In my Nationals summary blog post from earlier this week, I mentioned that one of the hardest things for me to grasp are the excuses that follow National meets. Social media gets filled up with Instagram posts and tweets with 9000 reasons they didn't do well or 6 specific things that happened to them that caused them to fail. I understand that there is a significant difference between a reason for lack of success and an excuse for lack of success but far too often I think we fall on the side of excuses. Excuses only show up when failure shows up.
The number one excuse I heard for lack of success in this year's nationals was inconsistent judging. Was the judging inconsistent? Maybe. Is a subjective group of judges determining the results of a National competition always the best route? Maybe not. However, blaming your performance or lack thereof on a judging error is a cop out. Do judges make bad calls? Absolutely! However, there is generally some reason that two out of three or all of the judges were put in a place to question the quality of your lift. I have never seen a lift get turned down that was absolutely perfect. In fact, every time I've seen a red light there has been something wrong technically with the movement that caused at least one judge to question it's quality.
You know who never gets called for a press out on the snatch or jerk? The people with incredibly perfect lockouts. You know who never gets called for their elbows touching their knees in the clean? The lifters with incredibly fast elbows and a perfect rack position. When your technique and quality of movement is not excellent, you open the door for judges to determine your results. If your movement is dead-on and there is no room for questioning its quality, you take the judges out of the equation.
I was called for a press out on my third clean and jerk at 150. I have watched the video and I still have yet to find conclusive evidence to warrant the red lights. However, when I've watched the video from the side view, what I do notice is that my hips and head are behind the bar and my back leg is not as bent as I'd like it to be. This is called technical error. That technical error did put the bar out in front of my head and it did create opportunity for my shoulders and elbows to at least bobble. That opportunity was enough to get me two red lights. The call may not have been perfect but the opportunity was created by my own lifting. Nobody is to blame for technical imperfection except myself.
After a National meet, excuses are as easy to find as the stars in the Texas sky. The reality is however that those excuses are exactly that, excuses to give a competitor reason to blame somebody else for their poor performance. Fix your technique, fix the errors in your lifting, and train harder. Don't blame something else or someone else for the result. Weightlifting is very simple, complete the snatch and clean and jerk with precision and quality and the judges will be forced to give you white lights. Open the door for anything else and it's your own fault.