Today’s training included snatching. As many of you will know, this is an Olympic lift that to the casual observer may look simple (‘it’s just chucking the bar from the ground to overhead’) but as anyone who has ever tried to snatch can attest, is actually a highly technical lift that typically takes many (many…) years to learn and develop.

Although I am reasonably strong in many lifts, the snatch is one of my weakest. Being the analytical sort that I am (I suppose a lawyer with a philosophy degree is probably doomed to over think things every now and then…), I’ve thought about my lift, watched tape of others snatching, read books and articles all in an attempt to improve my snatch.

Each and every time I snatch, I approach my lifts with a head full of doubt, the “my snatch is really pathetic” refrain playing endlessly. This invariably spirals into thoughts of missing the lift, how stupid I’m going to look and feel (the KGs on the bar being relatively few) when I DO miss the lift. No doubt, everyone will think “what a crap lifter”.

This morning, as I stood in front of the bar preparing to snatch, it hit me, I’ve been adding too much ‘weight’ to the bar. Not in the form of actual, physical weight, but in the sense of attributing a significance to making the lift that is wholly disproportionate to the actual lift. So what if I fail the lift? Everyone, including Olympic medalists, fail lifts. Failing a lift doesn’t make me ‘bad’, it just means I’ve got something to work on improving. The only way to guarantee I won’t fail is to stop trying. Stop trying and I similarly guarantee I won’t succeed.

Looks like I’ll be snatching a much ‘lighter’ bar in the future.