The Naked Square

The regulation competition weightlifting platform is 4 meters square, 169 square feet of glaring exposure.  The barbell awaits. You get six attempts that count, and it will be just you and the barbell.  There’s no one to throw a block for you or whip a beautiful outlet pass to you from under the basket.  There’s none of that here, and no one else to depend on except yourself.  They call your name, and you have one minute to break off your opening attempt. What you lifted in training doesn’t count. What behavior you exhibit before you step onto the platform doesn’t count. What you do after the down signal doesn’t count. If you gauged it correctly, you made your first attempt smoothly. If you continue to gauge it correctly, you will make all six attempts and the final snatch and clean and jerk will be bone-on-bone, gut-wrenching pr’s. These counted. No smoke and mirrors here, you see – just you, the bar, and…gravity. Get prepared to do the real thing. You can post all the training video you want…do it when it counts or else you have wasted some time toward your peak. When you get more concerned about what you do on the training platform than what you do on the official platform, you have lost the time it took to get ready to lift in that contest.  If you trained seriously for the contest, were uninjured,  and your official results did not increase then you left your best effort somewhere else and something needs to change in the preparations for the next contest.  If you are going to compete, then the competition platform is the most important piece of real estate in the entire world as far as you are concerned.  The training videos were nice…maybe some pr’s there.  If it didn’t translate to official pr’s, then you have lost time.

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