Effective Application of Psychology in Weightlifting

Dozens of articles exist on all aspects of weightlifting technique, drills, and strength, but one sorely overlooked topic is the importance of the mental aspect of weightlifting. Mental training is often neglected in favor of physical training,  causing an overall detriment of competition performance. This article is focused on the mental aspect of training in weightlifting so you can transfer training lifts to competition numbers.

Lifters on the world stage often seem to approach their competition lifts like it's the most casual thing in the world. Other lifters look like they are going to die from anxiety and stress. The key is to be able to bring forth a certain state of mind which you can develop through visualization.

Visualization is a technique where you memorize how you lift in training, encapsulating all five senses to form a strong, almost instinctive memory that you can bring out anytime. There are many ways to bring forth this state of mind.

On heavy lifts in training, take deep slow breaths and focus as much as you can on how you feel, what you see, what you hear, what you feel, and smell before the lift, to ingrain into your memory. As you repeat this dozens and hundreds of times, all of those sensations will become your own unique "feeling," almost like a summonable instinctive memory or mental state that's hypnotizing yourself to do the movements for you, to reach the best state of mind for competitions. As you practice visualization, you should be able to bring forth this feeling whenever you are, whether in class, school, or laying on the bed. Once you can close your eyes and focus, and almost feel like you're in the gym, smelling the sweat, feeling the chalk in your hands, the physical exertion of snatching, then you will have a powerful mental tool for optimal performance.

Cues are another way to help develop visualization. As a weightlifter uses a cue to help ingrain proper technique in training, over time the accumulated reps in training with the cue causes the lifter to automatically move in a certain desired way. A good example is using the cue "stand tall" to help ingrain properly extending on the second pull. Eventually this develops to a point at which when the athlete thinks of the cue, the body and mind can virtually forget about the present and bring forth the movement when doing the lifts, whether in training or competition.

Gaining a strong visualization ability will help fight against the stress and anxiety of competition by utilizing the hundreds of lifts in training to "lift just like in training" on the platform.

Ilya Illin has said that he performs extremely well in competition because he rehearses his lifts in competition in his mind and in training thousands of times before actually competing. When he competes on stage, it is almost as if he has already done the lift and is just replaying it for the audience's benefit.

Here you can see he doesn't try to hype himself but is rather calming himself down and channeling his training to reach his best state of mind before doing the last attempt.

The mental aspect of training should be focused on helping you develop this feeling to be as powerful as possible, to overcome even the greatest mental stresses on platform. Thus, in training, you will want to do your pre-lift ritual to be the same way you lift in competition. If you hype yourself up and yell before every heavy attempt, you should do the exact same in competition. If you are relatively calm on heavy attempts in training but then get hyped up on coffee and yell a lot, it will negatively affect your competition performance. The goal is to do to the same thing as you do in training as in competition as much as you can to "lift like in training."

If you can develop a strong visualization ability, then you will have an ability to maintain your optimal technique and state of mind in competition. On the platform, you become hyperaware of your five senses. Training hyperawareness of the five senses will increase your visualization ability, which, in turn, is useful for diminishing the stress of the competition platform.

Other useful articles to read if you want to read further:

https://www.crossfitinvictus.com/blog/the-science-of-visualization/
http://www.catalystathletics.com/article/1843/Adapting-to-the-Grind-Mental-Toughness-Visualization-for-We/
http://breakingmuscle.com/sports-psychology/see-how-its-done-6-lessons-on-visualization