Let’s talk a little bit about the personality dynamics we see in our glorious life of Olympic weightlifting, shall we? As I write this article, I’m approaching my 29^th year in the game. Serving that amount of time brings about a lot of things, and one of them is the sheer amount of human interaction I’ve experienced with the people of this sport. I’ve known hundreds and hundreds of coaches, athletes, and officials in weightlifting over the last three decades. Some of them are people I met towards the beginning of my career who are still around, like Sean Waxman and Ursula Garza. I’ve known those two since I was around 20 years old. Others are relatively recent additions who have become a big part of my life, like Greg Everett. And obviously, there are dozens of names who came and went. Their time in the sport ended and they walked away. I’ve kept in touch with a few of them. Most of them I haven’t.
 
Like any other walk of life, you’ll find every kind of personality imaginable in weightlifting.
I've known people in this sport who were legitimately mentally disturbed at one level or another, and it was scary as hell to be around them. I’ve also known people who were remarkably solid and full of the kind of wonderful character that makes you want to model a part of yourself after them. And every other variation between these two polar opposites…yep, I’ve seen it all.
 
What I want to talk about specifically in this article is the way personalities can be contagious, especially from the coaching perspective. One of the main things I’ve noticed over the years is how the attitude and personality of the coach tend to trickle down into the athletes. It’s pretty remarkable when this happens because it’s so clear and definite. The great coaches I’ve met in my career have athletes who are a lot like them, in a variety of ways. You can see it visibly. Certain teams have collective personalities, and everybody who’s close to them knows who they’re coached by. Back when I was on the national scene in the 1990s, everybody knew what the weightlifters who represented the top programs in the country were going to be like…how they were going to compete, what they were like in social situations, how they behaved on and off the platform, etc. Sometimes it actually gets freaky because it’s so conspicuous.
 
Many of you are coaches. And as I always say, if you’re not a coach yet…just wait. If you spend long enough in weightlifting, somebody will ask you to coach them eventually. When this day comes, you’re going to want to have some knowledge about how you’re going to set the tone for your team’s mentality, whether you intend to or not. Your athletes will be a lot like you. That might give some of you a lot of confidence, and it might scare the bejeezus out of a few of you. But regardless of how you feel about it, I can promise you it will happen. Probably the best way I can explain this to you is through stories and examples. I’ve got a few great ones.
 
I’ll give some real names, and hide a few…
 
I want to tell you about some of the most memorable instances I can remember where the personalities of coaches permeated through all the athletes they coached. I’ll use the names of the positive ones, and I’ll keep the sketchy ones anonymous.
 
Without a doubt, the best positive example I can think of is when Dragomir Cioroslan was the resident coach at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs through the 90s and early 2000s. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this name, here’s a quick history lesson. Dragomir was a former Olympic medalist from Romania who went into coaching in his home country after he retired from competition. In 1990, he was hired by the US Olympic Committee to be the head coach of the national resident program at the USOTC. For the next 14 years, the resident program at the OTC was like a freight train from hell. The crop of lifters who started with Dragomir in the early 90s went on to accomplish some of the most amazing feats in the history of US weightlifting. Wes Barnett, Tim McRae, Pete Kelly, Vern Patao, Tom Gough, Shane Hamman, and literally dozens of others spent those years rewriting the American record books, winning international medals, making Olympic teams, and elevating the sport for the whole country. To this day, that group stands as the most dominant juggernaut I’ve seen in the US since I’ve been a weightlifter. And it was pretty obvious where the energy came from.
 
For those of you who never met Dragomir, I can sum up his personality with a few simple words: intensity, work ethic, and fire. Dragomir was one of the most passionate people I’ve ever met in any sport, and the fierceness he showed in his coaching completely filtered down into his athletes. You know all those lifters I just mentioned? Those guys just flat out lifted their asses off when they were on the platform. My time as an athlete on the national scene was the exact same time as the Dragomir era at the OTC, so I was competing head to head with many of these dudes several times a year. They were tough, fearless, and aggressive. There’s no question about it…they were just like their coach. They learned their approach to weightlifting through him, and it showed in their amazing performances. Granted, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. I personally almost had to break up a fistfight between Dragomir and one of his top athletes in a hotel lobby the night before the national championship one year because Drag was pissed at the guy for staying up past ten o’clock drinking Coke when he had to get up and compete early the next morning. No doubt about it, the fires were burning pretty hot in that program. But that’s to be expected when you’ve got a bunch of hard chargers working together.
 
I personally think Dragomir’s influence affected this whole country, not just his athletes at the OTC. Hell, you had to be on your game if you wanted to compete with them. There was no room for slackers back then. And although I’m putting in a lot of words about the incredible impact Dragomir had, it would be negligent of me to forget about the other great coaches of that time period whose level of inspiration was just as powerful as his. My own coach John Thrush, along with great names like Jim Schmitz, John Coffee, Gayle Hatch, and Steve Gough…these guys were lions. They guided and shaped a whole generation of American weightlifters through their leadership. When these men were in the gym, there was no mistake about who was running the show. They were serious, committed, and completely intolerant of laziness. And just like Dragomir, their attitudes spread throughout their lifters, me included. We were young, and we learned the sport through them. Not just technique and training, but the level of daily drive you have to bring to the gym if you ever want to get to the top. These guys modeled it for us, and we grew up in weightlifting following their examples the same way young children learn life from their parents.
 
Are there any negative examples? Yeah, I can think of a few. I don’t want to mention any names in this next part, for obvious reasons. But I think I can describe the other end of the spectrum anonymously.
 
There are two specific programs I can think of from this time period that have always stood out in my mind, for the wrong reasons. The coaches of these programs had some very strong skills that attracted athletes to them, so they were able to reach positions of importance on the national scene. But they both had dark sides that were hard to ignore. The simplest way I can describe them is this…one of them was reckless, and the other one was shady.
 
The reckless one was like a ticking bomb. His personality was magnetic because he was about half crazy, and he acted like it. Young athletes are often drawn to bombastic types. I guess it’s the same thing deep down inside some of us that likes professional wrestling. Whatever the reason, this guy usually had a stable of pretty impressive weightlifters. Were they successful? As you can probably guess, their results were all over the place. They either broke records or bombed out. Plenty of injuries, too. It wasn't hard to see what was going on. The coach made a lot of risky decisions with the attempts he called for with his lifters. Because they were all loyal to him, they would go out on the platform and just rip as hard as they could on any insane weights he told them to try. Their collective personality was aggressive almost to the point of self-destructive. As Paul Newman once said, “It takes two things to win. You’ve gotta have brains, and you’ve gotta have balls. You’ve got too much of one and not enough of the other.” As much as I respected this coach and the guys in his program, you could see a little of this idea in their performances.
 
I told you one of the other negative examples I can think of was a coach who was shady, right? This was an interesting situation because, just like the reckless coach, the shady coach usually had a competitive team that did some big things at the national level. Everybody knew there was some sketchy business going on in this program, but none of it ever seemed to come to light. Until it did. Listen, I’m not going to write much about this and I’m obviously not going into details. Suffice to say a series of scandals eventually went public, and the whole sand castle came crashing down.
 
I’m not giving you these examples for muckraking or gossip. I won’t mention the names even if somebody asks me about them off the record. I’m telling you about real-life situations where the personality of the coach made a huge difference in the careers of the athletes, both in good and bad ways. I’ll celebrate the good ones by name, and conceal the names of the bad ones because this isn’t a tabloid. You all know the point I’m trying to make. One person really can make a difference. You just have to hope that difference is a positive one.
 
And now you…
 
When you’re a coach, the things you do on a daily basis will be the example you set for your athletes. Let’s look at a few specifics:
 

• If you show up late, you’re telling your athletes it’s okay to show up late.
• If you cheer for your athletes when they’re trying big weights and get excited about their successes, most of the people in the gym will do the same thing.
• If you screw around, they’ll screw around.
• If you act bored and uninterested, they’ll be bored and uninterested.
• If you bring your personal drama into the gym, they will, too.

 
These are obvious ones. We all know this. But you’d be surprised at how easy it is to forget these things sometimes, even if you’ve been coaching for ages. I have to admit I’ve even caught myself violating a couple of these rules in recent years, and I’ve been doing this for a very long time.
 
There are some things you just can’t go wrong with. High expectations, intensity, friendliness, respect for others, self-discipline, self-control, transparency, encouragement, empathy, work ethic, smiling. These things are daily necessities when you’re a coach. Some people were born to be coaches because these qualities are just the fundamental bricks of their personality. They don’t have to come to the gym and try very hard. The right things just happen because that’s who they are inside.
 
Some of the best pieces of advice I can give you as a coach are to remember two things:

1) Everything you do matters.
2) They’re always watching you.

It might not be fair, but everything you do as a coach will be under the microscope. You might say something to one of your athletes that’s small and minor to you, but it might be something they remember their whole lives. My wife was a professional triathlete for several years. The night before she won her first Ironman, her coach told her, “Just remember, all those other girls you’re running against are cream puffs. You’re tougher than they are.” The coach probably doesn’t remember saying this. It was just something he said to one of his athletes before a race. But my wife has remembered it her whole life, and she directly attributes her victory the next day to those words.
 
Yes, this can work against you sometimes. You might say something that deeply wounds an athlete without even intending to. Coaching is a tough business. An athlete’s entire self-perception is connected to the random stuff that comes out of your mouth. Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? What if you say the wrong things?
 
Listen, you’re going to make occasional mistakes as a coach. And do you want to know one of the best ways to become a great leader? When you make a mistake, do something to make it right. If you’ve established the right kind of example with the athletes, they’ll be willing to straighten it out. Now you’ve got an even stronger bond than you had before. However, the mistakes will be few and far between if you stick to that list of qualities I gave you. If you make those things the daily guidelines in your gym, who knows where it could go? Your athletes might rise to a level you never saw coming, and somebody might be writing an article about what a great coach you are someday. Best of luck to all of you.