For most of my youth, I played sports all year round. The funny thing is though I hated working out. After my senior year of soccer was over I realized that was probably the end of my sports career and I needed to find another outlet to stay active.
I had been introduced to CrossFit in Gym class and during practice for Soccer that past season so I started doing it pretty religiously. CrossFit led me to Olympic Weightlifting. I became obsessed with just trying to get stronger and trying to improve my technique on the snatch, clean, and jerk.
One day when I was roughly 19 years old I was lifting at the college gym I went to. I was practicing clean and jerks. I think on this day I may have worked up to 225. There was a bigger guy in the power rack to my right that was doing shrugs with 405 lbs. At some point, we started talking. I noticed he had a tattoo on his calf. The tattoo was a barbell and the number 350. I asked the story behind it. He said that he had clean and jerked 350 lbs when he was in high school.
At the time I couldn't even comprehend doing a clean and jerk at that weight. This was before the time of Instagram and before Olympic weightlifting really blew up in the United States.
From this day on this became my goal. I wanted to get 350 lbs over my head from the ground. It took about 8 years from this day for me to finally do it and throughout those 8 years, I had attempted the weight a handful of times. Each time failing on the jerk. The funny thing is each of those times I expected to hit it and the time I finally did I had 0 expectations.
My point of this story is it is ok to see someone else do something and want to do it as well. As much as people tell you don't worry about anyone else just yourself it is where we can find some great motivation to do something. Without other people doing things first we might never know that it was possible. This is what happened to me. I had no clue that 275 lbs was even possible never mind 350 lbs. Isn't it funny that when someone finally breaks a long-time record, for example, a sprint record, and then all of the sudden within a few short months a few other people have also gone faster than that previous record?
Humans are competitive people. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, you should embrace it because it will allow you to become the best version of yourself.
Coach Ben
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