Scared of Big Weight

Over the past couple months much of what I have published surrounding lifting has been focused on technical proficiency and perfection of movement. The specific articles have spawned from working inside of a high school for the first time and especially with a group of students who have never performed the Olympic lifts before. With that in mind, I have been overly-cautious towards those in the weight room as to prevent injury and focus on performing the lifts correctly. However, we are eight weeks in to this semester and quite frankly the kids have figured it out. They are far from perfect but if I were to ask them to complete a snatch from the floor or a clean and jerk they could do it with a decent amount of weight and do it fairly well. It’s amazing how fast they picked it up and it’s equally amazing what five days of work per week will do as opposed to just a couple.
However, some of my severe focus on movement may have created a bit of a backlash on performance in the weight room. Admittedly so I have harped and harped on not putting too much weight on the bar until their technique has caught up to their strength. This is a hard lesson for the students to learn the first couple weeks but after that learning curve was corrected, they’ve been very good about avoiding weights they are not capable of completing well. However the pendulum now has swung to the other end. Not that they are moving well and have figured out and practiced the movements repetitively for weeks, it’s time to put weight on the bar. Today I had to stop a class and give them a little bit of a lecture on our ultimate goal in the weight room. Ultimately, we would like to see them lift heavy weight. Granted proper technique leads to heavyweight but unless you put any weight on the bar, that goal is never accomplished. I think my overzealous focus on proficiency has created a fear of a heavy barbell in my students. They are scared of picking up a bar that feels heavy for fear that they will not be able to complete the repetition perfectly. In response to that fear, they never put a heavy weight on the bar. This mindset has drifted into every portion of the workout and now they fear heavy weight in general.
This is an interesting response that I did not expect and one that may take a couple weeks to correct. Of course there are those who would just rather not work hard and lift heavy weight just because it requires them to put forth some sort of effort but these students are in the minority. Most of the students fear the heavier weights because they desire to be perfect in their movement. Ultimately that’s a good place to start from but inevitably heavy weight has to get on the bar.
Huge lesson learned for me as a coach and one that definitely transcends outside of my high school weightlifting gym. Be perfect. But don’t give yourself the unrealistic expectation that every repetition you ever complete will be such. Heavy weight has to be lifted. Strength gain comes from the stimulus provided by heavy load. Avoiding heavyweight at the risk of slight technical inefficiency defeats the purpose of the work. Risk must be taken. Put heavy weight on the bar! Otherwise the return on your work put in will be minimal if any return at all. Don’t be afraid of heavy weights. It’s the heavy weights that define and illuminate progress.