Powerlifting Mentality: Embrace Struggle

Powerlifting… and sport in general is not supposed to be easy. 

The biggest wins we get from sport are the ability to overcome adversity and struggle in a structured format. This skill translates to other aspects of life. 

A problem I see with powerlifters is running away from this struggle instead of towards it. 

This struggle can present itself as training hard enough, working your way through injury, managing lifestyle factors, or many other forms of adversity. 

Regardless of the form of adversity your mentality and ability to remain strong will be imperative for overcoming adversity and embracing the struggle.

Overcoming The Struggle Of Injury

Personally embracing struggle is something I did not do well early in my powerlifting career. 

I would run away from pain. 

Pain can be a nuanced topic. I am not saying push through injury but as a powerlifter you must be able to differentiate between pain and injury.

When you are new they can feel very similar or even the same. 

Learning to differentiate between pain that you can push through and injury you cannot is an imperative part of making it far in powerlifting. 

You can often quantify this into one of three categories:

1. Minor pain that you can either push through or dial back weight a little.

2. A little more pain where training the lift as a variation or pulling back weight a little more is required.

3. More major pain or an injury where you are unable to continue using the affected area at all or without major changes.

If you are experiencing the third you should immediately consult a physiotherapist however I think often in my personal experience I would be experiencing one of the first two categories and treat it like the third.

One of the strongest tools we can have as a lifter is being able to identify the level of pain and respond accordingly without over or under reacting. 

Pain can be a struggle we deal with in training but embracing it and overcoming it makes us better athletes.

Are You Running Away From Fatigue?

A large part of what makes up coaching today is “fatigue management”. As a coach however I find the athletes that get the best results do not stray away from doing hard fatiguing things. Instead embrace them.

Some lifters get too in their head about fatigue and feel as if the entire program needs to be changed and adjusted for them to have less fatigue.

Often even if this helps in the short term it is not what is best long term. 

If we want to make progress we need to induce fatigue and work hard. Without fatigue building not enough stimulus is being created for progression.

Fatigue is not inherently a bad thing but instead a byproduct of the process needed for progression. 

Of course you do not want to have high fatigue all the time and that's why fatigue management is a thing but being under fatigued or under stimulated can hold back progress just as much.

As an athlete it is important to be able to report how you are feeling while being removed from outcomes. 

Providing feedback to your coach can be important however if you are allowing this to affect your mindset around training you can dictate the outcome.

“Whether you think you can or think you cant you are usually right”

This is true when it comes to your feelings around training. If you come into a session thinking you are too fatigued and it's going to go horribly you will probably be right.

Mindset can determine the outcome of training the more neutral or positive you can stay the better.

How To Structure Your Mindset

Positivity

Positivity and neutrality are the best path to a positive training outcome for a session.

If you come into sessions negative and with doubt they will go awful 9/10 however if you come in positive they will probably go well at least 7/10 times.

Bad sessions are inevitable… The worst thing you can do when you have one is to over react. 

This is how one bad session can spiral into many bad sessions. 

When a bad session occurs try to stay positive and if you can not try to stay neutral.

Remind yourself things will not always feel great and that is okay, it is part of the process so embrace it. 

Additionally, never make assumptions about what the future holds. Some of my best sessions started with me feeling fatigued and sore.

I did not assume it would go bad but instead stayed neutral and just focused on executing what I needed to execute for things to go well and things ended up moving great. 

Even if that did not happen that would have been okay but the important part is I allowed for it to be a possibility by not getting in my head.

If you embrace the struggle you fall in love with the process.

Embrace Hard Work

Most high level powerlifters have one thing in common… A ton of muscle mass on their frame.

More muscle mass increases our potential for strength in the long term. 

As powerlifters the further we want to go the more muscle mass we need to get there.

Additionally if you are feeling you are not making the progress you want you probably need more muscle mass.

While the main lifts (Barbell Squat, Bench, and Deadlift) will build muscle it's pretty commonly accepted that it should be expected that it's less than what can be built from accessories.

Accessories and machine movements allow us to push a higher relative intensity (RPE) with a lower recovery or fatigue cost than the big three. 

They also allow us to make adjustments to movements that emphasize range of motion which can be helpful for building muscle as well. Often for powerlifting purposes we optimize our main movements to reduce range of motion and lift more weight.

The lifters struggling with progress the most happen to be the ones that are sandbagging their accessories and not working hard on them.

Aside from losing out on muscle gains they are also likely missing out on some higher intensity exposures without a high recovery cost that very well may be needed to produce progression in strength. 

So if you want to make better progress go into your accessories ready to push hard. Embrace working hard through struggle and you will be better for it. 

Thank you for reading. If you are looking for coaching please DM me on Instagram (@maxhallfitness). If you like fitness and anime you also may enjoy my YouTube (@maxhallfitness). Check out this short video I did on why I love powerlifting below.