Intangible gains - reflections from and about my more resilient brain.
“Butterflies are fine, as long as they fly in formation”
— ADI BERKMAN, WILL BERKMAN'S MUM
I’m an anxious person. Anxiety can take the most fun things and make them a huge source of stress and worry for me. I hold a phD in anticipating the worst case scenario of just about anything. So take a high stress environment like a sporting competition, and boy can I make a mental mess of it.
This is something I’ve worked on a lot over the years. I was first involved in more competitive sport at age 15 with running. This is a bit dark, but from then up until only a few years ago in the days leading up to competition I would hope that I was in an accident so I had a reason to withdraw. I know right. It’s literally a hobby that I engage in voluntarily for no other reason than enjoyment/self-satisfaction.
So the cool thing is, I don’t do that anymore. Lit. I also have a much greater ability to compose myself in competition settings, which lends itself of course to greater enjoyment but also to better sporting performances.
I’ve reflected a lot on this recently. I competed this weekend and leading up to this competition I was the most excited I have ever been for any competition ever. This on its own is huge for me. To be excited about competition reflects some massive gains. And I was like, really excited. Minimal nerves, max pumped. So sick.
So here are some lessons I’ve learned over the years. I think they’re valuable.
To state the fucking obvious, powerlifting is a hobby.
This still needs to be said. Even at the top level, no lifter is making bank from powerlifting competition directly. We all do it for fun. Therefore, things that enhance fun and enjoyment within the context of powerlifting ought to be somewhere on your priority list. Of course making gains is fun; improving is fun. But it’s not uncommon to have periods of little to no progress — in not only competition settings but in your training too. So, enjoying lifting when things don’t or aren’t going well becomes important —
1. So you can enjoy your hobby obviously, but
2. And I won’t go down this rabbit hole here, but boy do you need to enjoy lifting for liftings sake if you are to stick this sport out for any noteworthy length of time and to make any noteworthy longterm gains.
If you’re a powerlifter yourself I can probably safely assume you got in to this sport for one or more of a couple of reasons — to have fun, to meet like-minded friends or to improve some element of your health. Don’t lose sight of those things in the pursuit of big numbers or on competition day. Even amid my worst performances or my longest plateaus, I am in the best health of my life, I spend hours surrounded by some of my favourite people in the gym every week and I still delight in throwing different stimuli at my body to see how it responds and what it’s capable of.
Don’t forget to have fun. It’s literally the whole fucking point.
IG post: Things I’ve achieved through lifting that have nothing to do with getting bigger or stronger
Your next competition isn’t the most important.
Something I say to my lifters a lot is that your next comp is probably not your most important one. It often feels like your next comp is the day you want to pull it all together. You want to nail all three lifts on the one day and finally pull together that dream total.
Like yeah sure that’s a worthy goal of every comp. It’s literally our objective. But that pressure that we can place on ourselves to make “today the day” can also lead you to feel absolutely crushed and throw in the towel when the first thing goes wrong — and oftentimes shit does.
I’ve had comps where I’ve missed a lift on strength and I’ve crumbled. I’ve had comps where I’ve missed a lift on a technicality and I’ve crumbled. This not only took away all of my enjoyment but also seriously impaired my performance for the rest of the day.
This week I failed my third squat on depth, having never had depth issues. Okay, that fucking sucks. But there are still two lifts to go so you can either be a big baby about it and ruin the rest of the day. Or have a minute to be disappointed then get back to work and back to having fun.
I’ve also had this weird glute/hip pain now and then which affects my deadlift after benching sometimes. That happened at comp this week and I felt a lot of emotions — stress, fear, disappointment. I tried my first deadlift warm up at 60kg and it was total agony. I grimaced, I got upset, then I put my headphones in and tried to remedy it the best I know how. We dropped my opener 17.5kg and each warm up and each attempt was just a “we’ll see how it goes”. I didn’t let myself lose it.
I ended up with a third pull only 10kg less than what I had planned. I managed the pain somewhat but more so I managed my response to it. I got to finish the comp with my head held high, put up a performance I was proud of, rally around one of my best friends as she pulled a massive PB and I got to enjoy my hobby — because I had perspective.
In seven years of competing I have never gone 9/9 (ffs). So in seven years of competing, in every competition something has gone wrong that has had the capacity to throw me off and spoil my day. Either I could let it, or I could manage my reaction. I’m not an anomaly. You’re gonna fail lifts too. So while you can do your best not too (which I’d also encourage, obviously), it would bode well to devote some of your preparation to not losing your mind when things don’t go according to plan.
IG post: Most recent competition wrap up
Your competition day performance won’t always reflect your preparation or your perceived/expected capabilities.
If I had a dollar for every IG post posted that acknowledged “a great prep, but just couldn’t pull it together on the day” I would not be writing blog posts to drive traffic to my business, lmao.
This week I PB’d my total with no individual lift PBs, because never not once have I executed all three lifts to the best of my overall capability on the same day. Again, I’m not an anomaly. This happens often. There’s a reason why people include training PBs and comp PBs in their IG bios 🤪
Tying back to my previous point, you would do well to relinquish some of the pressure of “today is the day”. It can still be a cracker with one of your lifts not playing ball. A day that you nail your squat and bench but fuck your deadlift is still a good day. A day that you fall a couple of kilos short of each of your training PBs but manage that under competition conditions is still a good day.
Heard a quote today: “relationships are the currency of life”. Bruh.
For the love of all things good, diversify your self-worth.
Your performance on one day of competition matters a lot less when you’re a nice person, a good friend, when you give charitably, when you do good work, when you possess qualities that you are proud of and do other things that make you feel good about yourself.
It doesn’t matter what the basket is, when you put all of your self-worth in the one, it’s risky business.
If you derive all of your worth from your work, how do you feel when you’re made redundant?
If you derive all of your worth from your partner, what happens when you split?
If you derive all of your worth from your appearance, what happens when your body changes?
And if you derive all of your worth from your sport, how do you feel about yourself when you put up an absolute flop of a performance? Sustain an injury that sidelines you? When you cease to make progress for some prolonged period of time?
Sport is much more enjoyable when you’re not leaning on it as your only source of self-gratification or self-esteem. You give yourself license to have a lot more fun when you remove the worry of having your entire self-perception shattered by a subpar day.
Billie x