Three ways to get better at weightlifting outside of the gym

We spend most of our time improving our technique, getting stronger, faster, and more powerful, and improving our snatch and clean & jerk in the gym. When thinking about how to get better at snatching and clean & jerking we may immediately think of what we have to do while training to improve—perhaps it is working on our mobility, warming up properly, not skipping any exercises, or doing our successories!

But what about all the things we could be doing OUTSIDE the gym that can make a difference? I repeatedly tell my HARD WORKERS in HWPO LIFT and all my athletes to FOCUS ON THE LITTLE THINGS. These little things in training make a huge difference, but the little things outside the gym—the non-training focuses that can really help us progress. Here is my list, my BIG three:‍

Recovery

SLEEP: While we are lifting, we are training our muscles, our movement patterns, our body awareness, and our leg power. We are in the gym training to get stronger. However, we get stronger while we are sleeping and recovering! When we are asleep, our body repairs and rebuilds muscle tissue that we beat up during our training session, helps our central nervous system recover and gives the time for our body to replenish glycogen (glycogen is so crucial because it is our body’s primary source of energy—think of it as fuel for our muscles!).

Sleep is the most important form of recovery. Not only because it allows us to continue to gain strength over time, but it aids in injury prevention and allows our body to keep showing up for us in the gym.

NUTRITION: Proper nutrition for training is like putting gas in your car—absolutely necessary to go anywhere. Nutrition is crucial for providing the energy we need to train our best, sustain our long weightlifting training sessions, and impact our overall performance. Weightlifting is hard work—we often train for 2-3 hours, with elite athletes training 5-8 hours per day.

If we don’t have the proper fuel before and after training, we do ourselves a HUGE disservice. Proper nutrition helps our muscle recovery, reduces soreness, helps in injury prevention and overall body function, builds our immune system, helps our energy production and sustainability, and ultimately helps us be a better weightlifter!

Hydration is equally important as nutrient balance as it helps regulate our body temperature, maintains electrolytes and replenishes what we lose when sweating so we don’t get dehydrated.

*Please consult a professional nutritionist, nutrition coach, or specialist for help with nutrition if you need guidance. This is just a summary of why nutrition is essential*

RECOVERY AND RESTORATION: Everyone is different and responds better to various ways to recover the body and mind. Things like hot and cold contrast, cold plunge or ice baths, Cryotherapy, acupuncture, hot baths or hot tub, dry or steam sauna, massage, chiropractor, physical therapy, needling, foam rolling, stretching, GOWOD—these are all things that will maximize restoration mentally and physically, as well as our training capacity. We can do as many of these as possible, depending on budget, to help our recovery. I like to plan for recovery and restoration on off days as it allows the body to rest and rebuild from the hard training days and for the mind to de-stress and relax.

Learn

Taking the time to evaluate what we learned from a training day is a valuable tool you can use to improve. Thinking about the good things in training is easy; it is thinking about the “bad” things that is hard. The misses, the mistakes, the hard stuff—but this is where we can learn something. When we miss or make mistakes in training, I believe we have three choices: let it define our training day, destroy our confidence, or strengthen us. When we allow a mistake to determine our whole training day or destroy our confidence, we are not allowing ourselves to let the mistake make us better.

I believe we need to use ALL we learn during practice to strengthen mentally. We must remember that when we release that bar after a miss, we have a choice of how we will return from that miss. Later, when we are home from training, thinking about the miss or the “bad training day”, we can let it bum us out or think about what we learned and how we can show up tomorrow and work on it. Otherwise, soon, we have taken all those misses, all those mistakes, and “bad days” and allowed them to define our training day, our training cycle, and our worth. 

Instead, let’s learn from these days! We can journal about it and ask ourselves if something contributed to the “bad day” and how we can avoid that in the future. Essentially, outside of training, we want to think/journal about three things:

1. What went wrong, and what we can do differently.
2. What went right, and how to repeat that.
3. What we learned, and how to apply what we learned to future training sessions.‍

‍Visualisation and self-talk

Visualization can be challenging to get started and takes practice. Training the mind can be difficult, and it takes time to develop the skill, such as training in the gym. Visualization can be done any time of the day, before a training session, in the mornings while having coffee, or, my favorite—when lying down to sleep. Visualization can be done simply and for a very short time—for example, taking a moment to visualise completing a perfect snatch in tomorrow’s training session. Or we can work up to a lengthier visualization session to review an entire training session or competition.

When I visualize my lifts, I also like to imagine what I smell in the gym, what I hear around me, what I see around me, and how it FEELS to complete that fantastic lift. Getting as detailed as possible in your visualizing helps you feel the moment is authentic, and I believe this is more effective. Sometimes, it helps to watch videos of your lifts—the GOOD LIFTS (delete all those messy lifts or the misses from your phone!). That snatch you did a month ago felt confident and effortless. The clean & jerk from last week that you were nervous about but absolutely crushed. You do that lift, then practice closing your eyes and seeing it in your head.

Another trick I do is sometimes I see myself loading the weight I need on the bar, chalking up, approaching the bar, and completing the lift confidently and easily.

Along with visualizing outside the gym, positive self-talk is a way to boost our ego and remind ourselves that we can accomplish our goals because we are SHOWING UP, WORKING HARD, and MAKING OURSELVES PROUD! We can be intentional with how we speak to ourselves and reframe our thinking by reminding ourselves of the good things we are doing in training rather than only focusing on the feelings of failure. Like visualization, positive self-talk can be tough to master and make a habit, especially during tough training days when finding the good things is hard. But with practice, it becomes easier and more manageable. We CAN find something good in every training day to focus on, highlight the good things, learn from the not-so-good stuff, and remind ourselves just how truly amazing you are!

Here are some things I do to help my positive mindset:

• Journal! I like to write highlights from the day in my training journal. This can be something I did well, felt good, or even something as simple as I AM AMAZING! I AM SO GOOD AT SNATCHING!
• At the end of each training week, I often summarize it by writing down three things I am proud of. When I start feeling negative, I look at those three positive things to remind myself of the good stuff.
• I focus on what I did WELL instead of what I didn’t do. This goes back to LEARNING: I recognize the things I could have done better, but instead of dwelling on them or thinking I have failed, I focus on how I can use them as opportunities to improve and grow. I remind myself that I am human and not perfect, but that I am a HARD WORKER, and I show up for myself, and that through every training day, I will make myself PROUD.