Train Hard

When I first started weightlifting towards the end of 2012, I did Bulgarian style training. After some months off, during the Summer of 2013 I continued this, hitting a squat daily maximum twice a day, the main lifts once a day, and doing from 6-12 back off sets. Sessions would take me so long I'd often be pale and shaking slightly by the end from lack of blood sugar. I began taking packs of kit-kats and eating around 1000kcal to just let me survive the training. It worked excellently. My lifts shot up extremely fast.

You're not hardcore enough.

I loved this. I loved the idea I was training hard. Train harder than anyone else, and you'll get better than them. This is a very self reinforcing mindset. You experience all the symptoms of chronic overtraining, but you think it's good. Most people can't train through this stage. I'm tougher than them. I will be rewarded for my perseverance. The only reason people don't train like this is because they cannot handle it. The main reason people don't get better is because they don't train hard enough.

The problem is, this is all wrong. Once my original beginner progression ran its course, everything went downhill. My technique was poor and inconsistent, even with my large number of back off sets. I still believed that the aim for training should be to hit big numbers. I had reasonably high maxes, but I could not hit them consistently, possibly even failing lifts warming up to them. I got bad injuries, which I trained through because I thought it was no problem. Abadjiev said: pain, no problem. I had to take 6 months off training from September 2014, after having stalled for over 6 months prior to then, refusing to admit the obvious. During the Summer of 2014, I visited a Chinese Sports School for the first time, only very briefly, but long enough to get an idea of their system. After my time off, I came back into training, programmed sensibly using knowledge from my trip to the Sports School. Then I broke my thumb, and abandoned my sensible programming (which had been working) for a far more difficult squat program, as I was frustrated I couldn't weightlift and felt the need to make up for that. This inevitably led to a knee injury, which is still plaguing me over 7 months later (well after my thumb had fully recovered), although I am managing to keep it under control now thanks to following a sensible training program and listening to my body.

Knee pain? Is no problem!

This type of training isn't what you should do. I refused to accept this. Everyone told me, but I thought it was just because they were lazy. Not as dedicated as me. It really hit home when I was in China. I saw professional athletes training far less than I had done, and enjoying their training far more. They also outlifted me massively. They spent hours a day on different recovery methods, to recover from what seemed to be so little training. These people weren't lazy. I wasn't hardcore for training harder than them; I was stubborn, ignorant and stupid. I showed my coach a large number of programs, starting from how I used to train, then trying to emulate how I thought they should train, obviously still biased towards how I wanted to train. He simply said "You train too much" to all of them. It wasn't even worth him critiquing, my mindset was so wrong. It took a long time for me to finally accept training harder did not equate to training better. Now I've learnt how to program well for myself, I still struggle with this idea a little, but I now have a strong philosophy ingrained into my head by people I know are more serious about this sport than I can ever be.

The reality is, for weightlifting moderate training is all you need. Recovery is the most important aspect. Squat once or twice a week for a few heavy work sets. Perform the lifts once or twice a week for a few work sets, focusing on perfecting your technique and being consistent at lighter weights. Practise your technique and develop your strength further with pulls. You don't need any more (weightlifting specific work). More is actually counter productive. The aim of your training should be to hit perfect reps, and to gradually increase the weight you can hit perfect reps at. How much you can lift imperfectly is of far less importance for long term progression, and should only be done occasionally.

The Chinese approach to injuries is similar. If there's pain, don't train. If something hurts during a session, stop doing whatever aggravates it. Find an alternative movement, and perform this instead. For example, if you have a wrist issue and it's a snatch day. Try warming up for snatch. If there is still pain as you approach your working sets, stop. Change it to power pulls instead. You will not recover if you do movements which aggravate your injury, and will slow your progress. Changing your snatches to power pulls whilst your wrist recovers will not effect your progress in any measurable way, and you will be back to doing snatches pain free far sooner. You are not hardcore for pushing through pain. You will not adapt if you continue to aggravate an injury. It will likely get worse, and it will then prevent you progressing at some point for potentially a very long time, as it becomes a chronic or even irreparable injury.

Serious weightlifting chat

Enjoy your training. In China, when I was having a bad day, my coach stopped me. He said, if you don't enjoy your training, why are you here? Training should always be fun. This is true for professions, and even more so for amateurs. We will never be setting world records. The chance of us going to the Olympics is very low, and even if you do, it's only one day in 4 years. You need to enjoy your training, try to enjoy every moment of it. I am not saying don't train seriously. Enjoy the serious periods of training. Give yourself less serious periods of training, and enjoy these. If you can't enjoy this, re-evaluate your programming and question why you do this sport. Now I program sensibly, I look forward to my volume and heavy weeks. I look forward to my deload weeks. I include variety in my training; every session is different. Training is fun.

If you are in a bad mood, training will go badly. Even if it's an awful day and you can't even hit the minimum weights you want to for your working sets, you can take the weight down and hit that. Don't hate yourself for having a bad day, that will not help with anything. You can find alternative movements to do. If your training isn't going as you want it to, grinding away will not make things better.

If people paid to train enjoy their training, you should too.

Weightlifters having fun