Reasons To Train Weightlifting That Have Nothing To Do With Lifting Heavy Or Competing
We love weightlifting, and we definitely love the vibes leading into a comp and after one. Watching one of our athletes walk out at a state comp is one of the best days of the year.
One thing we don't talk about enough is all the brilliant reasons weightlifting is a fantastic way to train when you have no desire to compete. These are some of our favourites.
Feeling strong and capable in your body, for the first time you can ever remember
Plenty of people arrive at the gym having spent years training with the goal of changing how their body looks. What tends to happen after a few months of weightlifting is that the goalposts move.
You notice your overhead position feels easier than it did in June. You feel your legs drive better and your bar path feel tighter. You know the lift was good before anyone says anything. You pick things up differently, you move differently, and you stop asking your body to be something other than what it is.
90 uninterrupted minutes where you put yourself first
Your phone is in your bag. Nobody can reach you, nothing needs deciding, and the programme in front of you already knows what you are doing today.
For a lot of the people who train here, that is the only stretch of the week where no one needs anything from them. You warm up, you lift, you talk rubbish with the person sharing your platform, and you leave with a clearer head than you walked in with.
Meeting your new best friend, who you would never have crossed paths with otherwise
Weightlifting puts a 26 year old teacher and a 43 year old CEO on the same platform for 90 minutes, twice a week, for years.
The friendships that come out of that are some of the closest our members have. They are built on watching each other lift, knowing what each other is working on, and being there on the bad days as well as the good ones. Nobody books their first session expecting that part.
Being surrounded by people who are already proud just for turning up
The standard at this gym is effort. Someone who turns up on a hard week and works through their session properly gets the same respect as someone who hits a lifetime best.
That changes how it feels to walk in the door on a day when you are tired, or busy, or already 3 sessions deep in a rough month. The people in the room are pleased to see you before you have lifted anything.
Teaching yourself you can do hard things
Weightlifting is humbling in a way that turns out to be useful. You will miss lifts. You will have days where 70% feels heavier than 90% did last week. You reset the bar and you go again 90 seconds later, in front of everyone.
The feeling of making 1% progress, in a month where nothing went above 80%, is what keeps our long term members here. That is a skill you take with you into everything else.
Having a space in your week where you get to be fully yourself
All quirks accepted and encouraged. The chalk rituals, the sitting on the floor between sets, the very specific playlist, the noise people make on a heavy clean.
Most adults spend the majority of their week being a slightly managed version of themselves. The gym floor is one of the few places where that stops for an hour and a half, and where the person next to you is being just as much themselves.
Falling in love with how good it feels to nail your technique
The snatch and the clean and jerk do not run out. You can train them for 10 years and still be refining the same positions.
An athlete can add nothing to the bar for 8 weeks and have a much better snatch at the end of it, because the timing of the second pull finally landed. That feeling, with no care at all for what is on the bar, is a complete reason to train. It is what our coaches spend most of their time on.
Finding a style of training that challenges you and humbles you, and is heaps of fun
There is a version of training where you turn up, do the sets, and leave without thinking about it much. Weightlifting is not that. It asks for your full attention for 2 seconds at a time and it tells you immediately how you went.
It is also good fun. The room is loud, people take the piss out of each other, and everyone is having a go at something difficult at the same time.
Meeting a bunch of likeminded people and watching them achieve their goals
Everyone at this gym is on their own individual programme, so the person warming up beside you is doing a completely different session with completely different goals. You still know exactly where they are at.
You count their plates, you stay back to load their bar when they are having a hard week, and you are happy for them when they hit a lifetime best on a Thursday afternoon in October. If they win, you win.
Come and have a look
Every athlete at Melbourne West Barbell Club is coached properly from day one, at whatever weight they are lifting. Programmes are written individually, injury history is factored in, and the coaching standard stays the same whether or not you ever want to compete.
If you want to spend the next 12 months learning the lifts, feeling better in your body, and training alongside people who are pleased to see you, that is a complete goal on its own. We coach a lot of people who are doing exactly that.
Your first session at the gym is free.
