No offense meant to any of the wonderful athletes and coaches we’ve previously interviewed for Performance Menu, but this month’s interview with Mike Gattone is my favorite one we’ve run so far.

First of all, Mike was the meet director for my first Junior National Championship in Peoria, Illinois in 1991. I got to know him then, I’ve continued to get to know him better over the last 25 years, and now Mike is one of those guys who has been a prominent figure in the weightlifting community throughout my entire career. As you’ll read in this interview, it’s hard to find a role he hasn’t played in this sport. Athlete, coach, administrator, meet director of countless championships…including the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Many of the greatest moments in USA Weightlifting over the last two decades have his fingerprints on them.

There are two kinds of people in weightlifting these days. First, there are the people who have come into the sport over the last six or seven years since the explosion of popularity through CrossFit started. Second, there are the tough veterans who started this sport back in the old days when it was very, very hard make things happen, and you were often working with no help from anybody. Mike Gattone is one of those men, the ones who have been making this sport successful whether it was during times of feast or famine. In my opinion, he’s one of the people the weightlifting community is most lucky to have. It’s a tremendous honor to share his weightlifting journey with Catalyst Athletics.

Tell us about your background. Where are you from, where do you currently live, what’s your occupation, family life, what kind of sports background do you have outside of lifting, etc.

I’m a proud native of the southwest side of Chicago, and although I’ve moved around the country quite a bit for my jobs, I can’t get away from this metro-area. My wife, son, and I live in Libertyville, IL which is a northwest suburb of the city. Our daughter is a senior at University of Iowa where she throws the javelin on the track team. I currently work full-time as a team sports manager in the sports marketing department of Gatorade. I basically have the role of relationship person with sports performance staffs: strength coaches, athletic trainers, and dieticians throughout the Midwest and Northeast on our partner teams at the NCAA and higher level. I’ve been doing this for five years, but my past occupations have all been in weightlifting or strength and conditioning. In my free time, I also serve as head coach for the Forza Weightlifting Club at A3 Performance Center in Grayslake, IL, and still teach certifications for USA Weightlifting once or twice a month.

As far as my sports background, it’s really field and track that got me into lifting. I fell in love with throwing in high school and threw hammer at the University of Arizona. My passion for training methods, strength and conditioning and ultimately weightlifting came from that.

Describe your weightlifting history. When/how did you start? Who were your coaches? What were your proudest accomplishments as either an athlete or coach?

Well I started getting interested in weightlifting early in high school, first to help my throws because I read how guys like Al Feurbach and other heroes of mine were doing the lifts in training and even competitively. As you know, in the late 70s and early 80s, there were not many outlets of knowledge for a high school kid to learn from, but I always bought Strength and Health and managed to get my hands on other stuff like Bob Hise’s magazine, etc. My brother and I tried to do the lifts in our garage with a metal York set, just like a lot of other guys my age. My brother was a decathlete, and when he started college at University of Illinois – Chicago, I’d go there with him once in a while to lift and throw. I met Coach Greg Kustra, who was a student there in the weight room, and he became a big early influence on me. Greg showed me how to lift more efficiently, and gave me lots of magazines, etc. so the bug for weightlifting was really started in me then. We even went to Sayre Park a few times when I was still in high school, and I saw real international level weightlifters like Mike Karchut, Jeff Michels, Mark Levell, and Chuck Nootens training, so this made me understand that this was a sport, and not just a way to train for throwing.

Like I said, I went to throw at University of Arizona as an invited walk-on hammer thrower, but I still continued to lift in local meets around the state. Although it was not weightlifting specific, I was very blessed to have Meg Stone (then Ritchie) as a training partner at U of A. She was a huge influence as far as her dedication, drive, and just flat-out strength in the weight room. During my time in Arizona, I was becoming more and more conflicted on whether I was a weightlifter or thrower! I was constantly reading Soviet Sports Review journal, and trying to incorporate exercises and programming into our throwing workouts.

In the summer of 1985 I saw that there was going to be a U-23 camp at the OTC. This was sort of a precursor to the very successful Junior Squad program which you were a part of, Matt. Anyway, I wrote Harvey Newton a letter and asked about coming to the camp, and he agreed. That was pretty much the event that turned me into a full-time lifter. That fall I transferred back home to Illinois-Chicago because I wanted to train exclusively as a lifter, and Sayre was a place where I know this was happening. Over the next year or so, I was coached by Mark LeMenager, and Roger Nielsen and again, got to train and watch many top American lifters. Don’t get me wrong, I was not a national class lifter, but I knew this was what I wanted to do, and kept trying to learn and grow in the sport as much as I could. After Mark moved to Europe, I became closer and closer to Roger Nielsen, and even started to help him some with the Juniors at Sayre, as well as running local meets, etc. He was, and still is a huge influence on my career.

I left Chicago to be a GA in Strength and Conditioning at KU for a year after I graduated college, but during the summer, the head strength coach that hired me resigned, and I decided not to go back to Kansas, but instead return to Chicago and Sayre Park. These were definitely great days for me; we had an awesome training group including Rich Schutz, and Paul Fleschler, and besides training, we were a very tight knit social group, hanging together several nights a week. I was still training, but really functioning more as an assistant to Roger with the Juniors in the gym on a daily basis, and with Rich, Paul, Jeff, and others at National meets. Great, great days!

In 1990, my life took an interesting change as I got hired by a not-for profit in Peoria, IL to run a weightlifting training facility for local athletes, and also to host weightlifting events in the community to bolster sports business. As you know, in those days it was extremely rare to be paid to coach weightlifting. Besides local juniors, I built a great community of guys that moved to town to train including Rodger DeGarmo, Kirk Davis, and Brian Kult. We all lived together, and pretty much had weightlifting 24/7. We also hosted the 1991 Juniors, 1992 NACACI Championships/Olympic Trials, and the 1993 Senior Nationals in town. All this meet organizing paid off, as it lead me to be hired in 1994 as the Competition Director for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Weightlifting event. One of my proudest and most awesome moments in the sport happened there. I remember at the conclusion of the Suleymanoglu vs. Leonidis battle, the entire venue was just on fire. All the fans were on their feet, and Tamas Ajan, and Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the IOC, were sitting in the front row of the venue, just feet from my station at the end of the competition management table. My wife and daughter were in the venue, and after the last clean & jerk, I was holding my daughter as the place was exploding, and the music was blasting. It was a pretty damn awesome moment to be standing there as part of history was unfolding, and sharing with my family and so many friends that were on staff.

Another crazy thing that happened to me in Atlanta was meeting and starting to train this young woman that was a colleague working with the soccer organizing committee; her name was Tara Nott. It was funny because I was not in Atlanta in a coaching role, but rather as an administrator. Tara kept pestering me to teach her, and I was saying no. Can you believe it? I almost didn’t train her, but thanks to her persistence I agreed to start taking her to John Coffee’s gym three times a week before work, and on Saturdays. Of course she progressed amazingly fast, and soon, I knew she was going to be something special. After the Games, we moved back to Chicago and Tara decided to as well so we could continue to train. She didn’t even have a job, and spent some time sleeping on the floor at our house until she got settled. We started to train at Sayre Park. Roger had moved to Arizona at this time, so I served as coach there as well for about the next four years. After Tara moved out to Colorado Springs, I also started another great US female lifter down at Sayre, Jackie Berube, who also got a chance to move out to Colorado to be a resident. Needless to say, watching and being a part of Tara’s progress, her gold medal at the 2000 Olympic Games, and being with her in Athens 2004 at her last competition were also high point moments for me in the sport.

You’ve made the transition from athlete to coach/administrator in the sport. What are the similarities and differences between those two lifestyles?

I did do pretty much every role you can in weightlifting; athlete, coach, official, USAW board member, IWF board member, national and international meet director, and High Performance Director, and you’re right, there are some differences, and intrinsic struggles to face. Probably the biggest is when you are thrust into making a decision that will affect an athlete’s ability to compete, train, or receive some benefit like a stipend, or even staying on a USADA list. This always sucked. You know as a coach, and just a human being, how hard these people work in this sport with very few benefits, and little accolades, and yet, you have to make these tough decisions at times because of limited resources, or objective standards that have been set. Always hated that! The similarities are first and foremost that in any role I’ve filled, my underlying motivation was always love of the sport, and the athletes in it. I’m very happy just coaching and teaching right now as I can just enjoy helping people improve regardless of level.

Describe some of the obstacles you face, or maybe some things that frustrate you in your weightlifting life. What kinds of changes would you like to see, either personally or with the sport in general?

Well, my biggest frustration now is that I’m not a full-time weightlifting coach. That might sound funny, but before my current job I’ve always pretty much been able to be in the gym whenever my folks were training. Currently, although my team trains in the evening, my travel schedule sometimes precludes me from getting to every training session. I’m there as much as I possibly can be, but some weeks are tough.

Tough to say what kind of changes I’d like to see in the sport right now as it’s huger than it’s ever been in regards to popularity and numbers. I love it! It’s probably the old High Performance Director in me, but I guess I would like to see us, and I mean the coaches in the United States, try to communicate and work together more to try and build some kind of “system” or philosophy that can help us move up internationally. Not saying we should all be doing the same programming using the same technical cues. Heck, it’d be boring as a coach if we were all doing the same thing, and there are just a lot of folks getting success with many different methods, but it does seem like we could have more national communication and cohesiveness on a high performance model in the US. Maybe it was my experience with Tara that “spoiled” me, but I believe in our athletes, and every time I see another sport having success at the world and Olympic level, I get jealous. I want us to be in there too!

What are your plans and goals for your coaching career? How do you see your future in the sport?

Right now after a little hiatus with my switch to this new job, I’m just really enjoying growing our team, not just in numbers of participants, but in quality, too. We haven’t even been at it a full year, and I see their technique getting more consistent, and their paradigm of moving heavier weights changing every week, and that’s very satisfying. I would say I see my future as continuing to coach, and teach, and do to so at the very best level I personally can. I just love weightlifting and it makes me really happy to be involved and hopefully passing some of that love and passion to the folks I work with. I never want to stop growing and learning as I move into the future as well.

Who are some of your major influences, people you look up to, etc.? Who are the people you want to thank for your success?

Such a tough question, as there have been so many people that have helped and influenced me in my life. The older I get, the more of a gift I realize this has been. Roger Nielsen has taught me so much about coaching and also dedication to weightlifting. He has one of the best technical eyes I’ve ever encountered and I’ve really tried to learn from that. Lyn Jones was a great mentor to me. Myself, and many other guys my age came up in his coaching education tenure and I learned so much about programming, and just systemization from him. I also learned a ton about passion and enthusiasm watching and talking to Dragomir over the years. Someone I talk to several times per week about coaching and training, and have for years is former American Record holder, Jeff Macy, who is currently Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Oregon State. Jeff is just a smart, no nonsense coach that has built a ton of experience at many different levels. We have great training discussions that help me with my coaching on an everyday basis. My single greatest mentor and someone I really want to thank for making me a better coach and person would be Al Vermeil. I had the honor of working for him as Assistant Strength Coach for the Chicago Bulls, and for his private sports performance company for three and a half years, and it was the single biggest professional growth experience of my life as a coach. I try to talk to Al on a fairly regular basis, and our discussions always turn to training, and I often wind up scrawling some note for myself! Like I said, I never want to stop learning and thinking about how to help people get better!

Thanks Matt and Greg for this opportunity, and keep up the super great service you offer to so many weightlifters out there.

We can’t thank you enough for your life of service and accomplishment in weightlifting, Mike. You’re the best, and we wish you nothing but continued success throughout your years in the game!