In which I realise that something has changed significantly: there is no longer any “try”. On the platform, there is only a good lift, or there is no lift. There are no points for trying, no marks for effort, no bonus for working hard, and no Miss Congeniality award. And there’s definitely no sick note from your Mum.
In the run up to the British, and my first chance to qualify for consideration for selection, it’s easy to fixate on numbers. In any competition, it’s easy to fixate on numbers. And those numbers can become a barrier, looming up and blocking the light, blocking the way past.
The number of kilos lifted. The weight of an opening attempt. The weight of the increment between second and third. Body weight. AH points (or Wilks points, if you’re IPF. Sinclair, if you’re a weightlifter.) Height, speed, time, distance, power. Points. Every sport comes with numbers, somewhere.
“Don’t worry about the numbers. Just go out there and lift. Try your best.”
Aye, right.
But, I do worry. (This is ok. Worrying is my default setting.) I worry about the numbers, because it’s only about the numbers. The numbers get me onto a list. It will be a list of one female lifter or zero female lifters. I’m not competing against another person to be considered for selection–that’s a whole other post, about how this sport needs to grow in Scotland–but against a standard I need to reach. If you’d asked me a few months ago, I would have laughed and given you a really self-satisfied smile. I was on track to sail past the minimum. Then life happened. It tends to, right when you don’t need it to.
All the reasons to make a mess of things are no excuse
So, when I was sitting on the floor of the gym on Friday, swearing and not-crying-it’s-a-high-pollen-count-honest when I messed up when I tripped over a number, I realised that a switch had been tripped. The excellent Mister Parkes was trying to cheer me up and make me feel better, reminding me that I was doing pretty well, and trying really hard to get back, considering the rough few months I’ve had.
Because it’s true–I’ve had an awful few months. And I got grumpy (sorry, Ben), because none of that matters.
Oh, it has had an effect. A huge effect. It trashed my training, my sleep, my emotions, and my focus for three solid months. It contributed to a horrible mess at my last competition. But it doesn’t matter. For now, the only thing that matters is the numbers. When I walk out onto the platform and lie on that bench, I have three attempts to meet some numbers.
“Trying” is not the polite term for being a bit rubbish
“Well…. I’ll try,” carries more than a whiff of assumed failure. It wobbles with doubt. (I am so trying to avoid going Yoda as I write this, but, you know. “Try” and “do” are just not the same.)
It took me a long time to learn to value effort, and the repeated failures inherent in trying, or to apply the “fall down seven times, get up eight” mentality to something other than recovering from surgeries, and re-learning to walk.
At school and college I was in a peculiar atmosphere where trying was the last thing that should show; success only counted if it was effortless. The reliable advice to “try, try, and try again” was swapped out for something more along the lines of “fine, then, try, but either impress us or stop wasting our time.” (I never said it was a positive or supportive atmosphere. This was, for example, a school where we worked out other people’s running average percentages after every exam, and the enviable grade in your report was a 10E for as many subjects as possible: a perfect score, but with no visible effort.)
But lifting taught me that trying counts more than I ever imagined. No one gets strong without effort. No one is born strong. Even Jennifer Thompson tells the story of being unable to bench a 20kg bar at the beginning. No one reaches their potential strength without a lot of work, repeated work, for years.
Learning to love the grind
The work is a pleasure. I like the grind. I like being able to do things that I used to be rubbish at, and able to do them just because I kept on pushing. I like lifting, again and again, and not giving up. And I like that I like this, rather than pretending I didn’t care about it, never wanted to be good at it anyway, stupid lifting, huh! (Etc., etc., continue hair-tossing teenage sulk at will.) It was a bloody glorious discovery–that trying wasn’t a sign of weakness, and that going from completely rubbish to slightly less rubbish was an achievement rather than a slightly sordid secret. (I know, most people figure this out when they are still at primary school.)
Putting in the work is valued, because that’s what makes progress happen. It’s the only thing that does.
(There are two videos of ring push ups in that instagram post above:
some progress to kind-of-Archers after three months of daily practice,
and some horrible first wobbly attempts at just plain pushups. With bonus swearing.)
And obviously I like the results: building up until I can rely on a weight that previously flattened me, and then using it for a warm up. I like these numbers–the increments and measures of progress, kilo by kilo, rep by rep.
Sometimes those increments slow down or stop–when life gets in the way, or the numbers get in your head, or something else dumps you out onto a plateau–but the trying, and the working still matters. It will still pay off, eventually. It’s a cliche, but just keep showing up, keep trying, keep working, even when it’s going slowly, or going horribly, or going nowhere.
“Just trying” has got me a long way, and I am absolutely not going to stop.
And then we hit Yoda territory…
So it seems weird that there is a stopping point, a cut off where it suddenly doesn’t apply. You try, and the trying matters. And than it doesn’t. There is only doing, or not doing. Good lift, or no lift.
Then it will be right back to trying, and working, as soon as I’m off the platform. Trying to get stronger, trying to get better for the next one. But out there? There are no mitigating circumstances, just getting it done.
All the points for trying
But aye, here’s the slow donkey getting it at last: while there are no points just for trying, all the points come from the trying (and the failing) you did before. That’s where the trying pays off.