painful truths of the sport (and life) to me in one sentence. Failure and defeat are part of the game, brothers and sisters. Nobody, regardless of how incredible they are, is exempt from that rule. There are examples all over the place to prove it. So if you ever experience a bombout, try to remember that you’re in good company. In my opinion, that’s one of the best ways to deal with it. When you understand that the great champions have all had to go through the same thing, it gets a little easier. None of us are perfect, even if we’ve got Olympic medals in our closet.

Why it happens, and how to deal with it…

You want me to explain to you why bombouts happen? No problem. Trust me folks, it ain’t the Riddle of the Sphinx.

When you’re a weightlifter, you push the absolute limits of your physical capabilities. When you’re a competitive weightlifter, you push these limits under the most stressful, complicated, unpredictable circumstances imaginable. If you push these limits frequently, there will be times when you come up short. I once read an interview with a great home run hitter in baseball who also had tons of strikeouts on his record. His explanation for the strikeouts was, “I swing really hard. Sometimes, I miss.” I love that quote.

Bad days are just a part of being an athlete, and there’s nothing any of us can do to change that. It’s not rocket science, for god’s sake. Look at the examples you see in other sports. In American football, Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway led his team to the Super Bowl AND LOST three times before they finally won it in 1997 and 1998. How about track and field? Ask the average track fan who the best pole-vaulter in history is, and the name you’re going to hear most often is Sergei Bubka. Bubka, like David Rigert, bombed out of two Olympics (it’s called a “no-height” in vaulting), but he also won it in 1992 and elevated the world record to over 20 feet in his hall of fame career. The two no-heights didn’t diminish his greatness.

When you bomb out, your job as an athlete is to figure out why it happened. This is usually a tricky process because, most of the time, there isn’t a clear-cut cause that you can point your finger at. It’s typically just a short mental lapse, a break in your concentration, excessive nervousness, or something like that. Figuring out why these things happen requires you to figure out your brain, which isn’t a simple task. But you have to try your best, because the only way you can keep a problem from happening again is to locate it and solve it.

Personally, competition got a lot easier for me as I grew up and matured. As a young lifter, I had a lot of mental obstacles that were mainly caused by my obsessive need for success and complete lack of tolerance for failure. You have to be a perfectionist if you want to be a great weightlifter, but perfectionists sometimes have problems because they simply get wrapped up too tight in their struggle to control everything. That mental “tightness” can cause some freaky performances, because most people do their best work when they feel relaxed and comfortable.

You can overanalyze a bombout, but it usually won’t lead you to any reliable answers. In my experience, it’s best to learn what you can from a bad day and then forget about it. The longer you analyze a bombout, the longer you’re keeping it in your mind. The best thing you can do as an athlete is leave it behind and start moving forward. Hopefully, you’ll be able to move forward with some understanding of how to prevent future screw-ups. The most important thing is that you move forward with determination that it’ll never happen again.

And stay off the s**t pile…

Aaahhh yes, self-loathing and judgment. These are such wonderful feelings to live with, aren’t they? Listen, a bombout will make you feel terrible. It’s the pinnacle of failure, and it doesn’t help when your coach gets a crappy attitude towards you and tosses you on the dung heap. Coaches, do you hear what I’m saying? The worst thing you can do to athletes is kick them when they’re down. Coaches obviously feel just as badly as athletes when a bombout happens because it’s a reflection on both of them. I know some coaches who treat athletes like dirt if they perform poorly.

First of all, the athletes are going to remember that you weren’t there for them when they needed it. They tried their best and came up short, and you handled it by being selfish and pissing on them. It’s not like they wanted to bomb, know what I mean? But coaches sometimes get an attitude with them anyway. This can be one of the first steps towards the athletes looking around for a different coach. Second, being a coach means you’re a leadership figure. If you’re a leader, you’re expected to handle difficulties in the right way. You have to be the positive one, the voice of reassurance, and the reminder that bad days are just temporary. When your people look at you and they see that you can’t maintain a strong attitude in the face of obstacles, they start to think you’re not tough enough to cope with harsh times. Then they start to lose faith in you. At that point, it’ll never be the same.

The bottom line is that you should be pissed as hell if you fail, either in weightlifting or in life. Regardless of the sport or life field we’re talking about, it should make you angry when you experience defeat. However, that anger is something you have to control and eventually dismiss. Nobody makes any improvement by continually dwelling on failure, know what I mean? If you hang on to it, how can you expect to move forward? You’re not the first weightlifter to bomb out. The best athletes have done it too. Learn whatever you can from your bad days, even if it’s not that much. After you’ve learned, turn your thoughts towards your upcoming goals. That’s what all the great ones have done, and it’s one of the main reasons why they’re great.