Competitions - Part 1

 We'll get straight into this one.

Competing in weightlifting;

1. Focuses your training;
2. Gets you out of your comfort zone;
3. Makes you a better lifter; and
4. Is fun.

If you've weightlifted for longer than 2 hours, you've probably realised... Its F-ing hard. There's no getting away from that.

So you may as well celebrate all the hard work you're putting in by showing it off on the competition platform. It's a thrilling experience and one which you can’t replicate in training. It can be somewhat daunting at first.. but what isn’t first time round?

Competing is for everyone, and you'll find a host of competitions, for all abilities, on the BWL competitions calendar - so don’t hold out on entering your first one. This doesn't have to be an official BWL sanctioned event - If your gym is hosting a friendly in-house competition at the end of a training block. Sign up! It’s a great opportunity to lift some heavier weights in a good atmosphere, especially if the competition is something the whole club has been working towards.

A time will come when you’ll start considering whether the podium is something to aim for. But before you get too far ahead of yourself, focus on building up some competition experience first. Everyone has to start somewhere, and competing is nothing like maxing out at your home gym, so the more experience.. the better.

‍We'll cover how competitions differ from day-to-day training, and how to prepare for your first competition in our following articles, so stick around.

Getting 'Serious'

Competing is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts and we've seen it time and time again with our athletes.
Once they decide to compete, something awesome happens. Overnight, they become athletes with a purpose (other than just getting #Yoked). Training gets more intense, sessions get more focused, diets get cleaned up and even recovery is (sometimes) taken a little more seriously. That extra push from the approaching competition date completely transforms their training, and often, that’s when the real gains start rolling in.

But the benefits of competing aren’t just physical.

Weightlifting is an individual sport – whilst you’ll hopefully have a support network behind you, once you’re out on the platform it’s just you. And ultimate responsibility for your performance is down to you. That pressure can be scary. But, if you have the power to stand on a competition platform, with all eyes on you, whilst wearing a silly looking swimming costume. There won’t be many things you can’t do in life.

Confidence

There’s an incredible amount of confidence to be built form platform experience. And if you’re worried. Well, what’s the worst that can happen? Every single spectator wants you to succeed. Nobody enjoys watching competitions where lifters miss lifts. That's not what they're there for. And if they do want you to fail, well that says more about them than it does about you.

The same goes for athletes. - Any good sportsperson will say the same. They want to beat you. But they want to do so by virtue of their ability. Not because you had a bad day.

So, what else? - Discounting any injuries and niggles which might keep you out of the gym for a few days... the literal worst-case scenario in a competition is going 0 for 6. (aka. 'Bombing Out') That’s it.

Nobody will look at you any different than if you had gone 4 for 6, and every good lifter will have a bomb-out somewhere on their record. Get them out of the way early eh? You'll be making memes about it before you finish packing up your lifters, and you'll likely make a few good humoured friends along the way. Certain clubs wear the 'Bomb-Out' as a badge of honour, an initiation of sorts. Although we'd recommend keeping your 0for6 scores to a minimum, once is funny - twice is annoying.

Beyond the Comfort Zone

In weightlifting, your comfort zone is your gym, the time of day you train, your favourite barbell and the hottest tunes from your playlist blasting from the speaker. In competition, you won’t have any of that, so you’ll have to dig deep to find different kinds of motivation. You'll learn a lot about yourself in the process and often come away eager for the next block of training and to fix every little detail which could have been better.

Competition, by extent, will make you a better and more resilient weightlifter.

So what are you waiting for? Get out of your comfort zone, put on the singlet and go compete. With a good group of you going, even if you do bomb out, it gives you an excuse to max out and skip squats without coach getting mad.

See you at the next one.