Chapter 7

Building The Mind Of A Weightlifting Champion

A person’s mind is by far the most important factor determining his or her success in weightlifting, and virtually anything else in life. We will explore the proper use of one’s mind in this chapter.

Why The Most Powerful Indicator Of Weightlifting Success Is Often Overlooked

One concept in vogue today with many “scientific” weightlifting coaches is that of “selection.” Select athletes with the proper physical characteristics (e.g., an outstanding vertical jump and natural flexibility), the argument goes, and champions will almost inevitably grow from this talent pool. In essence, the athlete comes to the coach to find out whether he or she has “it.” If the lifter does have “it,” the coaching process begins. If not, the lifter is advised that the pursuit of weightlifting glory is futile, and it is suggested that his or her energy would be better spent in other endeavors.

This idea is flawed, tragically flawed, because it presumes a knowledge that we do not have. It is tragic because it has destroyed many weightlifting careers before they ever began. From a scientific standpoint, we are quite a distance from being able to test for the physical traits that are essential to weightlifting success. We can identify certain gross limitations that greatly hinder performance, but we rarely encounter limitations that are so great as to preclude success; nor have we identified gifts so substantial as to make success highly probable. This is partly because we have not identified all of the essential physical characteristics of a champion weightlifter. Our analytical skills and tools for evaluating such characteristics are still relatively primitive. There are so many factors that interact in the making of a high caliber weightlifter that it is not yet possible to measure or fully understand their combined effects.

With regard to evaluating the potential of bodybuilders, 1992, 1993 and 1994 Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates, has said: “I think the subject of genetics is a bit overrated…. I can’t look at you and say that you have or haven’t got the genetics for a 21″ arm. No one knows until you’ve tried it.” He is talking about a single quality: a person’s ability to gain muscle size. The physical factors that impact on weightlifting performance are far more complicated; therefore, the ability to predict an individual’s physical potential for weightlifting is even more suspect.

However, even if our ability to evaluate physical potential were at the near perfect level, we would find it difficult, at best, to predict success with a substantial degree of accuracy. The chief problem with any assessment based on physical characteristics is that such characteristics are not the only, or even the most important, determinants of a lifter’s success. The key characteristics that we cannot measure are what is in the athlete’s mind and what is popularly called the athlete’s “heart.”

If there is anything more important than body strength in weightlifting, it is strength of mind. If an athlete is to begin and to sustain an effective regimen of weightlifting training, a proper mental attitude is a prerequisite. Does this mean that the will conquers all, that the athlete merely needs to “want it” badly enough for success to be inevitable? Absolutely not. The mere act of wishing for something is far from enough to cause it to happen. Neither is “working hard” a guarantee of success (working smart and hard is critical). The mind and the body are needed for weightlifting success. They must act in concert. There must be no rift between thought and action.As the great philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand said in defining her principles of ethics, there are three fundamentals that man (and woman) must hold as primary if he or she is to live a successful (i.e., moral) life: reason, purpose and self-esteem. Reason enables a person to proceed in accordance with reality, using nature as the means to success. Purpose is the goal a person selects through a process of reason. Once selected, it serves as a guide in the selection of steps for fulfilling that purpose, as a guide to action. Self-esteem is a consequence of acting rationally towards the achievement of the purpose one has set. A person who values and respects himself or herself will grasp the importance of his or her values. Such an understanding stimulates the mind to reason further, refining and devising additional means for achieving his or her purpose, the action toward which builds self-esteem, creating a sort of success spiral.

I would add one more element to Rand’s group of three mental fundamentals: support. By support I do not mean the sacrifices of others to facilitate your success (though help from others may well be welcome under certain circumstances), but, rather, creating an environment that nurtures success. Establishing conditions and cultivating associates that complement your objectives can mean the difference between success and failure.

Having an academic or work schedule that permits quality training time and adequate rest is critical to achieving maximal progress, while work or school commitments that do the opposite can make success virtually impossible (although this does not mean that you cannot work or go to school while training). Similarly, having associates who are psychologically supportive of your efforts (even though they may not share your interest or involvement in the sport), can be of great help. In contrast, having associates who despise your sport, discourage your efforts and make light of your success at every turn is likely to have a negative influence on your progress. Support, therefore, has both physical and psychological dimensions.

It should be noted that some “scientific” weightlifting coaches who fully accept the importance of the mind in a weightlifter’s success are undeterred from making prognostications regarding the probability of a lifter’s reaching championship level. They will simply apply a mental test instead of or in addition to a physical one. In short, a personality profile will be substituted for vertical jumping ability as a means of assessing an athlete’s potential. Unfortunately for this variant of prognosticator, no test has ever been devised which can identify the mind of a champion.

Numerous attempts have been made by sports psychologists to relate sports performance to various personality traits. The nature, definition and range of traits that have been studied and/or grouped to create some sort of personality profile or index vary considerably. Such attributes as assertiveness, motivation, baseline anxiety, social styles and self discipline have been studied. The overall outcome of such research has been that a wide variety of personality styles has been successful in athletics. It might be expected that an attribute such as motivation would be highly correlated with performance, but even athletes with limited motivation, as assessed by standard measurement tools, may be outstanding performers. This can be explained by motivations that are not measured by whatever instrument is being used, by a lack of complete candor or self understanding on the part of the athlete and by differences in perceived motivation when responding to questions in a laboratory as opposed to engaging in practice or competition.

Does all of this mean that the experienced coach cannot spot an athlete who has better than average physical and mental characteristics? Of course not. With careful observation a trained eye can certainly evaluate the current status of an athlete quite accurately. However, what the coach cannot predict with any level of certainty is how quickly and how much further any athlete can or will develop. The athlete is the only one who is in a position to know, particularly when it come to his or her mental capabilities. And while the athlete’s predictive powers may not be perfect, there is no one else on earth who is in a better position to decide just how far he or she can go.

Perhaps the most important single reason that predictions regarding development (particularly mental development) have limited value is the fact that the mind of a champion can and must be built. The purpose of this chapter is to help the athlete in that process.

Philosophical And Theoretical Issues Relating To Mental Attitude

Can You Really Control What Happens in the World?

In order to be a champion, or to succeed in any major undertaking in life, you must have answered this question in a certain way, even if only implicitly. In the very briefest of terms, the answer to that question must be a resounding yes. But the reasons a person answers yes to that question are as important as the answer itself.

There are two rational and fundamental reasons to believe that success is possible and that its achievement is largely under your control. Those reasons are: a) that existence exists independent of consciousness; and b) that existence is benevolent, particularly to the person who acts rationally.

To say that existence exists independent of any consciousness is to say that the world outside any person is independent of what that person thinks of that world and that existence has its own immutable laws which cannot be altered by any consciousness. This does not mean that humans cannot alter the external world, merely that simply wishing for change is not enough. A person who understands that existence exists understands that action is required to succeed in life. Action must be taken to alter the external world or to alter the athlete’s primary tools for dealing with that world— his or her own mind and body.

The notion that existence is benevolent toward humankind does not mean that existence has any ability or desire to think or to act on humankind’s behalf. Rather, the idea is based on the assumption that if humans were not fundamentally suited to live in the world, they would not have survived and prospered as they have. By the nature of humankind and its relationship with the universe, success is not only possible, it is probable. Tragedy and disaster are not norms; success and happiness are.

Why are these beliefs so crucial to the underlying premise of a person’s ability to control existence? A person who believes that consciousness itself influences reality (whether his or her own consciousness or some else’s) will be reduced to merely willing that something change or waiting for some other will to exercise its power. Action, then, will be implicitly considered to be ineffective and, as a consequence, any hope of achieving control of personal destiny will be wiped out.

In a similar way, a person who believes that humankind has the ability to be happy, that the world is not out there just waiting to snuff out all initiative and pretenses at happiness, will see thought and action as worth undertaking because of his or her ability to control the course of his or her life. Therefore, an understanding of existence and an appreciation of humankind’s fortunate place in it are the foundations upon which success is laid. If a person does not hold these premises, little can be done to achieve success in weightlifting or anything else.

Lest you conclude that the space taken above for establishing premises is unnecessary “philosophizing,” you should consult the literature of sports psychology. Considerable research supports the notion that successful athletes believe in an internal locus of control for their successful actions (i.e., that they, not events beyond their control, are primarily responsible for the positive outcomes that they experience and that the causality of events is essentially stable). In contrast, athletes who are oriented to failure perform poorly when under stress. They internalize defeat. They get depressed and anxious at the first sign of failure. For instance, if things do not go as planned in a given competition or workout, their conclusion is not that they have been unable to perform on particular occasion but, rather, that they are “failures.”

The athlete with a favorable self image and perception of his or her ability remains with activities longer. An athlete’s view of his or her self-efficacy also affects the choice of an activity, the effort expended on that activity, the persistence exhibited in the activity and the appraisal of feedback. Finally, an athlete’s self image influences the goals he or she selects. Those who see their ability as poor tend to select goals that are extremely modest (because of their lack of confidence and unwillingness to risk failure) or patently ridiculous (so that when they fail no one will see them as failures since no one could have succeeded at the task).

Athletes differ in their attributions (the factors they attribute to success or failure). Winners tend to make dispositional attributions (e.g., “I did not do A, therefore my performance suffered, but I can correct that in the future”). They then work to correct the cause of the unsatisfactory performance. Poor performers tend to make situational attributions (e.g., “the arena was too hot and the officials were unfair”). Such attributions may preserve the athlete’s psyche in the short run, but they preclude true enjoyment of any success because such success must necessarily be attributed to external factors as well. In addition, such attributions imply that success is always contingent on a wide variety of factors that are outside the athlete’s control, so why even try to control them?

In discussing the mental state of a person who is unable to differentiate effectively between things that are and are not under that person’s control, Ayn Rand made the following brilliant observation:

“Any small success augments his anxiety: he does not know what caused it and whether he can repeat it. Any small failure is a crushing blow: he takes it as proof that he lacks the mystic endowment. When he makes a mistake, he does not ask himself: “What do I need to learn?” He asks, “What’s wrong with me?” He waits for an automatic and omnipotent inspiration, which never comes. He spends years on a cheerless struggle, with his eyes focused inward, on the growing, leering monster of self-doubt, while existence drifts by, unseen, on the periphery of his mental vision. Eventually, he gives up.”

Your mental state and your view of the world are under your control, and they are the very foundation of athletic and all other forms of success.

Single Mindedness of Purpose

Bob Hoffman, the legendary promoter of weightlifting in the United States and worldwide, often said for a lifter to be the best in the world, weightlifting must come first. This is a true statement. It does not mean that weightlifting must be the only thing that you do or think about. It does mean that when any decisions are made in your life, the first question that must be asked is, “will this action hurt my weightlifting career?” If the answer is yes, that action should generally not be undertaken. The second question is, “will it help? ” If the answer is yes, the action is probably the right one to take.

Now these questions need to be answered with a long term view. Looking for a job today may not help today’s workout as much as a nap might, but having a secure job can help to provide the lifestyle that is necessary to train effectively in the long run. On the other hand, a job that will require considerable overnight travel is likely to interfere very materially with training over the long and short runs. Therefore, no matter how attractive it may be for other reasons, it is generally not the right choice for the competitive weightlifter. In today’s competitive world, great success in weightlifting cannot be achieved by the athlete who treats the sport as a second or third priority in life; it must be number one, period.

Keeping priorities straight is not always a simple matter. Constant sources of inspiration must be sought to maintain a proper focus. These sources of inspirations may be people who you admire, your specific goals or various images that you bring to mind. It is also important to pause during the day to refocus on your objectives and to relax (avoiding any tension other than what is required to achieve your ultimate purpose). In the gym it is very helpful to have a coach and training mates who share your enthusiasm and objectives. Exchanging letters and phone calls with fellow lifters can be still another source of inspiration.

A top performer is unflappable in terms of the ability to focus on the most important task at hand and to commit to carrying out his or her plan.

Balancing Ambition and Patience

A prerequisite for championship weightlifting performance is a powerful ambition to succeed. The road to success is an arduous one, and only intransigent ambition can make success a reality.

Those who are ambitious are also often impatient to achieve success as well. This is only natural, as time is one of life’s limited resources and therefore it is very important to use it efficiently. However, being overly impatient can be very detrimental to an athlete’s progress.

It is true that an athletic career can sometimes be cut short by an injury or other circumstances and the idea of “saving” capabilities for a later date increases the risk that those capabilities will never be realized and/or displayed. But an equal possibility is that an athlete will place great pressure on himself or herself to achieve a given goal by a certain date when, in the grand scheme of things, a later date would have served just as well. An athlete’s desire can be so great that it results in his or her attempting specific weights or training methods that are dangerously beyond the athlete’s true capabilities. One key to weightlifting success is to find the proper balance between the essential qualities of impatience and patience, and the key to discovering that balance is rationality.

A rational person recognizes the difference between what is within his or her control and what is not. A weightlifter must be impatient to apply all of the techniques that are within his or her control in order to achieve success as quickly as possible. The athlete must never think, “I can put off working my squat until the weather gets colder and I feel more like training hard,” or “I’ll get my body weight under control after the holidays, so I’ll overeat now.” There is no time to waste in applying the measures that are needed for success. The successful athlete learns to apply his or her full desire to succeed to such areas.

On the other side there are some things that take time. They cannot be hurried beyond the body’s maximal rate of adaptation. An athlete cannot break a personal record in the squat before the body has recuperated from its last maximal effort. Restoration techniques may speed recovery, but they can never eliminate adaptation time. To recover from a workout is one thing, to adapt to a new higher level of capability is another. Willing things to be different in this area is a positive waste of time; an athlete who tries and fails because of ignoring the constraints of the human body is always courting disaster through exposure to injury and constant frustration.

Similarly, the body can only recover from an injury over a sufficient period of time. Proper therapy can make recovery as rapid and complete as possible, but the time for recovery cannot be eliminated. To think, “if only I could eliminate recovery time I could be a champion tomorrow,” is no less wasteful than thinking, “if I could only get gravitational pull to be suspended when I lift, I could outlift everyone.”

In order to be a champion, the athlete must develop his or her strength to a champion’s level. The proper technique must be learned before heavy lifts can be attempted. Therefore, the athlete can never say, “I’ll deal with my technical faults tomorrow because I feel like going heavy today.” Adequate flexibility must be developed before proper technique can be achieved. Therefore, the athlete can never say, “I’ll work my flexibility tomorrow, but I feel like snatching today”. Everything must be done in the proper order and measure.

In essence, the weightlifter must be absolutely impatient with any delay in taking the next steps that can possibly be made toward success; they must be taken today, at this hour and this instant. At the same time, infinite patience must be exhibited in the context of waiting until the prerequisite of each step on the road to success is completed. Each athlete is responsible for maintaining the delicate balance between what he or she is responsible for and what he or she cannot change. The most important patience of all is that of knowing that real patience is one of the most profound expressions of confidence in yourself and in reality. The proper principles, applied in the proper fashion, will lead to success. Unshakable confidence in the ultimate effectiveness of rational effort is the hallmark of a champion.

The Pluses and Minuses of a Positive Mental Attitude

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the importance of a positive mental attitude when it comes to weightlifting (or anything else). Some argue that keeping a positive mental outlook is crucial for weightlifting success. Others argue that positive thoughts are unrealistic and that what is often referred to as a positive mental attitude (PMA) only leads to ineffective fantasy and eventual frustration. As is so often the case when there are two such points of view, the truth lies in another direction.

The will, or volition, is the prime mover in all of man’s activities. It selects a goal, and it is capable of generating action toward the achievement of that goal. Therefore, the will is necessary, in fact crucial, to success. But the will is not sufficient for success. The mere act of wishing for something will not make it so. Existence is what it is, independent of man’s consciousness. Frustration arises with various PMA programs, and they are quickly abandoned by many people, because a belief in the omnipotence of the will is cultivated by those to promote or attend the programs, and it is against that standard of omnipotence that the performance of a positive mental attitude is tested. Naturally, since no creature is omnipotent, the test is inevitably failed, and the tester comfortably (in the short term) retreats to a position of non-effort. Non-effort gives short term comfort because it reinforces the status quo. In reality, non-effort is a ticket to stagnation, regression and a lifetime of suffering.

In another sense the will is virtually unlimited in its power, and this is what the few rational and insightful advocates of a positive mental attitude are referring to, albeit often not in a thoroughly reasoned or very clear way. The will is unlimited in its power to improve human existence, existence within the scope of what is possible to man (“man” refers to humans regardless of gender). What is possible to man is possible only because man exercises his (or her) volition. Man is able to choose to think and what to think about. When thought is applied toward rearranging the world in accordance with the laws of nature, the possibilities are limitless. Therefore, the adage “thinking will make it so” is more accurately stated as “thinking can make it so—if the thought process is rational and action in accordance with the results of that thinking is undertaken.”

There is little question that the amount of effect you devote to achieving a given objective is highly correlated with the probability of success that you assign to that effort. If you think, “no matter how hard I try, I’ll never do X,” it is unlikely that you will work very hard to achieve X. Sometimes in life we are lucky enough to experience an event that causes us to dramatically revise our estimates of the probability of success (e.g., a “lucky” break during a competition). One important factor in making success happen is making those enthusiasm building “breaks” come more often. When you cultivate the habit of maintaining a positive mental attitude, you will experience an increase in the number of positive indications of success.

What is really happening is these cases is that your subconscious mind, programmed by your conscious mind’s focus on the positive, is constantly processing information in search of solutions to the problems that you face in achieving your objectives. This leads to existential success, which contributes to the mind’s belief that success is possible, which further programs the mind to look for more solutions, and so on.

For an example of how a positive mental attitude was actually applied by a champion with great success, consider the case of Bob Bednarski, the great American weightlifting champion of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Bob told me that when he was in his prime he had a strict policy of categorizing all input he received from others in one of two ways, positive or negative. If he sensed any negativism at all, he attached the label “negative” to it (which meant it was to be totally ignored). When positive input was received, he savored it, absorbed it and replayed it over and over. This absorption of positive statements served to build an overwhelming sense of confidence and enthusiasm, which led to a blazing desire to succeed and an unshakable confidence that success was to be his. This lead to actual success, and the process continued, leading to ever growing success.

It should be noted that Bob did not consider advice on correcting technique or training methods as negative or something to be ignored. Rather, he considered such constructive criticism to be very useful, indeed essential. What Bob was avoiding was the “gloom and doomers” who said things like, “Do not think about smashing world records, think about American records instead, and you won’t be disappointed.” or “You’re too small to compete against the really big superheavyweights.” (Bob began to chase superheavyweight glory in 1965, when he weighed a little more than 90 kg.. The then current world champion weighed in excess of 160 kg., and there were no weight classes between 90 kg. and superheavyweight. Bob reached his quest in dramatic fashion on June 9, 1968. Weighing approximately 115 kg., he made the heaviest C&J ever in the history of weightlifting, 220.5 kg., to literally shock the weightlifting world!).

The essence of an effective positive mental attitude relates to three interrelated concepts: a) any proper and positive attitude must have a rational basis; b) the focus of the mind should be on the positive; and c) there must be an underlying belief that thought is efficacious. Each of these concepts requires some elaboration.

To say that an attitude has a rational basis is to say that it recognizes the proper scope of human thought and action. If you say, “I am positive that the earth is flat, or that if it is not, wishing will make it so,” you are dropping the context of rational thought. What you are really saying is that anything goes. You are denying or refusing to consider all of the evidence that is available, ignoring the nature of consciousness (the capacity of perceiving that which exists). But in reality, anything does not go, and as soon as you let your guard down long enough to see reality, the illusion of the fantasy form of positive thinking becomes obvious. Positive “thinking” of this kind is not thought at all but, rather, mere imagining of the metaphysically impossible.

Focusing the mind on the positive is not merely “seeing the good that exists in everything,” because there are many things in which there is no good. Rather, focusing the mind on the positive pertains to turning your attention to what is possible and what can be done to overcome any obstacle or setback that you encounter. It has been argued that the value of positive thought is as much attributable to its ability to turn attention from the negative as it is to the positive thought itself.

Positive action is, of course, indispensable as well. Positive affirmations, such as “I like it” (when you are about to do something that you do not), “I am ready” (when you do not fell completely so) and “I will do it” (when you are not entirely sure that you will), have the effect of improving your confidence and, ultimately, your behavior as well. When your behavior improves, so will your confidence. In a similar way, acting the part of believing can ultimately affect belief itself. If you act as if you are confident, it is likely that you will begin to feel more confident. This is because the mind and body are inextricably tried together.

Regardless of the reason for its effectiveness, a focus on the positive is important. If your goal is to become the best weightlifter possible, any physical limitation that is encountered in that quest may simply redefine one aspect of what is possible, but it leaves the other avenues toward success open to the original objective.

For example, if you lose your hand, you cannot do a two hand snatch with two natural hands or snatch as much as you might have otherwise. But it does not preclude you from becoming the best lifter you can be or from enjoying the fundamental benefits of such an achievement. You could, after all, specialize in the one  arm snatch or snatch with a prosthesis. Either would permit one to experience the joy of lifting. This example is a random one in the sense that its message applies to all kinds of challenges that a lifter might face, but it is a very real example in another sense. During the 1930s there was an athlete who was missing the better part of one hand and who nevertheless managed to place second in the U.S. Nationals and to be competitive on a national level for a number of years. This lifter, whose name was Tony Vega, took second place in the 1939 nationals against a full field of lifters with two complete hands.

How did he do it? It is hard to imagine the courage that such an undertaking required; to say that his focus was on the positive would be an understatement. On a physical level Tony Vega took the normal overhand grip with his normal hand and a reverse grip with the other hand (which had no fingers but only a partial palm and a thumb). The bar was supported at the juncture of the palm and wrist by curling the palm toward the wrist.. Vega would pull the bar with this grip and then turn his partial hand as he descended under the bar, catching it in the juncture of his partial palm and his thumb.

Not only was Tony Vega highly competitive, but his lifts were well balanced (i.e., the relationship between his press, his snatch and his clean and jerk were relatively typical). There was probably no one to teach Tony how to lift with a partial hand, and no allowances were made for him by the officials or competitors. I cannot even begin to speculate about the arduous struggle of trial and error he must have gone through to discover and perfect his unconventional technique. The misses that must have occurred due to the lesser degree of control that he had over the bar must have been staggering in number. The mental toughness that he must have possessed in order to persevere in the face of the “friendly” advice that he must have received from many (to the effect that he had better concentrate on doing something he had more of a chance of success with) is unimaginable. It is hard to find words to express my admiration for such an achievement or my gratitude for the inspiration he provided to so many with his obvious focus on the positive.

Another legend in weightlifting who gained his well earned reputation as much through his positive mental attitude as through his accomplishments is Norbert Schemansky. By the time Norb was in his late twenties, he had won Olympic gold and silver medals and a World Superheavyweight Championship and had set numerous world records. Norb had been plagued by lower back problems for much of his career and ultimately required spinal surgery (no picnic today, but an extremely risky procedure in the 1950s). He attempted a comeback after the first surgery and was injured again, requiring a second surgery. He was told after the second surgery that he would be lucky to walk again and that any further lifting was absolutely out of the question.

When Norb discussed his plans for a second comeback with Bob Hoffman (then the perennial United States World and Olympic team coach), Bob gave Norb four convincing reasons to forget about the idea. First, he was in his mid-thirties, too old to comeback. Second, he had already had two spinal surgeries, and even a young man could not come back from that. Third, he was never a large superheavyweight and was much too small by the day’s standards (Norb may have weighed around 100 kg. when he was in his prime in the mid 1950s, and the top supers in the 1960s were in the 130 kg. to 160 kg. range). Finally, his press had historically been weak and by the day’s standards was much too low to be competitive (the press was one of the three Olympic lifts then performed in weightlifting competition). Any one of those reasons was legitimate, and in combination they were devastating. Nevertheless, Schemansky used them as a spur to vault him toward success. He came back carefully, gained body weight and dramatically improved his press. By 1962, at the age of 38, he had regained his national championship, broken a world record in the snatch and taken second at the World Championship in a close battle with the reigning champion. Norb went on to win a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics at the age of 40. In so doing, he became one of the great legends of weightlifting and one of the greatest testaments to the power of positive thinking.

The final concept of effective positive thinking is confidence in the efficaciousness of the human mind. As was suggested earlier in this chapter, if you believe that we live in a universe that is out of our control or that tragedy is fundamental to human nature (despite a modern world replete with examples of man’s efficaciousness and the norm of existential success), then there will be no desire to exert mental or physical effort. The result of such a belief will be a world where tragedy is the norm and where the world will seem out of control. In contrast, if you have the confidence to see that success is possible, is in fact the norm, then no amount of existential failure generated by mechanisms beyond your control will cause you to give up the one thing that could change the failed state: rational (i.e., positive) thought. Positive here means thought with the understanding that action is possible and good. Positive thought and action are the keys to much of the happiness that is possible to humankind on this earth.

Harnessing Your Mental Powers

Goal Setting on a Macro Level

Goal setting is one of the most effective ways to build the enthusiasm and the mental attitude needed to became a success in weightlifting or in other areas of life. Sports literature is replete with stories of great performers who established ambitious goals from the outset of their careers, but goals are important in all walks of life. For example, a recent survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that graduates who had established specific goals for themselves upon graduation and regularly thereafter out-earned counterparts by a factor of three to one. Graduates who established written goals on a regular basis out-earned those who did not set goals by a factor of ten to one. Now, mere goal setting itself may not explain this difference in results (the types of people who write down goals may have other characteristics which are more significant contributors to their success than writing goals down), but the goal setting group would probably attribute a significant share of their success to having goals which were reviewed and acted upon on a regular basis.

Psychological studies have demonstrated that goals are more important factors in predicting behavior than perceptions of ability (although perceptions of self efficacy and perceived ability, along with past performance, are major indicators of future success). However, the nature of the goals that athletes choose are influenced by the fundamental motivators of the athlete. Those motivated by internal factors and mastery goals focus on process, while those who are motivated by external factors and outcomes focus on the product.

The kinds of goals that are being referred to here can be termed macro goals. Macro goals can be defined as long term goals and the intermediate steps that are identified as the stepping stones to those goals. For instance, a 64 kg. weightlifter who can C&J 100 kg. might set a long term goal of doing a double body weight C&J in the 70 kg. weight category (i.e., 140 kg). The athlete might then break the goal down by resolving to improve his or her C&J to 115 kg. at 64 kg, 125 kg. at 66 kg, 132.5 kg. at 68 kg. and 140 kg. at 70 kg. Or, the athlete might determine that to C&J 140 kg, his or her squat must be increased by 50 kg, his or her power clean by 35 kg, etc..

Psychological studies on goal setting have revealed that those who established goals related to mastery tended to establish challenging goals, to exert a high level of effort and to confront failure constructively. Those whose goals were related to outcomes (such as winning a particular competition) tended to attribute a greater role to external factors when they did not succeed.

While setting goals does not assure that the goal setter will achieve them, goals do apparently play a vital role in helping an athlete to keep objectives in sight. They also give an athlete the opportunity to experience the kinds of rewards along the way that are essential to maintaining an athlete’s enthusiasm. Interestingly, those trained in setting performance goals rated effort as having a more important influence on success than ability.

By outlining an inspirational but realistic goal and then achieving it, an athlete accomplishes much more than taking a vital existential step toward success (as important as such steps are). The athlete also builds his or her confidence in his or her efficacy. In effect, the athlete concludes, “I am right for the world and for success, I have the power to establish goals in the real world and to accomplish them. I am in control of my destiny.” These are powerful thoughts indeed. They are the thoughts of a champion.

Specific and difficult goals are more effective in eliciting improved performance than easy, moderate or “do your best” goals. Difficulty is more important than specificity, and combining them both with feedback yielded the best performance overall. Positively focused goals are best for new and difficult tasks. However, negatively focused goals (e.g., goals of making fewer mistakes) are more beneficial for perfecting learned skills.

Goals should be formulated both in terms of the long and short range. They should generally be specific, attainable, measurable and within your control, but there is an important role for more subjective goals as well. For example, an athlete may have an objective of a 200 kg. C&J and a 265 kg. squat. But he or she can also have an objective of maintaining his or her composure under competitive conditions. The latter goal is not as easily measured, but success can clearly be identified. A person who is able to maintain control in competition can directly perceive the feeling of such control, even if those feelings cannot be measured mechanically.

Once long term goals have been identified, the athlete needs to take stock of where he or she is at the present. Then the athlete needs to establish sub-goals that will be stepping stones to the major objectives that the athlete has established. These sub-goals need to be of two basic types. One type has to do with the steps of progression. If the lifter’s objective is to C&J 200 kg. and he or she is doing 155 kg. at present, sub-goals might be set at 170 kg, 180 kg. and 190 kg. A second type of sub-goal is one that contributes to a more fundamental goal. To continue the example, the athlete might recognize that a 170 kg. power clean will be necessary in order to clean 200 kg. smoothly and therefore might establish a 170 kg. power clean as a sub-goal (along with further sub-goals in the power clean of 140 kg, 150 kg. and 160 kg).

Sub-goals can be set for technical improvements, body weight, body fat, mental performance and a host of other areas. While it is important for goals to be measurable in some way, it is equally important that the means of measurement conform to the quantity being measured. This is a particular challenge in the mental realm, but the challenge is not insurmountable. The athlete should have clear images of each of those sub-goals, so that they can be brought to mind on a routine basis. This will serve both to keep those goals in the forefront of the mind and to increase the motivation to achieve those goals.

Once the athlete has established detailed sub-goals, he or she must make plans for training to achieve them. When it come to goals for improving certain mental capabilities, the athlete can identify specific times of the day when he or she will attempt to think about a specific goal or to exercise a desired quality and then practice as planned. For example, having decided that he or she needs to develop patience, the athlete can decide to exercise patience with respect to each practice session and determine that, instead of rushing through a given exercise, he or she will perform it at a predetermined pace. The athlete can use a timer, a series of thoughts or some other mechanism to assure that the proper timing is being achieved. This effort can begin with one exercise, or some brief time interval, and then be extended. The important thing is to work toward achieving some progress at each session (even though progress may be uneven) and to continually build on the progress that is made. Regardless of the nature of the goal, feedback regarding its achievement is vital to success. Neither feedback without goals nor goals without feedback helps performance very much; both are vital.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that once goals have been established, the focus must be on the process of achieving those goals rather than on the goals themselves. Goals set the direction for effort. They help the athlete to select the means to achieve the goal and to direct attention away from negative or distracting thoughts, and they provide motivation along the way. But the process is the sport and the existential means for accomplishing the goal. Action is required to make a goal a reality, and it is that action which must be focused upon. This is where goal setting on a micro level is so effective.

Goal Setting on a Micro Level

Goal setting on a macro level is important for any weightlifter who wants to reach his or her full potential. Athletes who have long term goals tend to develop more complex and adequate strategies for achieving those goals than those who focus solely on the short term. However, there has been a tendency in the sports psychology literature to focus almost exclusively on this kind of goal setting to the exclusion of the all- important subject of goal setting on the micro level.

I would define micro goal setting as establishing goals which can be achieved in the immediate future, often during the workout in which the athlete is engaged. The need for these kinds of goals cannot be overemphasized. It is, after all, the achievement of immediate goals that makes the achievement of longer  term goals possible. Moreover, only these micro goals are within an athlete’s direct ability to control. Therefore, the failure to focus on this area is surprising.

It is my contention that every athlete should go into every workout with one or more micro goals. Generally speaking, these goals should be both quantitative and qualitative. For example, an athlete may have an objective of snatching 100 kg. for five singles in a given workout. Now, the athlete can meet such an objective by merely making the weight successfully. But the athlete could receive a much greater benefit from the workout if he or she had at least one other complementary objective as well. The nature of that complementary objective depends on the athlete’s needs at the time.

For one athlete, the objective might be to pull each successive rep higher and higher. For a second athlete, it might be to move under the bar faster than ever before. For a third athlete, it might be snatching the weight without expending too much nervous energy. The possibilities are endless. Creating combined goals has the added benefit of making the workout more interesting and challenging for the athlete.

Goals can be created for even the most mundane tasks. An athlete who is doing five sets of five reps in the squat might, at least on certain occasions, find the task someone routine and daunting. Concentrating on doing each rep better than the one before can be of help, as can trying to “groove” each rep perfectly. But sometimes goals can be created simply for fun. For example, one famous swimmer reported that he was able to fend off the boredom of swimming endless laps in the pool by imagining that there was a pretty young lady at the end of the pool urging him on and ready to reward him with a kiss. This athlete was able to use this mental goal setting technique (striving for the kiss) to make his arduous workouts an otherwise pleasant experience. A weightlifter might use his or her imagination in a similar way or might visualize each snatch as the one needed to win the Olympic Games. The particular image is not important. What is important is that the athlete use the micro goal setting technique to get the most out of his or her workouts.

If an athlete has selected the right sport, the sport itself will provide tremendous motivation for the athlete to train for success. However, no matter how enthusiastic the athlete, there will be occasions when the athlete will regard some necessary form of training as boring labor. Many athletes slog through such feelings for hours, days, weeks, months and even years at a time. They accept the need to do the work but see little joy in it.

Many coaches feel that there is nothing inherently wrong with such an attitude, as long as the necessary work gets done. I disagree for two primary reasons. First, anything an athlete does not like will tax his or her mind unnecessarily, will create negative memories and associations with the sport and will tend to undermine enthusiasm and hence the quality of the workout experience. Perhaps more importantly, an irreplaceable opportunity of life will have been missed: the opportunity to enjoy what you are doing at all times.

It may not seem possible to someone who has not tried it, but there are an infinite number of ways to turn the most mundane workout into a challenge and a pleasure. The examples already provided should give you the idea, but it is up to every athlete to take the responsibility to create means of making all workouts a pleasure, a source of inspiration and satisfaction.

While short term goals are critical to success, there is a context in which they can be misused. If moment-to- moment performance is overemphasized, athletes can become discouraged by short term failures and can swing back and forth from elation to frustration on the basis of extremely short term feedback. The key to successful use of micro goals is for the athlete to use them for motivational purposes but not to place so much pressure on performance that he or she is in a constant state of anxiety or attributes too much to any one instance in which performance is not at the level desired. Remember that the purpose of short term goals is to enable the athlete to focus better and enjoy workouts more.

The Vision of Success: Building Desire

The starting point for building the overwhelming desire to achieve outstanding results in weightlifting (or anything else) is to set an objective that truly inspires, a goal that evokes a true passion. In order for the goal to do this, it must meet three criteria. It must be exciting.. It must be specific. And, it must be believable.

Excitement about the prospect of an achievement arises out of the perception that the goal is worth achieving, that its achievement will make one a happier person. The higher a goal appears in a person’s hierarchy of values, the greater the desire to achieve it. If a goal doesn’t excite you it is not likely that you will work very hard to achieve it.

Specificity is important because it is difficult to get truly excited about a goal, or fully focused on its achievement, if one is not specific about what one wishes. Clarity in a goal makes it much more real and inspiring. In addition, in order to achieve any goal you will need to make decisions and trade-offs regarding your actions toward you goal. If you goal is not clear in your own mind, making such decisions and trade-offs will be difficult if not impossible.

Finally, you must believe that your goal is possible to achieve because you will not strive with all of your ability to reach a goal that you believe to be impossible to achieve.

It is not uncommon for a person to experience a certain level of difficulty in placing various objectives within a hierarchy of values. This requires identification of the most powerful needs of your innermost self. This can be done in a number of ways. One of the most effective and direct methods is to consciously rank your values and objectives. You can begin by listing the things you want to accomplish in the short and long term. To determine the short term goals, you might ask, “If I had only six months to accomplish everything that I wanted to do in life, what would I do?” To identify your long term goals, you might ask, “Where would I like to be five or ten years from now, what would I like to have accomplished?”

A less direct approach, but one that can be very effective, is to attempt to recall the accomplishments in your life which made you feel the greatest sense of achievement. Think about what aspect(s) of those accomplishments made you feel the greatest satisfaction. These may be things that other people would overlook if they were reviewing your personal history, or they may be aspects of that history on which you may place much greater weight than others. For example, you might identify winning a race when you were eleven years old as one of your most fulfilling experiences. Others might conclude that the pleasure you derived arose out of the victory itself. To you, the primary thrill may have arisen out of knowing that you had performed your best on a day that you did not feel particularly well. The point is that you can use a personal inventory to identify the kinds of events that gave you the greatest sense of satisfaction and the specific aspects of those events that meant the most to you. While this kind of exercise will not help you to identify specific objectives in weightlifting, it will help you to understand better the kinds of achievements that will give you the greatest sense of fulfillment (e.g., lifting 200 kg. vs. winning a specific competition).

Forward projections or visualizations can also be used for values identification. See yourself achieving a number of things that you consider to be important. Then imagine those experiences of success and all of the things that accompany them. Think about which one of those things give you the greatest sense of accomplishment. By combining a review of history and future projections you will be able to identify recurrent themes. Certain kinds of thoughts and experiences will give you the most satisfaction. These should form the basis of your goals. Only by focusing on your core values (assuming that they are rational), can you plan to achieve the things that will truly bring you joy.

Out of this kind of analysis will also come another kind of conclusion, the identification of a sense of mission. A mission is a very fundamental kind of objective that a person forms. It states in the simplest and most concise terms a person’s fundamental goal(s). It answers the question, “What kind of person do you intend to be when you have achieved your major objectives?” This is a more basic kind of goal than a specific achievement.

For example, your ultimate goal may be to make an Olympic weightlifting team. You may have a number of sub-goals along the way, including winning two national championships, setting several American Records and winning the Olympic tryouts. However, your mission might really be to compete with the best in the world at the biggest event in the world. Membership on the Olympic Team might be your means to accomplish this mission, but your real mission is to be on the platform with the best, to warm up with them, to give them some competition and to gain their respect as a member of their elite club. Consequently, if you made the team because some other athletes were injured and your own level of ability was not sufficient to be really competitive with the rest of the world, merely making the team might not fulfill your true mission, while a chance to compete with distinction at a particularly difficult World Championship might bring you closer to the accomplishment of your more fundamental goal. Personal missions are as different as people. Some people want to show that they can overcome some obstacle, to prove the “naysayers” wrong. Others merely like to pursue certain ends irrespective of what others think. The exact nature of what such a person might choose as ultimate achievement is secondary to the satisfaction he or she will derive from striving to achieve, and ultimately achieving, a challenging goal.

Once a person has identified his or her core values and basic mission, he or she is ready to establish goals that are really likely to generate excitement over the long term and to help that person become the best that he or she can be.

Although the perceived desirability of a particular achievement is the spark that can ignite a burning desire to succeed, it is not by itself enough to motivate a person to action. Many people spend much of their lives dreaming about a desired state of being. They can imagine the desired state and gain considerable satisfaction from that process of imagination. What separates these dreamers from those who achieve success (or at least attempt to do so) is the belief that appropriate action can lead to that desired state (or at least a state that is better than the current one). Those who act certainly do not believe that success is assured, but they do believe that they can make success happen. Such people have converted an imagined state into an actual object of desire.

Reaching your full potential in weightlifting requires an enormous expenditure of mental and physical effort. It requires an alignment of all aspects of life toward the achievement of your goal. Finally, your diet must be right, and you must receive adequate rest and relaxation. You must train assiduously. Total concentration must be applied to your lifting efforts. There may be some sports in which an athlete can let his or her mind drift during the training process, because the activity being performed is repetitive and relatively automatic in nature. Weightlifting requires complete focus and an awareness of what you are doing at all times. And, while weightlifting is a relatively safe sport, performing the activity at a high level requires courage. Hurling your body with blinding speed under a falling weight of several hundred pounds, to catch it at just the right moment, is not an activity for the fainthearted or the distracted. The dedication and courage to accomplish all of this exist only when you have achieved a burning, overwhelming desire to succeed.

To summarize, the process of building the champion’s mind begins by visualizing the person you want to be. See the image of yourself as a future champion, a person who has all of the characteristics that you desire and will possess when you become the champion you want to be. Then identify the characteristics that you need to improve upon or dispense with if that ideal person is to be created. See the desirable characteristics emerging as dominant. Give the unwanted characteristics images and see yourself destroying them or throwing them away.

Work to increase your desire for the target characteristics and your distaste for any undesirable ones that you may currently possess. You will eventually find that you are almost automatically becoming the person you want to be. What you see when you close your eyes is what you can and must become.

The importance of developing a “no limits” mind set cannot be overemphasized. What you can conceive you can ultimately achieve (as long as it is not at odds with the laws of nature). The champion is energized by the image of success and is therefore capable of awesome deeds. Energize yourself with your vision of success and you will become capable of such deeds a well.

The Value of Visualization

Many people who have achieved great things in life have been surprised when their accomplishments were recognized. It is certainly true that a person’s opinion of his or her abilities is often not a very accurate measure of those abilities. Moreover, wishing will not make it so. Believing something does not make it true, and imagining achievement of a certain objective does not guarantee that a person will achieve that objective. But it is also true that very few people have accomplished great things who did not first visualize themselves in some way having achieved their objectives. Visualization is clearly not sufficient to make a champion, but it may be necessary and there can be little doubt that it is helpful.

Why is visualization valuable? For one thing, it fuels the desire to succeed. Imagining a result can give you enthusiasm for that result. The more clearly you can imagine success, the closer you can come to experiencing the joy it will bring, and that can fuel the desire to achieve the goal in reality. Imagining yourself as a great champion you admire or as the end product that you aspire to can greatly increase your motivation and confidence. At least one major study of Olympic level athletes found that more successful athletes tended to imagine success and dream about it more than athletes who were less successful. There also seemed to be a relationship between the frequency of an athlete’s imagining success and his or her commitment to their sport. Could it be that these athletes imagined and dreamed of success and were more committed to their sports because success was objectively more achievable for them than for other athletes? The study attempted to control for this variable, but it still found a relationship between imagining and dreaming about success and the achievement of actual success. It is therefore likely that imagination and/or dreaming had same effect on the success of these athletes.

In his Encyclopedia Of Modern Bodybuilding, the great bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger says: “To be a champion, you have to have the mind of a champion and that mind is created step be step, just like the physique.” I couldn’t agree with Arnold more, and his words apply just as well to weightlifters, if you substitute “strength and technique” for the words “the physique” in his quote. Visualization is one of the important steps that Arnold alludes to. Visualize the person you want to be several times a day, put up pictures of your ideal or goal. These and similar actions will improve your ability to visualize success, and that, in turn, will increase your chances of achieving that success.

A second benefit of visualization is that it can return your focus to your real priorities. The vicissitudes of life can often cause attention and interest to be drawn away from what is truly important. The cause of such a diversion can be pleasant or unpleasant. A personal tragedy, such as the death or illness of a loved one, or a great opportunity, such as a chance at a better job or a better education, can divert attention from even a deep seated goal. Visualization cannot eliminate the diversion, but it can serve to bring your focus back to your goals, giving you the desire to balance that goal against the challenges that threaten to lessen or extinguish it.

A third application of visualization is that you can use it to play out mental struggles or physical or technical problems. For instance, you can visualize a fear and then see yourself throwing it away or destroying it. Or, you can visualize what you believe to be your true identity and see that as your “center,” a place from which you control your thoughts, your body and your feelings. Then you can visualize your control center actively influencing all of these areas to achieve a positive effect (a positive feeling, a good thought, a desirable action) or to do away with an undesirable effect. Athletes who use visualization in this way often combine it with relaxation technique. (For example, if an athlete visualizes a situation in which he or she becomes too excited, he or she then uses a relaxation technique to reduce the level of anxiety and then continues the visualization.)

A fourth application of visualization is in “seeing” yourself as someone who is accomplished (either by imitating a particular person or by simply seeing yourself performing in an accomplished manner) as compared with accomplishing a particular thing. Just acting as if you are an accomplished person can cause you to adopt and exhibit certain behaviors characteristic of such a person and to ultimately become more accomplished.

Why would such an approach work? Many psychologists have argued for years that the mind cannot distinguish, at least not completely, between reality and imagination. If you imagine yourself succeeding at something, the subconscious mind processes that information as if it had really been experienced. A sufficient number of such experiences programs the subconscious mind in the same way the actual experience would.

The notion of programming the subconscious has been discussed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, but one of the modern pioneers in this area was Maxwell Maltz, who published a book called Psycho Cybernetics in the 1960s. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who noticed that it took most of his patients several weeks from the first time they saw their new appearance after surgery to accept fully that appearance and to see themselves as having the new look that they actually had achieved. Perhaps even more interesting was Maltz’s observation that some patients who experienced dramatic changes in appearance never seemed to accept their new appearance. He then reasoned that if some of those who had experienced change could not see it, there was an aspect of belief that transcended reality (in terms of its effect on the mind). This led to the realization that the opposite situation could occur; the mind could be induced to believe that a change had occurred even when it had not. Maltz argued that suggestions made to the subconscious could effect such a change and that people could therefore actively cause mental change. Maxwell Maltz and many subsequent writers have made this point in many ways over the ensuing decades, and many who have tried suggestion feel that it indeed works for them. Obviously, believing that you are 7 ‘ tall when you are 5’6″ will never make you taller, but believing you can do something that is actually within your capabilities can make you attempt it (when you never would have otherwise).

In recent years, visualization has expanded outward from the realm of the few athletes who seemed to have taught it to themselves to become an established discipline within which much work is being done. Scientists are studying the phenomenon intently. There is still a great deal more that we do not understand than we do, but ignorance is gradually giving way to insight. While it will probably be many years before we fully grasp how and to what extent the mechanisms of visualization work, we are learning more and more about how to make visualization effective. This is often the case with technology. We understand that something works well before we understand why it does.

One of the insights that we have developed regarding visualization is that visualization can clearly help an athlete learn the cognitive aspects of a sport faster than pure practice (as was indicated in Chapter 2, there is still considerable debate about whether visualization can be of value in the development of power or motor skills).

However, those who believe in the use of visualization or imagery to improve motor performance generally describe two distinct approaches to visualization. One method involves seeing yourself perform perfectly as an external observer would. For instance, you might see yourself mounting the platform, preparing to lift and then performing a perfect lift. As you gain ability in this area, you will be able to manipulate images more easily and to view the performance from every imaginable angle. This kind of visualization is used to primarily in improving confidence and motivation as well as skill. If you can see yourself performing well in your mind’s eye, you can more fully accept that you will be able to duplicate this performance in reality.

The second major technique of visualization involves imagining a performance as you will experience it. Ideally, the athlete “experiences” all aspects of the performance. He or she imagines mounting the stage, feeling the steps up to the stage, seeing the arena and hearing the crowd. Then the lifter feels the lift being performed, from the visual experience to the feel of the bar to the feel of the entire movement and the applause afterward. (Focusing on response stimulus— how you feel—as opposed to pure performance— moving in a certain way—results in a greater degree of vividness in the experience, though the link between vividness and success has not been thoroughly established.) Elite athletes appear to use this kind of mental rehearsal to improve motor performance more often than the external-observer approach. While science has been moving cautiously in its evaluation of the effectiveness of such training, many outstanding athletes award a great deal of credit in terms of performance enhancement to such visualization.

These athletes “rehearse” technique mentally. Athletes who have a sense of how they feel at various points in a given movement appear better able to utilize the mental rehearsal technique. Some athletes use visualization to create the mental experience of executing a skill in slow motion (e.g., visualizing a movement five times in slow motion and then visualizing it ten times at normal speed). This ability can be developed if the athlete concentrates on generating a broad internal focus. In so doing, the athlete can develop a series of discriminative cues (indications of effectiveness in performance). Those cues usually involve the recognition of tension in various parts of the body, the orientation of the body in space and proper tempos of movement.

Imagery control and vividness seem to relate to performance (especially in the cognitive aspects of performance). Proponents of “psychoneuromuscular” theory believe that a small number of the neurons of the muscles that are involved in a given activity are activated during the visualization of such an activity. It is interesting to note that some studies have demonstrated similar degrees of improvement in certain tasks performed with the left hand between subjects who practiced with the left hand and those who practiced only with the right hand and performed mental practice with the left hand.

In order to be effective, this mental rehearsal should only take place when an athlete is not actively engaged in the activity; mental rehearsal and actual rehearsal cannot effectively take place simultaneously, although many athletes use mental rehearsal as a readying technique and as a means of reviewing and remembering a good performance. In fact, there are many coaches and athletes who believe that a mental rehearsal immediately prior to the execution of a performance is absolutely critical to success.

The movement being mentally rehearsed should also involve a large enough segment of the activity to create a coordinated motion. In weightlifting this will generally be a full snatch or C&J (or at least a full clean or jerk) but occasionally may involve a more limited segment of the movement.

At least one successful gymnastic coach has reported great success in terms of skill development through the use of visualization. He had his athlete practice a particular vault through the lead-ups, concentrate on the trick, including tightening any muscles used during the trick in the proper sequence during slow motion visualization, and then hit a complex trick on their first try.

Rehearsal can be used to analyze technique as well as to practice it, by recalling actual past performances. An athlete can compare good and bad performances and try to identify differences in the feelings experienced during both. By so doing, he or she can develop the kind of discriminative cues referred to above. Such cues are a key to developing a sense of correct and incorrect technique. Using recall of how he or she feels during a movement can also help an athlete to learn the direction of his or her mental errors— what he or she is thinking when a problem arises (and when it does not).

Many aspects of a movement can be important, including balance, body positions, feelings and the sensations produced by the interactions between the body and the implements that are involved in the activity, and those can all be analyzed to an extent by a mental review of technique. This analysis can be conducted in sequence and in slow motion, making sure that all of the important points, whether identified verbally or through images, are called upon. After several times in slow motion, the athlete can then move into motion at the actual performance speed and repeat that several times. Before the rehearsal process, the athlete may be aided by a review of correct technique, whether via film, video, still pictures, or a list of performance points.

Before undertaking any mental rehearsal, the athlete should attempt to define carefully the reason for the rehearsal. Is it to improve skill, change his or her mental state during performance, or improve some other area of performance? Once the athlete has made this determination, he can she can focus on becoming attuned to the right cues for improving the particular aspects of performance that require correction, whether those cues involve arousal level, a certain element of technique or the need to explode harder. For example, mentally reviewing only technique while exaggerating a technical mistake can be an important tool for emphasizing the characteristics that differentiate good technique from bad or other performance determinants (although the vast majority of what an athlete rehearses should be good technique, not bad).

A number of studies on mental rehearsal have shown that actual practice and mental rehearsal appear to be more effective combined than either is alone. Perhaps this is because the combination serves to increase total practice time or because these different forms of practice activate learning in the nervous system in ways that complement one another. Some have argued that the chief benefit of mental rehearsal is that provides rest from physical practice that would have otherwise fatigued the athlete. It should be noted that actual practice with an implement but without the full context of the event (e.g., lifting an empty bar instead of a heavy weight) can be helpful. The lifter can do this in slow motion or in sequences, always moving to full motion and speed, at least by the end of the practice session (if not immediately after some slow motion efforts). Practice with eyes closed can emphasize kinesthetic sense. This can be done in one series of sets with eyes open and closed, or in alternate sets or in alternate reps. When focusing on feelings, it is useful to bring in one sense at a time until the fullest possible experience of the event is reached.

Apart from improving the performance of a skill, there is evidence that imagery may also be effective in regulating arousal. That issue will be discussed further in a later part of this chapter.

Some practitioners of medicine believe that visualization can be used to facilitate recovery from illness and injuries. The effectiveness of such visualization has yet to be established scientifically, but the issue bears further investigation. (There is no reason to believe that visualization and wishing for a cure have a direct effect on healing, but thinking about healing may help to mobilize the body’s healing capacities in some way.)

One final note on visualization is appropriate. As is the case with virtually every other training method, it is not for everyone, at least not at all times. An athlete who becomes very emotionally involved during visualization can exhaust himself or herself with excessive visualization. Similarly, the athlete who finds that visualization in the days prior to a competition leads to added nervousness may opt to avoid it, as any gain in confidence or skill that may accrue as a result of such practice will be offset by losses from a depletion of the athlete’s energy stores.

Mental Toughness: Sustaining Power

Weightlifting is full of exaltation and frustration. The weightlifter must control the latter in order to experience the former on a consistent basis. The first step in controlling frustration and developing an iron will to succeed is to differentiate between failure and a situation in which you do not succeed.

When a person strives to achieve great things, there will be many times that success will not be achieved initially. The first acrobat to do a triple somersault did not succeed in his initial attempt at this feat. In fact, he, and others before him, missed the triple many times before he succeeded. But when successful people do not succeed at a particular task, they analyze the unsuccessful effort, searching for its causes. They then plan out a corrective strategy and try again. And herein lies the difference between success and failure. The successful athlete views a miss as valuable feedback that demonstrates where he or she really is and what further steps are needed in order to achieve success. The unsuccessful athlete sees a miss as evidence that he or she has “failed.”

Failure is a state of mind that arises when the person who has attempted something pronounces a personal judgment. Were the men who tried the triple “failures” because they did not succeed, or were they pioneers who helped to add to the knowledge of the field? Part of the answer depends on the specifics of each case (i.e., whether they were making rational attempts at the jump and whether information regarding their attempts was used by others in making their attempts). But the other part of the answer lies in a person’s point of view. The person who is thinking rationally views all of those who are doing rational work in a given field as fellow contributors. The person who is thinking irrationally places an almost mystical value on the person who happened to achieve a specific result first. To be sure, the individual who is the first in some landmark area is to be applauded and revered. But such an achievement does not in any way diminish the achievements that others made along the path to that landmark.

In the case of the athlete who has suffered a loss, reasons for that loss can be discovered. The athlete may have failed to live up to his or her capabilities or may have met a superior opponent. In order to change the outcome, the athlete may need only improve his or her ability to perform at his or her best more consistently. If the opponent was superior, the person needs to take the steps necessary to improve his or her capabilities so that they exceed those of the opponent. In no event should a loss be automatically considered a “failure.”

Thomas Edison is surely one of the greatest, if not the greatest, inventors of all time. By any standard his life was a monumental success. Yet Edison would have been the first to admit that he failed many more times than he succeeded when he worked in his inventions. What separated Edison from others who might have had an equal degree of genius was his dogged persistence in his work and his confidence that there was no limit to his ability to make a given invention.

Many of the productive greats in history have shared some common attitudinal threads. One was the view that time was the only opponent that could defeat them. Archimedes said: “Give me a long enough lever and I can move the earth.” The great creators said, “give me enough time and I will find the answer to problem I am addressing.” A second important attitude was the recognition that all limits are contextual. Four hundred lb.. was a great barrier in the C&J for many years. When it was finally achieved in official competition by John Davis in 1951, few could even imagine a 500 lb. C&J. Yet, in less than twenty years the 500 lb. barrier was broken, and a number of athletes were closing in on a 400 lb. snatch. Today, a 600 lb. C&J is in view, and a 500 lb. snatch does not seem impossible. Was a 500 lb. C&J possible with the diet, training methods and techniques and mental attitudes available to athletes in the 1950s? Probably not. And just as a 300 kg. C&J may seem out of the question today, some athlete will come along who can do it, most assuredly one who thinks he can.

Creators in every field, including many great athletes, have incredible mental toughness. That toughness stems from an ability to put aside any setbacks by addressing them squarely in terms of what current actions are available to overcome the obstacle and to focus on future success. Top performers have a way of seeing problems and stressful situations as exciting challenges which invite action. (When no action is possible at present, they are mentally filed away under the heading “problems that are to be dealt with as soon as conditions permit”.)

Handling success in the proper way helps an athlete to develop mental toughness as much as handling lack of success effectively. In the case of the person who has succeeded in a given situation, he or she must identify the reason for the success. If the reason was that he or she performed up to potential, then that should serve both as positive reinforcement and a source of valuable information on how to perform at his or her best. If the victory was due mainly to the fault of an opponent, the athlete should realize that he or she will need to improve in order to achieve victory at the next competition. Alternatively, if the victory was due to a weak opponent, more challenging ones should be sought. There is nothing more ridiculous than an athlete’s concluding he or she cannot lose because he or she is undefeated, when the real reason is that he or she has never met a suitable opponent. Such bravado is just as wrongheaded as the negative self-image of an athlete who loses and then declares himself or herself to have a permanent tendency to do so. Either mistake can lead to less serious training for the next competition.

You can increase your mental toughness by developing a vision of the success you wish to achieve, making a plan for that achievement and beginning to work the plan, while understanding that the specific methods for executing the plan may have to be modified many times before success is achieved. The effort required to succeed may be great, but if the plan was realistic to begin with, it can be achieved. The mentally tough athlete is the one who never forgets that principle.

The key to mental staying power is a proper perspective. As was suggested earlier, one aspect of such a perspective is the ability to focus on the positive (e.g., “now that I have tried, I can see what is keeping me from success, and I’ll now use that information in order to improve my preparation for my next attempt). The second characteristic is to break the goal into manageable steps and to have the confidence to realize that the ultimate goal can be reached by taking each step in succession.

This last attitude is particularly important for sustaining enthusiasm when a lifter is making a comeback from an injury or illness or when the distance up is very long. For example, near the beginning of my career, after a couple of years of fairly hard training, I can remember becoming a little disappointed that I could lift only about half as much as the world record holders of the day. The world record, which I had a deep desire to break some day, seemed so very far away. Then I realized that each athlete who has achieved great heights has traveled the same path, and in blazing that path has made it easier for others to follow. The trick in traveling such a path is to conscientiously put one foot in front of the other and then to proceed step by step, both enjoying the journey and pausing to reflect on how far you have come. In the same way, when a person is making a comeback, there is a tendency to focus on how far he or she has fallen, to emphasize the distance that must be traveled again. However, the winning attitude is to realize that familiarity is likely to make the trip faster and surer the second time. Moreover, in taking the trip again, there is always the opportunity to savor the high points once again, to avoid the bad spots and to correct any errors that were made the first time out.

The mentally average athlete who confronts an unexpected and/or seemingly overwhelming obstacle says: “How am I ever to succeed in view of this setback? It’s hopeless.” In contrast, the champion says: “What a wonderful achievement it will be when I succeed despite this obstacle or setback.” The average athlete sees the setback as an impassable obstacle and himself or herself as controlled by it. The champion sees the setback as a natural and ultimately unimportant event in his or her inexorable rise to success.

In the short term, as in a competition or workout, it must be remembered that performance is related to how you feel (e.g., if you feel well, you are likely to perform well). Therefore, part of being mentally tough is developing the ability to create positive feelings regardless of circumstances. You must learn to say “stop” to negative thoughts, and to substitute positive affirmations and behaviors over and over. Alternatively, you can act determined and, in so doing, become more determined. Finally, you must also learn to focus on performance (i.e., that which is under your control) rather than pure outcome (e.g., placement in a competition on a given day, which may or may not be under your control).

Naturally, there is a physical side to mental toughness. Vince Lombardi’s adage that “fatigue makes cowards of us all” is eminently true. The athlete must be in condition for the event. However, because of the limited number of attempts required of weightlifters in competition, physical fatigue is rarely a problem for the weightlifter who trains regularly . Occasionally, when a competition has many athletes at the same level, there may be such a long wait between attempts that an athlete’s warm-ups can actually become fatiguing, but this is a relatively rare situation in major competitions. The primary means of avoiding fatigue during a competition is to avoid burning unnecessary nervous energy (a subject that will be covered in greater detail later in this chapter). When fatigue does develop, some athletes are comforted by the notion that their competitors are at least as tired as they are.

Still another strategy for improving mental toughness is to intentionally expose yourself to adverse conditions (in competition or training) and to overcome them. Each time you succeed in such a process, you build confidence and determination. An example of this kind of mental toughness training is to practice with distractions. Practicing in the presence of external distractions can teach you to ignore them and to calm any inner mental distractions that result from them.

Irrespective of the particular adversity that you overcome, the fact that you overcame it will be of great value to you. When the going gets tough, you can focus on how you have overcome adversity before and be inspired to rise to the occasion once again.

Plumbing Your Inner Resources

The legends of competition are replete with stories of athletes who “reached down” or “dug deep” to their innermost reserves of mental and emotional energy to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. There is a great deal of truth to many of these stories, because there is often a narrow margin between the abilities of athletes who are at a high level, and extra effort can make the difference in an outcome. Therefore, even a small lapse in concentration or effort on the part of one competitor can cause one athlete to effectively cede victory to the other. Alternatively, a little bit of extra effort at a crucial moment can lead to victory over an opponent who is of fundamentally equal ability.

In certain respects, these issues arise less frequently in weightlifting than in many other sports, primarily because of the relatively closed nature of weightlifting competition (i.e., three attempts for each competitor in each of two lifts). Physical (or at least muscular) fatigue is therefore rarely an issue in weightlifting competition, and the need to mobilize resources to overcome fatigue is minimal. However, this does not mean that there is any less need to call upon other resources in a very profound way.

While a weightlifter’s muscular energy will rarely be exhausted by competition, there is still fatigue to overcome. Nervous energy can be depleted by the rigors of the competition and a special effort may be needed to overcome this. In addition, inhibitions and fears must often be pushed back in order for the lifter to perform a lift that is a new personal record or requires an extraordinary effort in terms of the lifter’s capabilities on that day. Finally, what weightlifting does require is a terrific intensity of effort, one that requires the full application of mental, emotional and physical capabilities. Therefore, there is often a critical need for the lifter to have the ability to dig deeply into his or her reserve.

In the short term, whether in the gym or in competition, there is often a moment where a competition is lost or the productivity of a workout lessened, when the lifter gives up with a thought that amounts to “I’ve lost the day so why continue?” or “this is just a “bad” workout, so I might as well just cruise, or even stop.” Often, these thoughts are premature or, at a minimum, lead to a lesser degree of success than might have otherwise been achieved, merely because the ability to dig deeply into your resources and to overcome the short term thinking of a negative focus leads to a diminution in performance. It has often been said in coaching circles that the athlete who will not be beaten cannot be beaten. This is true on two important levels. First, as has been suggested, many competitions are lost by those who could have won, simply because that athlete lost his or her will or focus while an athlete of lesser absolute ability did not. Second, to the extent that an athlete will turn in the very best possible performance on a given day by “refusing to be beaten,” that athlete will go away knowing that, regardless of the official score, he or she had a winning day.

Inner resources are also called upon in generating the resiliency to recover from adversity, the ability to pick up the pieces and move forward again when disappointment strikes. As was suggested in the previous section of this chapter, this challenge can arise on a short term basis, such as when an athlete is performing below his or her capabilities and/or expectations at a particular point in a competition. In such a case there is the temptation to “throw in the towel,” to say, “I can’t win, so why continue to put myself under pressure?”

The challenge to call upon inner resources can also be much more long lived when an athlete faces a serious illness or injury, when financial or personal problems divert his or her energy or when a loved one is suffering or has passed away. There may be a temptation to give it all up, to be overcome with that sense that you just cannot continue. Yet, as difficult as they are, these are all challenges that can and have been overcome. But they can be overcome only through the greatest imaginable commitment to the idea that the struggle must continue and that the greater the loss or the challenge, the greater its hidden affirmation of the importance and grandeur of a life lived for achievement. If a life is not lived in accordance with and in pursuit of important personal values, the momentary sense of loss at not achieving or sustaining these values will not be so strong. But values are worth living for; indeed, they are the only thing worth living for. Therefore, no matter what the setbacks, a life realigned toward achieving what is possible will soon begin to move toward achieving all the values that are possible to it. Learned helplessness is your only real barrier to long term self-control.

The Pain Barrier

We have all heard the expression “no pain, no gain.” There is certainly some truth to it. Without mental and physical effort, improvement cannot occur. There is a certain pain threshold that we all must reach and exceed if progress is to occur. However, a distinction needs to be made between pain that is a symptom of damage and “pain” that stems from the discomfort of pushing yourself to new heights.

Pain is the body’s basic means of telling the mind that the body is in danger. Whether the pain is a direct result of an external stimulus (e.g., intense heat) or represents a symptom (e.g., inflammation from damage to some tissue of the body), it is the body’s signal that there is some direct threat to its well being that is not to be ignored. On the other hand, strenuous activity (e.g., training) will generate a reaction from the body that is designed to protect the body’s state of equilibrium. The body will produce signals of distress (e.g., increased respiration and heart rates) to warn the athlete that the body’s equilibrium has been disturbed. The successful athlete must be able to discriminate between the pain that signals injury and the discomfort that signifies effort. He or she must be attentive to the former and heed its warnings. He or she must learn to characterize the latter as a state of stimulation and learn to seek those feelings because they are an indicator of the generation of a training effect.

Chapter 11 deals with the subject of injury. Injury aside, the dedicated athlete welcomes the signs of discomfort which are associated with the training effect because they are the sign that the training regimen being followed is strenuous enough. Without this kind of pain on appropriate occasions, there will be no gain.

The Fear Factor and the Most Common Fear: Fear of Failure

Fear is an emotion experienced by all higher animals including humans. In normal life and at normal levels, it serves a valuable, life protecting function. Fear reflects a person’s automatic evaluation of a certain situation as a threat to his or her values. However, as with all emotions, fear cannot be relied upon as an indicator of actual danger. It is for the conscious mind to determine whether a given fear is truly justified. If so, the signal presented by fear should be heeded; if not, it can be circumvented.

Some people have an irrational fear of using their bodies, and this fear lessens the enjoyment that they could otherwise gain from athletics and other physical activities. In contrast, other people impulsively or obsessively misuse their bodies, ignoring signals the body gives and all reasonable safety precautions that should be taken while engaging in any activity. The correct balance is demonstrated by a third group of people who use their bodies without fear or abandon, enjoying the possibilities that are before them; this is the healthy model for most people, including weightlifters.

Some people have a fear of exerting themselves. Others may fear a certain competitor. Still others may fear making a certain movement or lifting a certain weight. In general terms, we fear the unknown, loss of identity, change and suffering.

In the properly trained and prepared athlete, most athletic fears are unfounded. Exertion per se poses no threat to an athlete’s well being (assuming the athlete is not in ill health). Competitors cannot hurt you (at least not in weightlifting competition). An athlete who performs a particular lift skillfully is not apt to be hurt, and if the weight being tried is within the athlete’s current capabilities, there is little to be feared from the weight. It is true that accidents can happen, but they are accidents (i.e., the unusual). And the vast majority of accidents, rare as they are, can be prevented by proper safety precautions (e.g., proper equipment and training methods, good technique and full concentration). Through proper mental and physical training, the barriers of irrational fear are progressively pushed back to the point where they are virtually non-existent and are not a major factor in performance. When you know what you are doing and have confidence in your abilities, fear comes under control.

Perhaps the most pervasive fear that athletes face is fear of failure (with its associated fears of embarrassment and loss of self-esteem). This is a very irrational fear because, as strange as it may sound, failure is generally good. It helps you to know your capabilities. Without it, it would be hard to know what your current limits truly were. Without it, you are unsure as to whether you are pushing yourself towards true limits. Failure can help you to know your weaknesses and to set about overcoming them. It is one of the most important feedback mechanisms that we have. Naturally, you should never intentionally fail, but failure per se is not to be feared or avoided; rather, success, in its full measure, should always be actively sought.

Irrational fear of failure keeps us from attempting something that is at our limits. It therefore inhibits progress. What is more, fear of failure can become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The fear itself may keep you from performing at your best, causing you to fear to attempt more, which further fuels your fear. You must learn to focus on performance more than outcome, to learn to love the battle and the effort. In doing so, fear of the outcome will fade away as you become fully immersed in and dedicated to making an all out effort.

Another technique for handling fear is to create a mental image of the fear or its cause and then to find a way to mentally dispose of it (smash it, throw it in the garbage, blow it up, etc.). For example, you might envision fear as a certain facial expression and then visualize that image changing to a positive one or running away from you out of a fear that it can no longer influence you.

On the positive side, fear can actually help to motivate the athlete toward high performance, as long as it is not permitted to get out of control. Former undefeated heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano reportedly feared losing so much (after experiencing defeat once as a amateur) that he was able to train religiously and fight courageously. Perhaps this was not the most pleasant way to live, but it surely kept Marciano in a state of fighting readiness.

Developing Mental Control

The Importance of Concentration

Concentration is the ability to focus full attention on a given task, to the exclusion of everything else (at least on a conscious level). The ability to concentrate is a key characteristic of an accomplished weightlifter for a number of reasons.

First, concentration helps the athlete to apply motor skills more effectively and consistently. Second, it improves strength and power performance significantly. Third, concentration can reduce fears and inhibitions, permitting the lifter to move under weights aggressively (i.e., without hesitation).

There is an important aspect of the application of concentration to the reduction of fears and inhibitions that I did not really appreciate fully until I had been both a coach and a high level lifter for many years. I was working with a national level athlete who had reached a sticking point in his lifting. One day, while we were analyzing his situation, he reported that in recent months all of the weights he was lifting felt heavy. Thinking that the cause was physical (i.e., fatigue), I reduced both the volume and intensity of his training. This seemed to have little effect. We tried several other kinds of physical interventions with an equal lack of success. In thinking about the problem one day, I began to introspect about the nature of the sensation of heaviness. It was after some thought that I realized the nature of this lifter’s problem. It was not physical, not the result of a heightened sensitivity to the sensation of heaviness. Rather, this lifter’s problem was a failure to focus on applying maximum effort to the bar. Since the mind can only truly focus on one thing at a time, when a lifter is focusing or an explosive effort, the conscious perception of the weight of the bar is diminished. The lifter who says that the bar feels heavy (barring a physical cause such as fatigue or overloading the bar) is really saying that he or she is not concentrating on applying sufficient force to the bar to effectively block out or reduce the sensation of the bar’s weight. Correcting his mental fault was no easy process for this lifter, but once he understood the problem, he was able to work on refocusing his mind, and the problem did eventually disappear (or at least that is what he reported).

Still another benefit of concentration pertains to the psychic pleasure that can arise out of the act of extraordinary concentration on virtually anything. A certain feeling of calm and mind/body is experienced as a result of an act of concentration. Some people derive it from meditation, others from concentrating on mental work, and athletes experience it from a total focus on their activity. In my view, the athletic experience is the most profound of these experiences, perhaps because of the combination of mental and physical activity (the latter of which can have physiological effects, such as the release of endorphins, substances which have a calming and pain relieving effect on the body).

One final dimension of concentration needs to be discussed before we move on to a discussion of how you can develop concentration. That dimension is one of sustained concentration, even when you are doing something else. What I mean by this is a form of concentration that causes you never to lose sight of your primary objective. In order to succeed, you must be able to concentrate on other things and at the same time occasionally to question whether your efforts are appropriate to the overall purpose of what you are doing. This sustained level of staying in focus (really the single mindedness of purpose referred to in an earlier section of this chapter) must be carefully cultivated if an athlete is to reach his or her full potential.

There are a number of exercises and procedures that an athlete can perform in order to improve his or her concentration. They come from many disciplines. Yoga, for example, has many exercises which can improve concentration. One such exercise consists of sitting at one end of a darkened and quiet room and achieving a relaxed state (relaxation techniques are discussed in a later part of this chapter). The subject then stares at a lighted candle that has been placed at the other end of the room for a period of ten or twenty seconds, until the image of the candle’s flame has been fully fixed in the subject’s mind. (It is a good idea to shade the flame or wear sunglasses while doing this exercise to assure that the brightness of the flame does not harm the eyes). Then the subject closes his or her eyes and tries to see the image of the candle (which is automatically retained for a time) and to preserve that image as long and as sharply as possible. With time, the ability to retain the image and to exclude other thoughts will improve, as will the overall ability to concentrate at will.

Variations of this technique consist of using another prop, such as a ball or bar. The object is to examine it in detail, to look at it, to feel it and even to talk about it. Then one can think about how the object is actually used in the sport. The purpose of the exercise is to develop the ability to focus selectively, deeply and at will.

Another kind of concentration exercise consists of maintaining focus in the face of distractions. The subject first cultivates the ability to concentrate on something in a favorable atmosphere (such as the candle exercise described above) and then attempts to perform a similar exercise where there are more distractions (e.g., the noise of a radio or under rapidly changing conditions of light). This exercise may be even more helpful if it is done under actual training conditions (i.e., the lifter concentrates on his or her lifts even with distractions in the gym). A lifter who learns to concentrate under such conditions will be truly hard to rattle under meet conditions. Moreover, the confidence that such an athlete will develop regarding his or her abilities to concentrate under all conditions will pay dividends beyond those of mere concentration itself, as the athlete will feel in control at all times.

Still another powerful technique for gaining control of concentration is to learn to use any distraction or negative thought as an impetus to turn attention in another direction. For example, suppose an athlete has a habit of occasionally letting his or her mind drift to a fear of making a certain technical mistake. The athlete should then cultivate the habit of immediately turning his or her attention to a more positive thought or image (such as that of seeing the lift performed without such a mistake) and to making that new image stronger and more clear. The athlete should in effect couple the two items by association, so that the negative thought almost automatically leads to a focus on the positive one. If this practice is diligently cultivated, the lifter should have no difficulty eliminating the negative thought altogether or, at a minimum, eliminating its negative effects.

The result of mastering concentration is that the athlete learns to isolate himself or herself from virtually all stimuli other than the task at hand. Some athletes have described this as being enveloped in a “cocoon” that protected them from the distractions of the outside and inside worlds to leave them “alone” with the task to be performed.

Controlling the Direction of Attention

While concentration is the ability to focus attention, there is an entirely different aspect of attention control that needs to be addressed by the athlete. That aspect is the direction of attention. The direction of attention has two fundamental dimensions: a) the width of attention; and b) whether that attention is focused internally or externally.

Width of attention refers to how much the athlete is trying to take in. Attention can be narrow or broad. An example of a narrow attentional focus would be thinking about the feeling of the bar on the shoulders while preparing for the jerk. A wide focus would be observing the entire audience as you wave after a good lift. There are those who argue attention cannot be narrow or broad (i.e., that the mind has only one fundamental kind of attentional capability). Instead, they say, it is the size of the “unit” being focused on that varies (e.g., the field or the ball). However, regardless of its cause, attentional width does vary, and the existence of this phenomenon has important implications for athletes and coaches.

With respect to the internal/external direction of attention, an internal focus refers to instances in which a person focuses on himself or herself rather than the external world. An example of an internal focus would be an athlete’s monitoring his or her sense of fatigue. An external focus would consist of observing the texture of the bar’s surface.

In certain sports a broad external focus is beneficial. The quarterback in football needs this kind of focus when sizing up the flow of players on the field to determine to which receiver to throw a pass, or whether to throw a pass at all. Later on in the play, after the decision has been made to pass to a specific receiver, the quarterback requires a narrow external focus in order to deliver the ball to the receiver and to ignore the “footsteps” of the defensive lineman who is about to bring the quarterback to the ground (at least until the pass has been released).

In contrast, the weightlifter requires a more narrow form of attention throughout a lift. His or her attention may shift from an internal focus when the athlete is concerned with controlling his or her arousal. Then the focus (external) will be on lifting the bar. The ability to shift attention as required and to engage the appropriate width of attention is critical to athletic success. In order to develop this ability, the athlete must first learn the appropriate direction of attention and then learn how to control it so that the proper direction is attained. Only then can the powers of concentration take over to maximize the benefits of properly directed attention.

Attention control is a learned ability rather than a simple act of pure will. It requires practice. Many athletes are able to control the direction of their attention at will when they are relaxed, but stress and the anxiety it produces can seriously undermine the ability of most athletes to control their attention appropriately. This can result in the athlete’s either being distracted from what should be the object of his or her attention or becoming so focused on one small aspect of reality that they miss the larger picture. Other athletes may actually be aided by anxiety, finding it difficult or impossible to narrow their focus sufficiently to the task at hand unless they are anxious. For the athlete who lacks the ability to narrow his or her focus, meditation (which is discussed later in this chapter) and mental rehearsal can help to improve ability in this area. For athletes who need to widen their focus, progressive relaxation, hypnosis and biofeedback (both of which are discussed later in this chapter) can be of help in attaining a state that is more relaxed and therefore more receptive to information. Mental rehearsal that involves shifting a narrow focus among many things can be used to simulate a broader overall focus, but ultimately the athlete must develop the ability to “see” the big picture.

Athletes who are too internally focused need to learn to attend to external cues lest they develop a level of ignorance with respect to the external world. In contrast, those with an external focus are more susceptible to “psych-out” techniques and distractions than are those who normally focus more internally.

As was noted above, the weightlifter’s focus needs to be relatively narrow. However, it is possible for the focus to become too narrow. For instance, the lifter can be so focused on an explosive pull that he or she “forgets” to move under the bar rapidly or to push up on the bar during the squat under. Therefore, the athlete needs to be able to focus relatively narrowly and to shift his or her focus appropriately as the lift progresses. The lifter must also be able to shift rapidly from an internal to an external focus, so that both the bar and the body itself are experienced. Ideally, the athlete will be able to experience the bar and body as one unit, with the bar being seen as an extension of the body, at least at certain points during the lift.

The width and direction of focus can be affected by the lifter’s level of arousal and the instructions he or she receives. As arousal levels increase, attention tends to narrow. Therefore, a pep talk can narrow attention if it is stimulating. If the talk is so stimulating that attention is too narrowly focused on the right thing, it may not improve performance. Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi used his pep talks as a vehicle to narrow the attention of his players to two areas: believing in themselves and playing the game all out. Brilliant coach that he was, Lombardi did not seek arousal solely for its own sake; he looked for an appropriate focus as well.

Sport psychologist Robert Nideffer, one of the leading thinkers in attentional behavior and training today, has drawn broad applications for attentional control in everyday life as well as sports. For instance, Nideffer argues that by choosing what you attend to you can control anxiety and emotions and learn to relax. His focus is not on what causes a person to attend to the wrong things but, rather, the ability of humans to choose what to focus on and thereby control their emotions.

Controlling Emotions and Level of Arousal

The hallmark of the champion athlete, or anyone who must perform at a specific time, is the ability to control emotions. In this context control means creating the required emotional state whenever it is needed. Emotions can be a powerful energy source for peak performance, or they can inhibit, or even destroy, a potentially outstanding performance. The prerequisite for achieving an outstanding performance is to generate the appropriate emotion at the appropriate level of optimal performance.

For example, in many circumstances most lifters find that the positive emotions inspired by a desire to achieve a heavy lift are all they need to become highly motivated and emotionally charged enough to make that lift. But sometimes an added lift from emotional energy will be needed. For some lifters this added lift can be elicited by imagining the cheers and congratulations of the audience as they succeed. For others, motivation will come from an overwhelming desire to avoid the embarrassment of a loss. The important point is not what is needed to achieve the appropriate emotional state but, rather, that it is achieved.

The champion learns to control his or her emotions at will and to select the appropriate emotion for the job to be done. This ability arises out of the athlete’s experience with various emotions and their effect on him or her, as well as an understanding of what triggers those emotions. For instance, the emotion of revenge can be a powerful motivator for an athlete if the notion of revenge arouses a powerful emotional state in that athlete. However, creating a desire for revenge only works if it does not evoke too extreme a response, if the desire for revenge can be satisfied by defeating an opponent on the platform and if the opponent actually acts in a way that elicits the desire for revenge (or the athlete can imagine such behavior to the point where the emotion is triggered).

Sometimes something spontaneous happens to activate the necessary emotion. I can recall lifting at the National Junior Championships for the second time in my career. I had placed third the first year and was favored to win in my second appearance. Things were not going well for a variety of reasons (most of which were exacerbated by my lack of skill and experience). My first two attempts in the snatch with a lighter weight than I had initially planned for my start had been missed for technical reasons. I was so dejected as I prepared for my third attempt that I might well have missed it. As I was contemplating my disappointment, I happened to glance over to the side of the platform and noticed that most of my competitors were looking on, including one who had delivered a minor insult to me earlier in the day. It then occurred to me that missing would cause this lifter, and some of the others, to rejoice at my faltering. I did not normally think of my competitors very much, but the thought of this angered me, causing me to come out of my depressed state. The result was a near power snatch on my third attempt and an easy victory after that.

When emotional states are not triggered by such fortuitous events, the lifter needs to be able to create his or her own emotional state by imagining the necessary triggering event. Joe Puleo, many time U.S. National Champion and American record holder and one of the top ranked lifters in the world at one time, told me about a technique that he used on occasion. In the earlier part of Joe’s career, he found it very helpful to be mad at his competitors. He would sometimes go so far as to provoke his competitors to say or do something that he disliked simply to have a reason to be mad at his opponent. (I hasten to add that Joe is really a very nice fellow who did this all in the spirit of fun and good competition.) When Joe was competing against Mike Karchut, the first man to beat Joe in many years, he found it hard to get mad at Mike. Anyone who knows Mike can understand this, because in addition to being one of America’s all time great lifters, Mike is one of the nicest guys ever to mount a platform. No matter how he tried, Joe couldn’t get mad at Mike, so he turned his attention to Mike’s close friend and competition coach of many years, Lou DeMarco. While Louie is a close competitor to Mike for the title of weightlifting’s nicest guy, Joe found that he could at least generate a mock anger toward Louie by imagining that Lou was saying negative things about Joe in an attempt to inspire Mike. Such thoughts were sufficient to get Joe’s competitive juices flowing and helped him to perform at his best (even though it was only a mental game that Joe was playing with himself, one that never interfered with his friendly relationship with Lou and Mike outside of those few moments in competition).

Each athlete must learn not only what works for him or her but also under what precise conditions it works. For example, if an athlete is in a lethargic state, a minor level of fear might cause the athlete to increase his or her level of arousal to the point of performance enhancement. In contrast, an athlete who already dislikes an opponent and is prone to physical displays of his or her displeasure may get into a fight with another athlete if a high level of anger is induced.

The arousal level that a lifter achieves during a competition is the strength of the emotional energy that the athlete experiences. This is, to an extent, controlled by the nature of the emotion that is being experienced; some lifters will experience fear of failure as a weak or virtually nonexistent emotion, and others will find it to be so powerful as to have a very powerful effect on performance. But most athletes will experience the same emotions at different levels on different occasions.

Most athletes will feel a certain baseline level of arousal throughout most of a competition (although there will often be a difference between the pre-start, post-start and pre-lift levels of arousal), and that level will generally be too high or too low for purposes of optimal performance (although some athletes have a typical level that is just right).

To a point, performance depends on arousal level. The most widely accepted theory of the relationship between performance and arousal is the “inverted U” hypothesis. This theory says that performance improves rapidly with arousal level until it heats a peak zone (the top of the inverted U), then falls off rapidly as arousal continues to rise. A number of criticisms have been made of the theory (e.g., that anxiety is multidimensional and that somatic and cognitive anxiety has different effects on performance), but most athletes and scientists would agree that performance generally increases with ones arousal level, to a point. However, too high a level of arousal, or the wrong kind, can ruin concentration, technique and other aspects of performance (the more skillful the athlete, the less likely it is that high levels of arousal will disturb his or her performance). Similarly, too low a level of arousal can lessen an athlete’s energy and desire for success. Even athletes who have achieved similar skill levels will manifest individual differences with respect to their ability to tolerate a given arousal level without a breakdown in technique. Some lifters will be able to maintain their skill while relatively excited and others will find that only a moderate level of arousal will lead to a performance breakdown. We simply do not understand enough about human arousal and its interaction with skill to provide definitive advice in this area, except to say that the athlete needs to monitor his or her own balance of arousal and skill to maintain that arousal at the proper level.

It should be noted that the arousal level employed by the lifter will tend to vary between training in competition and in competition between warm-ups and official attempts. For example, while warming up for the competition, the lifter will likely want to conserve energy for the actual competition, with arousal being only gradually elevated as the warming up progresses. Indeed, even during the lifter’s first attempt (particularly in the snatch), arousal may be quite controlled in order to save energy and to execute as precise a movement as is possible. In contrast, the last lift in competition may be attempted with the highest level of arousal that is possible without causing a technique breakdown. This is because: a) that lift often demands all of the athlete’s reserves; b) there is nothing critical to save energy for (particularly after the last C&J); c) the lifter will typically be relaxing for a time after the competition to rebuild his or her energy reserves; and d) there is generally no more important lift than one that is done in competition.

Lifters typically follow a similar pattern in training, so that their nervous energy is not necessarily expanded. However, in training, it is important to control arousal more carefully. Training in a highly aroused state with great frequency can lead very quickly to burnout and to undue training stress overall. If the athlete is to perform at an optimal level, he or she must learn to control his or her state of arousal at will. This can be accomplished by having mechanisms for calming down as well as getting more excited. Focused deep breathing, muscular relaxation techniques, meditation, listening to certain music or inspirational tapes, self-hypnosis and similar methods can serve to bring the lifter’s level of arousal to the appropriate level. The lifter needs to become skillful enough in using such techniques that he or she can raise or lower his or her arousal level on command.

Regardless of the specific technique used by an athlete to bring his or her emotional state under control, it is far easier to do so before that emotional state has moved very far away from the desired level. It requires far less effort to bring an arousal level under control when it is only a little above the desired level than when it is dramatically above that level; the longer an unnecessarily high level of arousal is maintained, the greater the amount of unnecessary energy that is burned.

Athletes vary in their reactivity to circumstances within the competition, in the degree of control that they can generate and in the typical range and nature of their emotions during competition. Most lifters will find that they are either characteristically too highly aroused or too relaxed to perform at an optimal level (being too highly aroused is the more common problem). Therefore, they will generally need to regulate their emotional arousal either upward or downward. But an ability to do both can be critical, regardless of what a lifter’s normal challenge is. My performance at the 1970 Junior Nationals was a case in point.

In 1970 I was nearing the end of my eligibility as a Junior and was finally in shape to accomplish what had been the biggest sub-goal of my lifting career for the previous four years: to establish Junior world records. I was lifting in the Junior Nationals (later renamed the American Championships). As I mounted the platform for my first attempt at a press (there were three lifts in those days, and the press preceded the snatch and the C&J), there was a great deal of pressure on me. My press was the heaviest starting weight in the competition, and it was approximately 7.5 kg. more than I had ever successfully attempted in competition (though I had made considerably more in training immediately before the competition). Only a handful in the audience thought I had any chance at success with that weight, but I knew that if I made it, my next attempt would be approximately 7.5 kg. more, enough to break the existing Junior World Record.

As I approached the bar, my arms suddenly began to tingle and the rest of my body seemed to go numb. As I prepared to grip the bar, these sensations worsened. It occurred to me that I was actually too aroused to make a successful attempt, a rare occurrence for me. At that moment, I paused, stepped away from the bar and breathed deeply, making a conscious attempt to relax. Then, after ten seconds or so, my level of arousal receded somewhat (though it was still quite high, as it always was in competition). I approached the bar once again, feeling more like my competitive self and made a successful attempt. And, several minutes later, I was successful with a new Junior World Record. Shortly after that, I faced a mental challenge of a different kind.

In those days the rules required that both the athlete and bar be weighed immediately after a world record (the athlete to assure that he was within the body weight limits of the class at the time the record was broken, and the bar to ascertain the exact weight of the bar fully loaded). The rules also required that the athlete be nude when weighing in. Even though I had another attempt in the competition, I had to wait for the bar to be weighed and subject myself to a stripped re-weigh as well. There were many people congratulating me while all of this was going on, and the temptation to relax and celebrate was enormous. Rather than fall victim to that temptation, I focused on my next attempt with 5 kg. more and worked to elevate my emotional state by thinking about what an achievement it would be to break my own record by a full 5 kg. and how important it was to lift as much in each lift as possible in order to pursue my ultimate goal of breaking the total record that day. These thoughts got me excited again.

There were those who reasoned that no additional attempts should be taken because I was still in close competition for the championship and still others who suggested a 2.5 kg. jump to increase my chances at a successful third attempt. My view was that my record had been lifted relatively comfortably and that if I missed my next attempt it would not be because of 2.5 kg. one way or the other but because of a technical error (which was just as likely with either weight). In addition, I was thinking about the record I wanted most that day—a Junior world record in the total—and I felt that an additional 5 kg. in the press would be a key to that. Therefore, I insisted on taking my third attempt and on taking it with the extra 5 kg, and I was successful with that weight. Moreover, I did go on to establish a new Junior world record in the total that day, partly due to my record spree in the press.

The point of the story is that if my mental approach had been different on the opening attempt or the third attempt, the greatest day of my weightlifting career would certainly never have turned out the way it did. Instead of three world records and a championship, I might have simply had a good day or failed to register a total at all. Here then is a real world example of the difference that being in control of your emotional and arousal states can make.

Anxiety Control

Anxiety generally serves to worsen athletic performance by compromising the athlete’s ability to control his or her attention properly (although, as noted earlier, athletes who benefit from a narrowing of attention can actually benefit from the effects of anxiety, at least in this respect). Too much worry and anxiety can increase self-awareness to a point where it negatively affects skills. Anxiety can also affect arousal, and that can have an effect on performance.

Athletes experience two levels of anxiety, their “trait” or baseline level and their “state” anxiety. Your baseline level of anxiety is what is with you most of the time, when there is no external stimulus to either raise or lower it. For example, some people are characterized as high strung and others as reserved. Trait anxiety is obviously a complex phenomenon, and its causes are not well understood, but it has been posited that people with characteristically high levels of baseline anxiety simply see more things as a threat than do people with lower baseline anxiety levels (and worry over worry is believed by many to be the single biggest cause of escalating anxiety). While a person’s trait anxiety can change over time, such changes are not commonplace.

Some research suggests that high strung athletes (those with a high baseline anxiety level) tend to do better than those with a lower baseline level of anxiety in non-threatening situations, because anxiety seems to provide action energy for high strung athletes. The same research suggests that the reverse tends to be true in stressful situations. Highly anxious people appear more likely to become overly stressed and to react negatively to such situations. Obviously, these are merely tendencies, not absolute outcomes.

State anxiety has to do with the change in anxiety experienced as a result of being in a certain situation or thinking about a certain thing. (Anxiety in athletic competition seems to be experienced most profoundly by those who seek prestige through competition.) Both the degree and the nature of the changes that take place when anxiety levels are changed vary from person to person. Some people can move from a very relaxed state to a highly anxious one, others are at a fairly high or low baseline level of anxiety and suffer only a small change in that level under certain stressful conditions. In addition to individual differences in the level of response, different people experience different bodily reactions to anxiety. (For example, one person may experience significant tension in the neck muscles and another will have a greatly elevated heart rate, while still another will have both symptoms.)

One final major difference between people in terms of the way they experience anxiety is in their ability to sense changes in their anxiety level and its symptoms. Some people are very sensitive to any change while others can undergo major changes and barely notice it at all.

It has been argued by some sports psychologists that athletes who “choke” tend to be those with high trait and state anxiety and that a narrow and negative internal focus is usually present at the time of choking. Others argue that only cognitive anxiety at a very high level poses a threat to performance (such anxiety is characterized by worrying thoughts, a high level of self-awareness, an inability to concentrate and a high level of negative thoughts). Physical anxiety, which is characterized by such symptoms as cold hands, hyperventilation, butterflies and nausea, rarely has an ill effect on performance (though they are surely unpleasant phenomena).

In cases of high cognitive anxiety, it is possible that a strong external stimulus applied to the athlete will break his or her focus on internal negative thoughts and thereby bring the choking to a halt. A less radical approach is for the athlete to learn to think of other things when such a state arises. The sooner the athlete begins this process of diverting his or her attention away from the anxiety producing thoughts, the better.

Physical anxiety responds to a wide array of techniques, such as massage, yoga, biofeedback and sleep. Athletes who are prone to developing physical anxiety should experiment with these and other means of dealing with the problem in order to identify the methods that work best for them

Many psychological approaches to controlling trait anxiety focus on understanding its causes. This may make sense over the long run, but correcting such causes, assuming that they can be identified and corrected, can be an extremely long process. Moreover, the condition can actually worsen as this lengthy discovery takes place. A more practical approach for most athletes is to learn to redirect attention from worries and fears and toward a relaxed state and perfect performance.

In order to reduce anxiety, athletes use a number of techniques. They range from hypnosis to positive affirmations to relaxation and meditation; the aim is to enable the athlete to focus so fully on external things that he or she no longer worries about winning or losing.

One of the more direct techniques of dealing with performance anxiety, one that has been successful for many athletes, is systematic desensitization. Desensitization involves an athlete’s creating an anxiety hierarchy. This is a series of situations which creates ever increasing levels of anxiety. For example, the athlete might say that entering the competition arena itself generates a low level of additional anxiety beyond his or her trait or normal level (this lowest level of additional anxiety is characterized by a 1). Getting ready to attempt a winning lift after being insulted by an opponent might produce the highest level of anxiety imaginable by the athlete (so it would be assigned a 10). The subject is taught a relaxation technique to enable that subject to control anxiety or tension. After some weeks of practice in this area, the desensitization process begins. First, the athlete is asked to relax and then describe, on a scale of 1 to 10, his or her current level of tension. The purpose of this procedure is to establish a baseline level of tension for that session. Then the athlete is asked to imagine the situation that raises his or her tension only slightly (to the lowest of the elevated levels that was originally described by the athlete). The athlete is then asked to signify the level to which his or her tension has been raised by imagining this minor tension raising situation. If the athlete’s tension has been elevated by imagining that situation, the athlete works at the relaxation technique that he or she has learned until the tension level is reduced to the baseline level for that day.

The development of the ability to control tension, even in this mildly tension producing situation, may take more than one practice session. Once the technique has been mastered, the athlete progresses to imagining the situation which produces the next higher level of tension and works on achieving baseline tension while imagining that activity. Eventually the athlete will progress to the point of achieving baseline level tension while imagining even the most stress producing situation on his or her list. That ability should enable the athlete to carry over the skill of achieving a relaxed state when the actual situation presents itself. Some researchers have suggested that mentally rehearsing in the relaxed state before going on to a higher anxiety  provoking incident can be helpful in associating the ability to perform effectively after confronting the anxiety producing event and relaxing successfully. It is not uncommon for an athlete to require eight to sixteen sessions to reach a successful result with this method.

It is a wise practice for the athlete who is dealing with worries and anxiety to select a specific and consistent time and place in which to deal with negative thoughts. This time and place is used to deal with worry as a means to resolve problems. The idea is to worry intensely and then to stop after a specific time. The athlete resolve not to worry elsewhere and keeps a list of what to worry about so that there is no need to worry about failing to worry about the right things. The athlete uses the session to learn how and why he or she worries, reflects on whether there is a level of worrying that brings about the right state of arousal and learns how to control worrying so that he or she only worries to that level. (A person who cannot control worrying cannot use this readying technique). After the worrying session something must be done to take the athlete’s mind off worrying. With some practice, many athletes will find that this approach will bring the problem under control.

A simpler approach to controlling anxiety is to have the athlete make every effort to focus on the process he or she will be performing rather than the objective and to avoid any thoughts about what he or she should not do. (For example, the athlete should never be thinking, “I’d better not get this weight too far in front”; a much better approach is to say, “I need to be sure that the bar is close to the body and that I explode upward during the pull.”)

A coach can be a great help or a great hindrance to an athlete trying to manage or avoid anxiety. A coach who identifies poise as a value to be admired and developed early on can help an athlete immensely; inculcating in the young athlete the importance of playing within and for himself or herself will be invaluable to the athlete who is trying to control his or her anxiety level.

Exploring the Rich Potential of Our Complex Personality

We all have multiple personality traits. While psychologists tend to distinguish between personality traits (which are stable and dominant in behavior) and personality states (mental states that are more occasional and less dominant), this distinction is not terribly important to athletes (in terms of their effect on performance). We may think of some of those traits and/or states as desirable and of others as undesirable. However, with a little ingenuity we can often find strategies for using effectively nearly all of the rich range of personality traits/states that we possess.

For example, at times we may act bravely and at other times we may be timid. We may be very quiet most of the time but quite noisy at others. Often, within the behaviors that we have already exhibited, we can find those that are identical or at least similar to behaviors that would be highly beneficial in preparatory or competitive athletic situations. If so, we can then endeavor to increase the strength and frequency of the behaviors that are desirable and to do the opposite for those that are not.

Another useful strategy for utilizing personality traits and states is to try to identify appropriate uses for behaviors that are generally negative. For instance, communicating by shouting and waving your hands would be considered aggressive under most circumstances, but on the trading floor of a stock exchange it might be perceived as merely assertive or even reserved. Similarly, thoughts of embarrassing an opponent by delivering a public beating cannot be acted out, but thoughts of embarrassing an opponent via a sound “beating” on the weightlifting platform are well within the bounds of athletic behavior (though you might wonder why such a desire exists at all). Still another approach to employing behaviors in an effective way is to identify movements, thoughts or feelings that are useful but have not previously been used for athletic performance by the athlete.

One final note on personality traits. Your attitude toward them is nearly as important as the traits themselves in terms of their effect on your life. You tend to be influenced most by the traits with which you associate yourself, by everything which you recognize as being part of your “true” personality. However, you tend to be better able to control “personalities” which you do not identify with yourself. Therefore, your attitude toward behavior that you exhibit can be as important as the behavior itself.

For instance, attitude that “I have made many mistakes and therefore I am tragically flawed” can lead to a lack of interest in controlling behavior and a tendency to focus on and accept further mistakes as being part of your nature. If instead you accept the error and recognize it as an error but take the attitude that you are “better than that,” you are more likely to correct the mistake and to avoid making it again in the future. Naturally, you can make terrible errors and disassociate yourself from them as a defense mechanism (e.g., by saying, “that is not really me so I’ll ignore it, no matter how prevalent the behavior becomes”). This, of course, can lead to a continuation of the same destructive behavior. But the former error is more common than the latter.

Pain Control

There are many psychological methods for dealing with pain available to athletes. Some center around relaxing the painful area and the areas surrounding it. Others involve diverting the athlete’s attention away from the pain or using mental techniques to block the pain.

For example, visualization can be used to control pain. In order to apply the visualization technique an athlete might put his or her hand in cold water until it is numb and then visualize the cold of the water touching other parts of the body (i.e., injured areas). Another visualization strategy is to see the pain getting smaller or relaxing and letting it slip away.

Obviously, before making any effort at pain control, a person must be sure that the pain is not serving a necessary function (e.g., warning of an injury that could become worse with activity). Blocking out functional pain, though possible, can simply lead to the athlete’s further. damaging an injured area However, when pain is not functional (i.e., it is not symptomatic of an injury or the injury cannot be exacerbated by continued activity), pain reduction techniques can be invaluable to the athlete. Before proceeding with the use of any mental (or physical) pain control techniques, it is critical to get medical clearance. Only a health professional can help determine whether a given pain is functional. See the Bibliography for books with further information on this subject.

Hypnosis

Some athletes have been found hypnosis a useful adjunct to their preparation for competition. Contrary to popular belief, hypnosis is not some technique of mental training that permits a person to accomplish superhuman feats. It merely enables the subject to reach his or her true potential when the achievement of that potential is blocked by mental attitudes or processes that the athlete may have acquired. For instance, a state of hypnosis will not give super strength, even if the hypnotist suggests to a fully hypnotized subject that he or she has it. It may enable a subject to apply more easily the strength that the subject already possesses, by removing any inhibitions that person may have about expressing that strength.

Hypnosis has four phases: induction of the hypnotic state, the hypnotic state itself, termination of the hypnotic state and the stage of post-hypnotic suggestion. The hypnotic state is induced by the hypnotist’s ability to gain the subject’s attention and to take the subject through a set of suggestions (e.g., your arms are getting heavier, you are feeling warmth, etc.) until the subject has achieved a relaxed state in which he or she gives the hypnotist his or her full attention.

Once the subject is in the hypnotic state, the hypnotist provides a series of directions that describe the way the subject will behave once a specific triggering word has been heard by the subject or a particular set of circumstances occurs during the post-hypnotic state. For example, for a lifter who is having trouble concentrating in competition, the hypnotist might say: “When you mount the platform in competition, everything around you will become quiet, you will feel alone with the bar and will be totally focused on making the lift until you hear the signal from the referees to put the bar down.” The nature of the hypnotic suggestion itself is very flexible. Suggestion can be used to control pain, to improve concentration and to facilitate relaxation. Positive suggestions are generally the most effective.

Once the suggestion has been given, the hypnotist will explain to the subject that a certain procedure will be followed (e.g., “I will count backward from ten to one and when I reach the number one you will wake up”). At the end of that procedure the lifter will wake up feeling refreshed and remembering the suggestion for post-hypnotic behavior. The post-hypnotic suggestion can be effective for a period of minutes to a period of months, depending on the subject and the nature of the suggestion.

Naturally, the hypnotist must be careful in providing post-hypnotic suggestions. They must be very limited. Otherwise, the potential for triggering unwanted behavior can be significant. For example, if the athlete were merely told that he or she must block out everything else when he or she mounts the platform (failing to specify the competition platform), the athlete might not hear any instructions from the coach during training.

It is possible that a hypnotist could be helpful in competition itself to redirect the attention of a panicking athlete if the hypnotist could remain focused, break through to the athlete and redirect the athlete’s attention.

While there are no scientifically precise figures on the susceptibility of the general population to hypnosis, it has been estimated that approximately 10% of the population can achieve the very deepest of hypnotic states, another 10% cannot be hypnotized at all and the rest fall in between these two extremes.

I have never experimented with hypnosis. I do know a number of athletes who have done so, and none of them have reported long term success in using it (admittedly, my sample is a small one). Nevertheless, the very concept of hypnosis bothers me for three reasons. First, it is meant as a means to place the mind on a form of automatic pilot in a certain situation. As was noted earlier, automatic pilot mechanisms can be triggered at inappropriate times and cause unintended effects. If hypnotic suggestions are designed with care, the likelihood of errors can be greatly reduced, but the risk can never be eliminated. Second, the point at which hypnotic suggestion will wear off is unpredictable. It could happen at the most inopportune time, and the athlete who relies on hypnosis is unlikely to have developed adequate coping skills for situations in which the suggestion has worn off.

Finally, the very notion of giving up control of his or her mind to another person is anathema to many athletes. One of the major benefits of sports is its ability to challenge the athlete to develop his or her own mental faculties. The sense of control over the mind and the ability to achieve a certain mental state at will contribute to a person’s confidence and maturity not only in athletics but also in life. Relying on someone else to produce a certain mental state, no matter how beneficial, essentially precludes this kind of benefit. For most athletes it would be preferable to use the other techniques that are discussed in this chapter to achieve the benefits that could be achieved through hypnosis. Nevertheless, for the athlete who has a specific need that can be effectively met by hypnosis and who does not have the time or has been unable to develop his or her own approach to the problem, hypnosis can be a useful tool.

As is the case with many of the methods of mental and physical development in weightlifting, combining techniques is often more effective than any one alone. This can certainly be true in the case of hypnosis. For instance, consider the case of an athlete who is having difficulty relaxing before an event. The athlete has tried relaxation techniques and hypnosis, and both have helped to a point, but the athlete feels that a fully relaxed state has not yet been achieved. He or she might persist in perfecting relaxation skills or persist in hypnotherapy. Either path might very well lead to ultimate success. However, another approach would be to combine the two techniques by achieving a state of hypnosis, performing relaxation exercises in that state and then suggesting that the same state could be achieved post-hypnotically by saying a certain word or phrase. The result might be a faster and deeper state of relaxation than could be achieved in the same amount of time with either technique alone.

It should be noted than hypnosis can been used for analgesic purposes, but the cautions expressed in the previous section on pain control must be observed when hypnosis is used in an athletic context. If the analgesic effect is really powerful, it may disguise a real problem.

Self Hypnosis

Self hypnosis is generally a much more appropriate technique of mental preparation for the athlete than regular hypnosis. The problem of dependency on the hypnotist is obviated with self hypnosis. In addition, the problem of having the suggestion wear off is avoided because the athlete can reaffirm the suggestion on a regular basis.

In a sense, all hypnosis is self hypnosis, because the subject must believe to a certain extent in the process and the hypnotist before hypnosis can be induced. A good hypnotist should be willing to assist a subject in performing self hypnosis by including the suggestion that the subject can achieve such a state if he or she wishes.

An athlete is capable of inducing a state of self hypnosis without any intervention by a hypnotist. In fact, many of the techniques referred to earlier involve elements of self suggestion. The relaxed and focused states that are induced by meditation and progressive relaxation are essentially the same as those achieved by hypnosis. The difference is that with self hypnosis the focus is on the suggestions the subject is making to himself or herself. For example, instead of focusing directly on relaxing his or her legs, a subject might repeat the suggestion (really an inner statement) that his or her legs were relaxing. A sequence of statements suggesting relaxation and then falling ever deeper into a hypnotic state are the means to create a self hypnotic state. Once such a state has been achieved, suggestions are made for the post-hypnotic state, much in the same way that they are made by the hypnotist. (It is generally recommended that the suggestions be positive, that repetition be used in making the suggestion and that suggestions that lead to images of success supplement verbal suggestions.) After making the appropriate self suggestions, the subject suggests the process of emerging from the hypnotic state to a state of normal consciousness.

If the athlete has trouble achieving a relaxed state and maintaining the ability to make suggestions to himself or herself, a simple solution would be to record the entire process, from hypnotic induction to the suggestions to be made during the hypnotic state to suggestions for awakening from the hypnotic state. Then the recording could be played at the appropriate time and the athlete could be self hypnotized by the recording.

Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a process that involves giving a subject feedback on a bodily function that is not normally well perceived. Examples of this are the electrical activity that takes place in the brain (e.g., alpha and beta brain waves), blood pressure, blood flow and low levels of muscle tension. Feedback can help the athlete to understand how to control all of these things. The ability to control such processes might be achieved without direct feedback, but it would take far longer and would have to take place in a more indirect way (e.g., concentrating on slow breathing might cause the subject to relax, and that could lead to a decline in blood pressure). With feedback the athlete might learn about other thought processes and behaviors that might achieve the same result more quickly and certainly.

For example, “alpha brain” waves are associated with achieving a relaxed state. Without biofeedback the average person cannot appreciate when he or she is producing this kind of brain activity. He or she might indeed achieve the desired state with diligent practice of meditation, but that would be an effect of the meditation process, which might take a very long time to master without special feedback.

If control of a particular process or area of the body is important for an athlete, and other methods of control have not been successful, biofeedback may be worth exploring. However, specialized equipment and knowledge is required in order to apply biofeedback effectively. Therefore, an expert in this area needs to be consulted before biofeedback can be appropriately employed.

Achieving a Relaxed State at Will

It is very useful for an athlete to cultivate the ability to achieve a relaxed state at will. This ability can be helpful in many ways. First, it can help the athlete to control his or her mental and emotional state immediately before and during competition (an athlete who is too anxious and emotional will “burn out” before the competition is over). Second, it can help an athlete to sleep soundly before a competition. Third, it can enable an athlete to save energy prior to and during the competition. Fourth, a relaxed state is considered by many advocates of mental rehearsal to be a prerequisite for such rehearsal (although research in this area has not thus far supported that contention). Fifth, reducing stress may help to prevent and even to speed the healing of certain kinds of injuries. There are a number of means for achieving a relaxed state. We will outline four here. Others can be learned from some of the books that are listed in the Bibliography at the end of the book.

Perhaps the first relaxation technique that was written about extensively in Western literature was one developed by Edmund Jacobson in the early 1900s. That technique, called “progressive relaxation,” consists of carefully and sequentially tensing and then relaxing various muscle groups. Jacobson believed that the contrast between tension and relaxation helped the subject to better sense a truly relaxed state. He also believed that if the body could achieve a thoroughly relaxed state, many bodily ills such as headaches, hypertension, and anxiety could be cured. Jacobson had considerable success in treating patients with his relaxation technique.

Briefly summarized, the Jacobson method begins with the subject lying in a supine position in a comfortable, quiet and darkened room, with the arms positioned at the sides. The subject concentrates on relaxing, permitting the body to sink into the bed or other surface upon which he or she is lying. The subject then creates very slight tension in the arms and sustains that tension for approximately ten seconds. Then he or she increases the level of tension somewhat and sustains than level for another ten seconds, concentrating on how that tension feels. Next the subject concentrates on gradually relaxing the same muscles and on how the process of relaxation and the relaxed state feel. This relaxation process continues for one or two minutes. This cycle of creating two levels of tension followed by a period of relaxation is repeated twice. On each successive cycle the subject attempts to achieve a deeper level of relaxation. The object is to be able to detect the very slightest levels of tension and to correct that tension. The three cycles of tension and relaxation are repeated for the muscles of the legs, chest, abdomen and face. Eventually, as the subject becomes more accomplished, the tension phases of the relaxation sessions can be eliminated. Ultimately, the subject will be able to relax completely in a very short period of time.

Another approach to relaxation is a technique called “autogenic training.” It was first developed by Johannes Schulz in the middle of this century. Schulz’s technique involves moving through a series of six steps. First the subject concentrates on creating feelings of heaviness in the limbs, then on creating a sensation of warmth. Next the subject attempts to regulate his or her heart rate and then focuses on breathing. In the fifth step of the process, the subject endeavors to develop a sensation of warmth in the abdomen. Finally, in the sixth step the focus is on developing a contrasting sense of coolness in the forehead. This combination of steps is expected to enable the subject to achieve a fully relaxed state, which he or she will be able to assume even more quickly with practice.

Much more ancient techniques of relaxation have come down to us through religious practices, yogis and martial arts practitioners. Their meditative states create a very relaxed condition. A number of researchers and theorists have attempted to abstract aspects of these ancient techniques in order to achieve the benefits in terms of relaxation and control of mental activity, without having to devote years to the discipline. One of these techniques involves deep and slow breathing while the subject is concentrating fully on the inhaling and exhaling. Sometimes this is accompanied by some physical gesture, such as placing one or both hands on the diaphragm or doing so and breathing in slowly, holding, exhaling to 4 counts and practicing with associating a word with the relaxed state.

A related relaxation method consists of repeating short phrases until you feel what is being suggested by those phrases (e.g., “I am relaxed”). Ultimately, one key phrase will be all the athlete needs in order to complete the entire relaxation process.

Still another technique which became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s is transcendental meditation (TM). Practitioners of TM were found to be able to lower their heart rates, blood pressure (especially if it was previously elevated), respiration and blood lactate levels through meditation. The TM technique involves the repetition of a sound (called a “mantra”) over and over while the subject assumes an attitude of passive concentration. Ultimately, the result is the relaxed TM state.

In order to master any of the preceding relaxation techniques, it is recommended that the subject practice daily for approximately forty-five minutes (in the case of TM and the breathing techniques, TM trainers typically recommend two twenty to twenty-five minute sessions).

All of these techniques share the objective of relieving tension while at the same time focusing the mind inward and not on the external world. This combination of focused attention and physical relaxation seems to predispose the subject to a relaxed and receptive state of mind. From this “platform” of a relaxed state, the athlete directs his or her attention on the process at hand, whether that is near term physical performance, technique improvement, further relaxation, self affirmations or some other objective.

As was noted earlier, it is very worthwhile for an athlete to master at least one relaxation technique to the point of being able to enter a relaxed state nearly at will. With such an ability, the athlete can be relatively certain that he or she can bring his or her emotions under control when that becomes helpful prior to, or during, a competition. No athlete has an unlimited supply of nervous energy. Many years ago the great champion Dave Sheppard counseled me: “You must learn to turn your intensity on and off like a light switch.” Cultivating the ability to save energy wherever possible is bound to pay long term dividends in the athletic arena as well as in other walks of life. The increased feelings of well being, higher energy levels and improved ability to concentrate that can result from mastering the art of relaxation are all laudable objectives as well. Ultimately, the athlete can learn to relax almost immediately, such as by taking as little as one breath while focusing on it completely (the mastery of which technique can be supported by practicing several times a day).

For the athlete who has not yet become skilled at relaxation, laughter can be a source of relaxation. This does not suggest that a good belly laugh before a big lift is beneficial. Rather, some mild humor well before the heavy lifts begin may serve to break unnecessary tension, such as the tension that can build up early in the process of waiting to warm up (building some humor into life is probably a good general health practice).

For athletes who have not developed the mental skills of relaxation, there are other approaches to relaxation involving physical stimuli. A mild form of exercise can assist the relaxation process, particularly if it does not tire the athlete, if the athlete is used to such exercise and if the exercise can cause or help the athlete focus on the exercise itself or on anything else that is calming to the athlete. Some recent research done with weightlifters suggests that a light training session the evening or morning before a competition may help some athletes to relax.

Flotation tanks can be a great source of relaxation, particularly if the athlete can learn to achieve a similar relaxed state by association after experiencing the tank a number of times. The problem is that such tasks are generally not available at the competition site (although a reasonable substitute might be created with a sleeping bag and portable audio equipment with earphones).

Naturally, relaxation, like anything else, can become too extreme. An athlete who is totally relaxed will not be able to perform at a high level. But this is rarely a problem for a competitive athlete. Just being at a competition is generally sufficient to get the athlete aroused enough to perform well.

One more comment needs to be made with respect to relaxation. A top level athlete, or a great achiever in any area of life, needs to develop the ability to relax merely to control his or her expenditure of nervous energy. No one can sustain a peak or even high level of energy at all times. There must be times for the mind and body to rest and recuperate from a state of full effort. Sleep is not enough for the competitive athlete. Relaxation must be built into daily activities as well. (It must also be remembered that stress has been correlated with illnesses and athlete injuries.)

Paul Anderson, the great Olympic and World Champion and one of the strongest man who ever lived (undoubtedly the strongest in certain respects), often noted the importance of rest. Early in his career, he reportedly lived by the rule that you should walk if you do not have to run, sit if you do not have to walk, lie down if you do not have to sit, and sleep if you do not have be awake. Similarly, the great bodybuilding champion Reg Park has reported that the fastest gains in his bodybuilding career came when he merely rested completely between workouts. Admittedly, these men followed these guidelines for limited periods, and few have a life situation that would permit them to emulate Anderson or Park. However, there can be no doubt that the ability to relax where possible and to save your energy for training will contribute significantly to your progress.

Relaxation need not mean a total vegetative state. It does mean a state in which the body is free of tension and anxiety, the emotional state is at a relatively low level and the mind is receptive to stimuli but not racing. You are clearly in control and comfortable overall.

Achieving the Optimal Performance State

Most people have experienced certain moments in their lives when their concentration seemed to be complete, when their confidence was high, when the importance of the task at hand seemed unusually clear, when success seemed inevitable, when achievement seemed effortless. This kind of state has been described variously as a condition of being totally focused, in the sweet spot, or in the “flow.” In short, it is the ideal mental state at which to perform to full capabilities. One of the most important objectives of mental training and preparation is to be able to achieve such a state at will. Athletes who have been able to cultivate this ability are the small minority who are able to perform at their best regardless of the conditions. How can you achieve this ideal state at will?

Many athletes and coaches seem to feel that performing the activity that the athlete will be performing in competition is the best or only warm-up needed to perform at an optimal level. Other athletes need to feel ready before they can begin, and still other athletes need to consciously build the proper mental state as they warm up physically. Once an athlete understands what is needed to reach his or her optimal state, he or she needs to perform the actions that lead to proper readying on a consistent basis.

Many performers use rituals to prepare, especially those which are totally under the athlete’s control and help to assure readiness. Rituals differ from superstitions in that they do not depend on something beyond your control and are not negative. Rituals can be calming, energizing or tied to performance (assuring all is in readiness). If an athlete wishes to try the ritual approach to preparation, the place to begin is to look at existing rituals and see if they work and, if so, how they do. Then the athlete can adopt the ritual specifically for purposes of preparation, instead of performing it irregularly. One technique is to use a “countdown” of external events to cue mental preparation. For instance, review your goals after the weigh-in. Then dress in a certain order, each clothing item triggering another readying thought. The first weight on the bar then triggers another thought, and so on.

Another approach is to create a readying spot (a place and/or time) for doing whatever is needed to perform at optimal level. In order to do this, the athlete should have approximately twenty minutes of uninterrupted time. During this time the athlete goes through a series of thoughts and/or action which place him or her in the optimal state.

Many athletes find rituals too lengthy and unnecessary. For such athletes, readying may simply involve finding his or her best positive image and then evoking it. This could be done through visualization. Alternatively, it could be the use of a nickname (such as “Mr. Comethrough”) that evokes a positive image. Still other athletes merely need a key word or phrase to place them in an optimal state.

Every athlete derives his or her motivation from different sources and has different strengths and weaknesses with respect to achieving an optimal mental state. Therefore, each athlete will need to find his or her individual path to achieving the state of full readiness at will. The starting point for all athletes is to observe the internal and external causes of their thoughts, feelings and behaviors during workouts and competitions. Then the athlete needs to answer the question: “What leads to the good performances and what does not?”

For example, how did you feel during your finest hour(s)? at your moment of most complete and pleasurable relaxation? at your moment of greatest fear and loathing? at your most depressed and defeated? It is important to identify not only what you felt but also what led to those feelings. Including in your training log mental states and noting what events, thoughts and feelings were associated with ideal and poor mental states are invaluable practices. Understanding the conscious and subconscious judgments that triggered an emotional state is often just as important as understanding the events that lead to the evaluations that you made. This is because emotions are physical and mental reactions to your instantaneous value judgments. When you are dealing with emotional triggers, one approach is to remove an unwanted trigger or to incorporate a desired one. However, the other approach is to alter your valuations. Serious work done in this area can help not only to achieve an optimal state with greater consistency but also to avoid undesirable ones more frequently.

In order to achieve the optimal performance state, three major variables need to be observed and, ultimately, regulated: arousal, motivation and concentration. Arousal has been discussed earlier. It must be set at the optimal level, generally by bringing it up or bringing it under greater control. The athlete must learn to evaluate his or her sense of arousal and to regulate it, primarily through developing the ability to relax and to control focus.

Motivation is the desire to achieve the lift. It is a function of two things: the positive desire to perform the lift and the absence of fear (or, stated more positively, the presence of confidence). The lower the fear and/or the higher the desire, the greater will be the lifter’s motivation to perform the lift. Desire comes from goals and the role that a given lift is perceived to have in the achievement of those goals.

The greatest motivation of all is a love for the sport and an associated desire to master it (an achievement orientation), but motivation can arise out of such factors as the desire to affiliate with others, the desire to beat others, the desire to affirm competence and the desire to gain approval. Positive affirmations can also help to build a desire to succeed.

While many athletes will almost automatically have the level of desire necessary to perform optimally, some athletes need a special effort to remind themselves of the importance of what they are about to do. Pictures, videos and inspirational notes or books can all serve to get the athlete on the right track in this regard.

Lack of fear stems from the confidence that a particular effort is reasonable within the context of the lifter’s abilities and that, in the event of a failure, the ability to “bail out” safely can be counted on. More fundamentally, it stems from the feeling that you will perform well rather than a concern with competitive outcomes. The motivated lifter will feel an energy that cries to be released and confidence that success will be achieved. I have almost never missed a lift that I was highly motivated about. I have rarely made a maximum lift that I lacked confidence about making or lacked the burning desire to complete.

While proper arousal and high motivation are critical, concentration is the third critical factor. As has already been indicated in this chapter, concentration is the ability to focus completely on the task at hand and to focus at the correct level (i.e., neither too widely nor too narrowly). This state has been described by some as being consciously unconscious. What this means is that the athlete’s attention is so completely focused on the task at hand that he or she is not consciously (i.e., conceptually) aware of that focus or of what his or her mind is doing. In a sense, the mind is still, in that it is virtually impervious to thoughts outside of its primary focus. In another sense, such a focus is extremely active because total attention is actively directed to the task at hand. However, the overall experience is one of mental (though not necessarily emotional) calm and extreme clarity of mental focus. As was noted earlier, this state has been described as being in a “cocoon” (the athlete is oblivious to any distractions to the point where the world outside the field of concentration seems to be powerless to penetrate the athlete’s active attention). Some athletes are actually aided in achieving this state by consciously thinking of “nothing,” of emptying their minds (this is often beneficial immediately before a lift is commenced).

 This kind of concentration is vital in at least three respects. First, full concentration virtually assures the attainment of a correct level of arousal; it is difficult to be too relaxed or two anxious when one is focusing almost exclusively on performance. Second, full concentration makes it more likely that the skill at hand will be performed properly. Third, when an athlete is learning a skill (and learning never really ends), the ability to concentrate on how the body is performing the movement provides the most valuable feedback on the movement itself. (This does not mean analyzing every step on the conceptual level but, rather, fully experiencing and understanding the movement.)

Ultimately, by combining optimal arousal, motivation and concentration (and these three aspects of mental state are interrelated), the athlete achieves the ideal state of mind, which, when combined with a body that is well peaked, is capable of producing outstanding performance. The true challenge of competitive athletics, one that is only rarely met by an athlete, is to achieve such a state consistently and at will.

Those Who Can Help Your Mental Training

The Role of the Coach in Fostering the Mental Development of the Athlete

Coaches can play a great role in the development of the minds of athletes as well as their bodies. A coach cannot make or break an athlete’s mind (the athlete, after all, has free will and may choose to be influenced by the coach or not), but the coach can certainly have a major influence on the mind of the athlete, particularly if the athlete is not evaluating what the coach is saying but is merely absorbing it. In my view the role of the coach in developing the athlete’s mind can be at least as important as the role the coach plays in developing the athlete’s body. My experience has been that coaches who are truly effective long term motivators (not simply those who can arouse a lifter at a competition) are more successful than many coaches with superior technical skills who are poor motivators.

Research and practical experience have shed significant light on the role of the coach. It has been discovered, for example that positive feedback from the coach generally helped the athlete’s perceptions of competence. The major exception to this rule was when the athlete was being praised for things that the athlete regarded as relatively easy. The explanation for such a phenomenon is that when the athlete is praised for easy things it implies that the coach thinks these easy things are actually challenges for that athlete; thus, what is actually communicated to the athlete is that these mediocre performances are all the athlete can hope to do. Positive feedback also generally helps the athlete’s intrinsic motivation.

The quality of feedback is a very crucial determinant of its value. Feedback must pertain to legitimate criterion of performance and be appropriate to the level of achievement of the athlete. Information on how to perform well makes athletes believe that they can actually perform better.

Some coaches seem to foster an environment in which they are the sole source of wisdom. Those coaches seem to enjoy developing a cadre of athletes who are dependent on them. But coaches who emphasize the autonomy of the athlete tend to have athletes who are more intrinsically motivated and have better self-esteem. It is the age old story of teaching a person to fish as opposed to giving them a fish.

 Children are often seeking different things from sports than adults. In addition to seeking pure achievement, they are also looking for affiliation, team competition, fitness and just plain fun. Their motives are typically multiple. Parental pressure can kill performance and the child’s pleasure in that performance. Children must be permitted by their parents to find their own way in sports.

Behavioral modification is a psychological technique for changing behavior that employs the use of specific techniques that “reinforce” a given behavior (makes it more or less likely to recur). Behavioral modification essentially suggests that a coach employ some physical, social or economic reward to reinforce a desirable behavior. A rule of thumb for coaches is that 50% of their behavior should be positively reinforcing, 45% should be ignoring and 5% should be negatively reinforcing (punishment). The point here is not that half of the coach’s time should be spent in reinforcing behavior and the other half in ignoring it but, rather, that the coach should not spend any significant portion of his or her time punishing athletes. Positive reinforcement is far more likely to result in good behavior than punishment. In offering positive reinforcement, praise should be progressively greater if performance is good. The coach should also reinforce consistency, which is an important behavioral attribute.

But the coach should also be aware that the continued use of external rewards can undermine an athlete’s development of deep personal motivation. Athletes who are motivated primarily by their own desires prefer coaches who provide instruction and training. Athletes who participate because of external rewards (scholarships, trophies, etc.) are more likely to accept autocratic coaching styles.

Research and practical experience suggest that coaches generally receive the best results from positive feedback (e.g., encouragement, praise, positive suggestion). Despite this finding, many coaches deal with athletes with a constant stream of criticism. It is one thing to correct technique flaws as often as needed; it is another to attack an athlete’s person. The former leads to progress and the latter to conflict and poorer performance. Some athletes seems to be able to perform well wherever they go, with or without help. Antonio Krastev and Naim Suleymanoglu are such athletes. They know themselves, their technique and how to train. Both have moved to new environments in which little coaching or a dramatic change in coaching occurred, and both could still perform. Other athletes who find themselves under similar conditions are lost. Clearly the former are better off than the latter.

Under competitive conditions, a coach can be of greater assistance in helping an athlete to relax when appropriate, to focus on the right things and to properly evaluate the athlete’s performance. Anyone can be an athlete’s friend when things are going well. The true coach and friend is there when things do not go as well.

When To Consider Getting Professional Sports Psychology Help

Virtually all of the techniques for improving mental performance that have been discussed in this chapter come under the heading of “self help.” In most cases the athlete who is psychologically healthy psychologically will be able to conduct most of his or her own mental training. Even athletes who have psychological problems that hinder performance will be able to develop ways for dealing with those problems in training and competition by applying one or more of the rich array of techniques that have been described in this chapter. However, many athletes will find the assistance of a trained sports psychologist to be very valuable.

There will be some occasions when even psychologically healthy athletes (and many who are less healthy) will need assistance from a psychologist. The first indicator that you may need professional help is doubt that you are handling a given mental problem properly. Some athletes find it difficult to identify their problems properly. They may simply not be able to understand the nature and origins of the problem, or they may constantly identify “the” problem, only to redefine it the next day or week. If you are having trouble determining what your problem is, some professional help may be useful.

Similarly, if you are having trouble determining what approach to take to solving a perceived mental problem, or if you have been working to resolve a particular problem for a substantial period of time without any real results, the advice of a professional may help (even if the only help provided is to reassure you that you are on the right track). An experienced sports psychologist may help you to understand better the training techniques that you have selected or may suggest one that is better suited to solving your problem.

Finally, if you have psychological problems that extend well beyond the athletic arena, professional help of a more general nature may be necessary.

While a discussion of such problems is well beyond the scope of this book, three general suggestions can be offered. First, it is rarely necessary for an athlete to resolve some or all of his or her overall psychological problems in order to be a successful athlete. Many champions have been able to achieve outstanding success while still harboring substantial psychological problems. The techniques described in this chapter will often enable an athlete to gain sufficient control of his or her problems during competition and training so that they pose no performance threat. Second, psychologists differ in philosophy, technique and style. The mere possession of some degree, license or certification does not mean that a psychologist is skilled in every area, or that the areas in which a particular therapist has skill will necessarily be useful to a given athlete. Just as an athlete must experiment with diet, exercise, rest and many other variables to achieve championship results, so an athlete who needs professional help may have to experiment with different practitioners and methods before success is achieved.

Third, do not permit yourself to become dependent on a particular therapist as “the sole solution” to your psychological problems. A good therapist will help you learn to deal with you own problems over time—not make you dependent on some guru for all of the answers to your problems.

A Closing Word on the Mind

While this chapter has been devoted to presenting the ways in which the mind can be used to improve weightlifting performance, it should be noted that the kind of mental development that leads to weightlifting success can offer many dividends in other areas of life. For example, concentration, a positive mental attitude and the setting and visualization of goals can all be as powerful outside athletics as they are within it. The heightened self-esteem and well being that can come out of weightlifting success tend to carry over into other areas in life. Knowing that you can achieve success in the world at something often opens up your minds to a myriad of new possibilities (this is particularly true of those who began with problems of self-esteem).

Note the relationship here. Mind and body work together. The mind sets the goals, the body achieves them. This gives the mind more confidence, which leads to further motivation and effort, which leads to existential success. The mind and the body are inextricably linked, as are thought and action. One is worthless without the other. In combination they enable man to achieve all the joy that is possible on this earth—and that is a great deal indeed. Life itself embodies a continuous effort to set, to achieve and to maintain values. The true measure of a life is not only the number or importance of a person’s values but also the nature of their values and, perhaps most of all, the quality of the effort that they put forth toward the achievement of those values throughout their lives.

The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi often spoke of the pursuit of excellence as being the real key to success in sports and in life. Seek excellence, and happiness will follow out of the existential achievement that you will almost certainly enjoy. Perhaps even more importantly, happiness will arise from the sheer joy of knowing that you have committed to something and given it the best that you can give, the best within you.

Summary

The athlete’s mind is the “prime mover” behind championship performance. The tools that have been provided in this chapter will enable the athlete to build the mind of a champion. Now that we have discussed the elements of training the mind and body for high performance, the next chapter will explore the all important issue of preparing for top performance in a competition. It is a great achievement to create the mind and body of a great weightlifter. Being able to express that ability when it counts is still another step toward becoming the weightlifter’s weightlifter.