Max Aita has been in weightlifting for well over two decades. I’ve been in the sport for about a decade. What we both have in common is our share of mistakes we’ve made as athletes (and as coaches, but that’s for another article). The sport of weightlifting isn’t all smooth sailing, even when you’re anchored by excellent coaching. This is largely a result of how our minds make decisions — and their sometimes illogical ways of thinking (e.g., all-or-nothing thoughts, overgeneralization, fortune-telling, etc).
In a recent podcast, we sat down to discuss the top five mistakes athletes make, drawing on our previously mentioned three decades of experience. This discussion runs the gamut, covering communication, perspective, planning, and the idea of being flexible in the face of uncertainty. If you’re an athlete, you are guaranteed to make these mistakes too, and that’s okay. The key is to understand them so that when you falter, you can recover quickly.
The worst mistakes aren’t those committed once or twice, it’s those committed endlessly.
Mistake #1: Focusing on Marginal Gains
“You can’t technical change your way out of a bad program.”
The Pareto principle states that 80% of a result comes from 20% of the work. This means that most training gains come from the 20%, whereas the extra 80% only brings in a marginal amount of return. A hyper-focus on granularity generally won’t produce an overabundant outcome, but it will derail your motivation to train and/or your results.
Proper programming provides a stimulus for change. This means creating new muscle tissue, more force capacity, a better ability to tolerate work or a host of other adaptations. Specific aspects of the training must reflect the desired end (e.g., increasing volume over time to build work tolerance). A hyper-focus on small technical changes to right the ship of a terrible program is a dead end. Making sure the foundational pieces of training are in place precedes any nuanced adjustment to technique, exercise selection, mental skills training, and a plethora of other marginally meaningful interventions. The right place to start is the place you’re at, knowing how massively influential variables need to be developed to make the minutiae matter.
Mistake #2: Not Communicating Effectively
“People often times don’t communicate honestly with coaches and with themselves.”
One way to ensure that you hit the target is to make sure it’s always moving. A major mistake athletes make is acting, and then rationalizing away their actions. This is juxtaposed with deciding on the correct course of action and acting in alignment with them. For example, skipping part of your workout and then telling yourself that it’s what’s best is entirely different from creating a plan that will help you reach your goals and holding yourself accountable to that plan. Now this is just how you can compromise communication with yourself. You can also communicate poorly with your coach, making the process that much more complicated.
Mistake #3: Being Overly Caught Up in the Future
“Realize that it’s not all now or all later, it’s an integration and it’s a balance.”
Each success or failure is decided by today’s actions. Nothing else can matter more than the present, because even the future is predicated on this moment. A hyperfixation on the results of the now or a hyperfixation on what can be will typically lead to disappointment.
Imagine that you get caught up thinking that this session is the session. If you can’t hit a new personal record, your training must have been ineffective, or even worse it was pointless. However, this perspective is not helpful and doesn’t capture the non-linearity of the training process. Opposite to this is getting caught up in the future, assuming that at some point not too far off you will be able to reach pre-determined goals and milestones without the power to follow through along the way.
The most helpful perspective is one that moves between the two, sharing the perspective of long-term planning with the ability to concentrate on the next task and see it through. That drives results.
Mistake #4: Lacking an Exit Plan
“I need to think about what it is that I’m going to do after that. Am I coaching to move to coaching? Am I just going to retire?”
When athletes initially get into weightlifting, the most important thing is their next PR. Beyond that, it starts to get a bit fuzzy. What about the next 5 to 10 years? What’s your plan with coaching or starting a gym? Even then, what if you decide you want to become a coach? When do you start building a team? Do you want to own your own space? What about retirement? These are questions most never truly consider.
Avoid this mistake by thinking broadly about your competition or lifting career, your transition to either stay in weightlifting or to move out of it. Consider the timelines. Then, create a course of action to maximize your goals so you can continue to love the sport and be around it without overstaying your welcome.
Mistake #5: Being Inflexible When the Plan Changes
“A lot of this is having (a) responsive attitude… but having some sort of framework in place by which you can operate and move to an ultimate end.”
The perfect plan is not one laid out in complete and accurate detail, but it’s one that changes with new information. Being inflexible can lead to frustration, failure, and an inability to move on. We have all fallen pretty to this mistake, bashing our heads against failure because we can’t stand the feeling of pivoting and taking our training in a different direction. This will end in a lot of missed lifts, potential struggles, and a desire to quit the sport and never look back. This can be avoided by updating our wants and needs with the ever-changing situation.
Imagine that a chance to coach weightlifting comes up. Resisting could be a missed opportunity. If you pursue it, you may just find that you love coaching far more than competing. From there, you could shift your priorities in that direction.
Or, the opposite could be true. As an athlete, you’ve taken on coaching duties, but find it drains your ability to train full-time. Being flexible when plans change means adapting and pursuing the best course of action for the moment and the foreseeable future —like giving up coaching duties to uplevel your training.
It’s Easier Said Than Done
Being an athlete isn’t easy. This list represents mistakes that are very easy to make. That isn’t to say that after knowing them you won’t slip up. Life is a process of being less and less wrong with time, or at least acknowledging your failures and trying to right them. If you can see it as a process, the setbacks will sting a little less and there can be some compassion when trying to right the ship. Whether it’s having an unhelpful perspective, botching communication, or being inflexible in the face of change, adaptability and a willingness to learn is key.
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