The Suspense of Coaching |Oympic Weightlifting
Coaching can be one of the most rewarding careers one can pursue. Many people don’t realize the amount of dedication and effort a coach puts into his or her athletes to ensure they succeed. Can you image putting thousands upon thousands of hours into teaching someone and then having to stand on the sidelines watching them perform and showcase everything they have worked for?
It’s goes something like this: the coach trains his or her athletes everyday focusing on correcting, cueing, mentoring and developing the athletes progressively toward success in competition. Little competitions will be held and the coach will travel with their athletes sometimes hundreds of miles to be there for them and watch all the hard work come to life. In Olympic Weightliftig a coach will eventually qualify an athlete for a national or international level event. More traveling is needed and a much more structured and personalized training environment are now necessary. Countless hours are put into drilling technique, building strength and peaking for this high level competition the athlete has qualified for.
Finally when it is time for the athlete to compete on the big stage the coach is responsible for ensuring they get a good amount of warmups without overdoing it and they must ensure the timing of the warmups to coincide with the lifts on stage are just right.
When the athletes walks on stage the coach must sit in the back and watch the athlete put all their training hours attained to the ultimate test. At this exact moment as a coach you can feel your heart beating out of your chest, your palms get sweaty and you can barely breathe as you watch seemingly helpless at this point after so many hours of preparation. As your athletes hits their lifts you can feel yourself leaning hard into the lift as if you can somehow make a difference. You jump up and down as they pull under and sometimes struggle with it a bit.
If they miss or don’t do as well as they had hoped now you’re their biggest support system. This is the point where the coach gives them a hug and tells them how proud of them they are and that there will be another competition to crush in the future. The coach is the guiding light and always needs to be there as a support system!
When the athlete makes the lifts you’ve been working so hard to achieve and beats the competition you’ve been eying, as a coach you are filled with so much pride it’s hard to contain it. You want nothing more than to run on stage and give them a big hug and tell them how proud of them you are for working so hard! There are no words to explain how much pride you gain from this experience, but it is and always will be an unforgettable experience.
