Penultimate (adjective): Definition- the next to last
 
This is my penultimate article for Performance Menu. As most of you know, the magazine is shutting down after the December 2021 issue. We’ve had a long, successful run, and we’re ready to close this chapter of the Catalyst Athletics journey. Next month will be my final words to you, our readers. October 2008 was my first PM article, and I’ve never missed a month since.
 
For those of you who didn’t read last month’s issue, let me tell you what I’m doing. I decided to make a trilogy with these last three articles. I’ve been in weightlifting for three decades now, so I’m going to dedicate my final three articles to the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my first, second, and third decades in the sport. One decade per article. This is the second one.
 
Last month, I wrote about my first ten years (1990-2000), when I worked my way up the national ladder and rose to the peak years of my career. The main lesson from that first decade was that weightlifting is a “stand in line and wait your turn” sport, where you have to commit years of hard work to slowly inch your way upwards through the ranks. Whatever your personal level of potential is, you’re not going to get it quickly in this sport. The weightlifting gods aren’t that generous. When I started lifting at 17, I dreamed of someday making it to the medal podium at the National Championship. I eventually got there. It took me eight years. This is how the sport works, and it’s one of the most important things a weightlifter needs to understand.
 
This month, I want to talk to you about the biggest thing I learned in my second decade (2001-2010). You know how a hangover always follows a fun night of partying, right? Just like the Great Depression followed the Roaring Twenties in US history? Well, that’s kinda what this article is going to be about. 1990 through 1999 was a steady stretch of progress for me. Then, right before the end of the decade, I suffered a devastating knee injury that knocked me out of competition for three years.
 
Just like many of you have experienced, I worked my ass off and enjoyed the fruits of my labors through progress and success. And then, the plane crashed into the mountain. I got hurt, and I lost it all.
 
This article is going to be about the biggest lesson of my second decade…how to rebuild yourself. I know, I know…you might be thinking this is going to be another garden-variety “you have to keep pushing through the setbacks” type of thing.
 
We’re going to go deeper than that, because it takes more than a cliché sports-poster motivational phrase to bring you back from the depths. I didn’t truly understand this until I went through it, and I want to share as much as I can about it…just in case you ever find yourself in the kind of hole I was in.
 
It has to start with YOU
 
Once again, I’m going to use a boxing example to build this idea. In a few days, heavyweights Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder are going to fight for the third time, with the world championship title on the line. Their first fight was a draw, and their second one was a massacre.
 
Deontay Wilder has built his career on frightening punching power. He’s rated by many experts as one of the hardest punchers in history. His knockouts are vicious, and they’ve given him an aura of terror. There hasn’t been a heavyweight as scary as him since Mike Tyson. Nobody had ever been able to beat him. Most couldn’t even last a few rounds.
 
And when he faced Tyson Fury in their second fight, he lost it all. Fury literally beat the living hell out of Wilder, winning by TKO in the seventh round when Wilder’s cornerman threw in the towel to rescue him from the merciless beating he was taking. It was a completely humiliating fight. Wilder had built up an image as the boogeyman, a destroyer. And Fury whipped him like a rented mule.
 
He lost his title, his undefeated record…and his identity. His invincible aura was gone. And how did he respond? Sadly, he responded with excuses and finger-pointing. For the sake of brevity in this article, I won’t go into the whole messy story. Suffice to say Deontay Wilder has blamed everyone and everything under the sun for his loss.
 
Boxing fans have been watching this saga with sadness and disappointment, because Wilder can’t seem to say the obvious truth…THE SAME TRUTH we all have to accept when we fail: I didn’t get the job done. It’s on me. And only I can fix it.
 
This is the truth when you have bad workouts. It’s the truth when you bomb out of a meet. It’s the truth when you go through a long period of stagnation. It’s the way you have to look at your entire weightlifting life.
 
And here’s the crazy thing: even when it’s not the truth, it’s still the truth. Let me explain.
 
Let’s say you’re in the gym doing some snatches. You’ve worked up to a big weight, something close to your personal record. You chalk up, grab the bar, and start your pull from the floor. And right as you’re in the middle of the lift, some idiot walks directly in front of your platform. Complete distraction, total violation of basic lifting etiquette, and you miss the snatch.
 
In this situation, was there a legitimate outside factor that made you miss that snatch? Yeah, there was. But a mentally tough weightlifter won’t blame the distraction. A mentally tough weightlifter will say, “Yeah, some jerk walked in front of me. But that’s no excuse. I should have been sharp enough to make the lift anyway. It’s on me.”
 
People sometimes run away from this mindset because…it’s tough. It gives you nowhere to hide, and it places the responsibility directly on your shoulders. But that’s where the beauty lies. Here, let me give you another example straight from weightlifting. If this doesn’t motivate you, nothing will.
 
Yuri Zacharavich
 
I’m going to self-plagiarize this part, but you’ll thank me for it. A few years ago, I wrote a blog article for the Catalyst website about one of the greatest weightlifters of all time, and the lesson we can learn from his story. This is it:
 
How many of you have heard of a weightlifter named Yuri Zacharevich?  Probably not many, I’m guessing.  He’s one of the greatest in history, but his prime was in the 80s.  So, he’s before your time, unless you happen to be a veteran or historian.
 
You newbies have never seen anything like Yuri. It’s still almost incomprehensible how good he was. On March 4^th, 1983, he snatched 200 kg (440 lbs.) and clean and jerked 240 kg (529 lbs.) at 100 kg bodyweight (220 lbs.). He had just turned 20 years old at the time, so he was still a junior.
 
I want you to stop and think for a second about a guy doing a 440 lb. snatch and 529 lb. C&J at 220 lbs. bodyweight…and 20 years old. Nobody had ever seen anything like this. I’ve watched the video of it many times. All the old suits in the front row of the audience were shaking their heads with their mouths open. He absolutely eclipsed all the world records that day, junior and senior. The whole sport was basically in shock.
 
Needless to say, the future was ripe pickings for Yuri. He was poised to win two or three Olympic titles and as many world championships as he wanted. Then it all fell apart, big time.  Later that same year (1983), Yuri dislocated his elbow attempting another world record. And I mean he really tore the piss out of that thing. The damage was so extensive that the doctors had to rebuild his elbow with synthetic tendons. Keep in mind, this was 1983 technology. That means they probably used tire rubber or something.
 
It could have easily been the end of the road. But he fought his way back to the top. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Yuri competed in the 110 kg bodyweight class (242 lbs.).  The current world record in the snatch was 203.5 kg (448 lbs.).  Yuri snatched 200, 205, and 210 kg (462 lbs.).  That’s right. He broke the world record on his second attempt, and then jumped five more kilos and made it. He also did a 245 kg C&J (540 lbs.) that day to win the gold medal and set a world record in the total of 455 kg (1,003 lbs.). Much like his 1983 performance, he annihilated everything in his path. 
 
Think about the balls it must have taken to jump under a 462 lb. snatch after suffering the kind of injury he had five years earlier. Big injuries obviously mess up your body, but they also screw with your mind. I can verify that personally. This guy not only came back from it…he came back and tried weights that were even bigger than the ones that had broken him. That kind of courage is…well, it’s hard to imagine. 
 
I’m going to write some of Yuri’s own words in here. Years after he retired, he did an interview with World Weightlifting magazine. They asked him about his 1983 injury, and how it affected him mentally. Here’s what he said: 
 
“First I thought, ‘Hell, that’s the end of the world.’ Today, in retrospect, I can see it was one of the major turning points in my career. It made me realize that there is a time in every one’s life when you must clench your teeth together and your fate only depends on your determination.  Finally, I overcame the injury, because I wanted to lift again so much. And later on, I achieved even better results than before. It was a great thing.”
 
That’s the lesson
 
As I mentioned earlier, I had a devastating injury in late 1999. In one split second, everything I had worked for was basically wiped out. I don’t want this article to turn into my own personal life story, so I won’t chronicle all the details. In a nutshell, I spent three years in a black hole before I finally decided to make a comeback, which eventually led to the pinnacle moment of my career…competing in the 2004 Olympic Trials. Like Yuri, I had my greatest accomplishment after I came back from the injury.
 
Did anybody help me along the way? Sure. My coach helped me. My family helped me. My teammates helped me. But that’s all they did…HELP ME. They didn’t get me back to the top. I had to do that myself, and that’s the biggest lesson I learned in my second decade.
 
If you’re a coach, you’re going to have athletes who need to hear this. They need to learn it. That’s your role in the process. You give them as much help as you can, and then it’s up to them.
 
Here is where we see one of weightlifting’s greatest secrets. The lessons we learn in the sport spill over into the rest of our lives. Everything we just said can be applied to going through a divorce, losing your job, surviving the death of a loved one, or any other hard time you want to name. You’re all adults. You know what I’m taking about.
 
Yes, we need good support systems. Yes, there are some things you literally can’t handle by yourself. But I think you get the main idea I’m trying to communicate. At the end of the day, self-reliance will always be your most valuable weapon. Think of any great individual success story you’ve ever heard, and you’re always going to find that lesson at the core of it. The things that happen outside you are important, but they’ll never be as important as what happens inside you.
 
That’s the best thing that stands out in my mind when I think about my second decade in weightlifting. Next month, I’ll share the last one with you. Until then, brothers and sisters.