A Glimpse Behind the Curtain ...

I have always enjoyed watching movies and along with that love, I enjoy using movie quotes as much as possible. Today's post is a play on a movie line from The Wizard of Oz where you find Dorothy and her companions in the hall of the Great Oz and her dog Toto goes to a curtain and pulls it open to reveal the truth behind this Great Oz. The man now no longer hidden says, "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" ... today I desire to actually give you a glimpse behind the curtain of the journey to the platform in the picture.

The making of a World Champion weightlifter ...

From the outside looking in it can appear to be a graceful and steady upward climb. If you follow me on social sites I will post training lifts and more often then not the posts are lifts of success. The quotes I post are mostly rooted in encouragement and edification. I have even received comments of encouragement referencing "you were made for this", or "you make it look easy", and even "you are so motivated" ... who doesn't love encouragement like that?

Although the number of good days do outweigh the not so good ones, I want to be real for a moment and talk about those not so good days.

After losing Worlds last year by 1 kilo I went into a funk. My body had barely limped across the finish line with that competition in 2022 and typically a rest period of 7-10 days is taken and then the focus shifts to the next training cycle for the next competition which would be Nationals in March of 2023.

The road to Nationals looked like this after my rest period:

- sick for a week followed by 2 more weeks of no energy

- tendinitis turned to tendinosis

- Travel interruptions from December to March included Tennessee, Costa Rica, Florida, Bahamas, Florida

- Diet issues

- Hip issues

- Knee issues

- Sciatica the week of competition

- Missed lifts that shouldn't be missed going into the home stretch (which messes with your confidence)

- hotel fire alarms went off in the middle of the night interrupting sleep prior to lifting (it's hard to go back to sleep when there is no clarity if the alarms were an accident or if there is an issue)

- Opener was to be a National record attempt and my confidence was still struggling

I joke around about having superpowers, my spidey senses are a real thing, but truly I don't feel I possess anything that is unique and available to only me. I have days that it takes me long periods of time talking to myself just to go out to the gym - on those days i give myself permission to suck, but I'm going to make the effort. I have days that I get sick of the grind and move the workout to the next day. I have days that I wonder if this ship has sailed and maybe I'm done. I even had a day going into a competition that involved travel and expenses and I missed all my opener homework attempts - I sat on my timeout bucket with my head in my hands and cried as I imagined myself going to all that expense and trouble just to fail.

How does a person go from crying on an upside down bucket in their gym to winning the event and even taking home the Best Lifter award? Don't quit!

It sounds much easier than it truly is, but the secret to any type of success is continually moving towards the thing you desire to be successful in. Before leaving this post I hope you look clearly at the building blocks in the picture below as it clearly represents several aspects of success that are often "behind the curtain". Training, discipline, hard work, elation are all parts - but so is failure, rejection, injury and doubt.

Proverbs 24:16 says "A righteous man falls seven times, but rises again". Zig Ziglar said, "Getting knocked down in life is a given, getting up and moving forward is a choice".

Some practical things that I personally do:

1. Talk to myself as crazy as that may sound - I verbally encourage and correct myself.

2. In the area of lifting I have videos of my best lifts handy and I watch them. I see myself actually hitting the lift successfully over and over.

3. Follow encouraging people and look for encouraging quotes.

4. Reach out and encourage others.

5. Listen to encouraging, motivating podcasts/videos.

6. Set little goals as stepping stones to my big goals so I have more frequent feelings of accomplishment.

7. Just keep showing up!

The truth "behind the curtain" is that we are all the same, we all have successes and failures in life - we also have the same opportunity to stay down or to get back up and continue to press forward.

I want to encourage you today to not be moved by the length of time that something has knocked you down - if you make the decision is get up and press forward - that will be just a building block in your success story!