Weightlifting: Where Perfectionism Goes to Die

Olympian Mattie Rogers is the only American weightlifter to medal at five consecutive World Championships. She holds the American record in the snatch, clean & jerk, and total. She also makes mistakes and tweaks on nearly all of her lifts. 

Your favorite professional weightlifter isn’t perfect. 

What your favorite professional weightlifter does have is a team of coaches that provide feedback after each lift to do a little more of “this” and a little less of “that.” In fact, Mattie recently made this clear in a recent Instagram post about a training session where she admitted: 

“The morning snatches I always try to use ‘perfect’ as a cue because I generally feel a little fatigue from the week, a little slow, a little just MEH, so focusing on HOW I’m moving the bar makes a huge difference. It leaves no room for where my brain wants to go, which is mmmmm idk about these. Is anything actually going to be perfect? Absolutely not. BUT the better I move the bar, the easier they’ll feel.”

If you’re a recovering perfectionist, weightlifting (and other skill-based fringe efforts) is an incredible way to shake the need to be perfect… because, well, there’s no such thing. 

In the meantime, treat your weightlifting days as an endless road of feedback, tweaks, and improvement. Once you become an Olympian, then you can relax into the reality that weightlifting is (still) an endless road of feedback, tweaks, and improvement. 

Keep going!