UpLIFT You: Strong Body, Strong Mind
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UpLIFT You: Strong Body, Strong Mind
18 | Building Champions: Greg Everett on Foundation and Discipline in Weightlifting
Learn more about our guest, Greg Everett here: catalystathletics.com
And be sure to follow Greg on Instagram
Unlock the secrets of Olympic weightlifting and coaching excellence with our latest episode featuring Greg Everett, the head coach and owner of Catalyst Athletics. Ever wondered how a combination of passion for writing and weightlifting can create a global educational movement? Greg's journey from a self-taught teenage lifter to a leading voice in the sport will inspire and educate you. Learn how he transformed the landscape of weightlifting education by filling the void of comprehensive resources, and how his work continues to support athletes and coaches worldwide.
Dive into the nuances of weightlifting coaching, where Greg emphasizes the importance of a strong foundation and a disciplined, step-by-step progression. Discover the contrasting challenges of coaching adults, who often rush through learning, versus children who benefit from a more systematic approach. We'll explore how creating a supportive gym culture, where advanced athletes mentor beginners, can significantly enhance the overall experience and retention in the sport. Greg's insights into fostering a positive team environment highlight the critical role of a coach in maintaining discipline and enthusiasm among athletes of all levels.
Greg Everett's influential book, "Olympic Weightlifting: A Guide for Athletes and Coaches," has left a profound impact on the weightlifting community. Hear personal anecdotes and success stories from around the globe, illustrating how his resources have guided many to achieve their weightlifting goals. Understanding the significance of personal values and genuine connections in coaching, Greg shares practical advice on creating a meaningful and supportive environment for athletes. Wrapping up, we express our gratitude for the far-reaching impact of Greg’s work, underscoring the importance of positive reinforcement and personal fulfillment in the world of Olympic weightlifting.
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So, hey, everybody, welcome to the next episode of Uplift you, the show that delves into creating a stronger body and mind through uplifting conversations and practical tools, and strategies to lift you up and those you care about Today we welcome a very special guest from the USA, greg Everett.
Speaker 1:Greg is the head coach and owner of Catalyst Athletics, a USA weightlifting national champion team and the world's leading source of educational material for Olympic weightlifting. So our listeners who are interested in becoming a better coach, lifter, athlete or all-around cool person by using the snatch and clean and jerk in your training, then this is the episode for you. Greg has a wealth of coaching knowledge to share with us, through both body and mind in his experience. So thanks for being on the show today, greg, and welcome to the audience in the land of Down Under.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So, greg, right off the bat, I would like to acknowledge your amazing contribution to the education of coaches, lifters and athletes worldwide. But what is most notable that, I believe, is the majority of your work is free. Um, can you tell us where your passion for writing? Because I know that you really do enjoy writing and that's something that you've been doing for a long time. So where does that passion meet? The world of Olympic weightlifting, or where did it meet the world of Olympic weightlifting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a funny way you put that, because it did meet it at some point. And now they're kind of, uh, running away from each other as quickly as possible these days, uh. But yet early on, uh, as you mentioned, before the show started, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, there was virtually no information on the sport out there, even in book form it was very limited. Uh, you know, tommy cono had a book, artie Dreschler had a book, harvey Newton's book came out at some point, but none of them were complete enough to take someone from having zero experience and guidance to being able to be competent weightlifters, and certainly not coaches. They all kind of had different pieces that contributed to the whole picture, but none of them presented that whole picture in any kind of cohesive way.
Speaker 2:And so I found myself in a position where I recognized that missing element to the sport, because it was something I wanted as a teenager when I was trying to learn the lifts.
Speaker 2:I wanted as a teenager when I was trying to learn the lifts, and I just happened to be an at least competent writer, editor, I had some publishing experience, and so I decided that I was going to fill that void to the best of my ability at that time and it worked out very well for everybody, I think, because, again, it filled this need that at that time was not huge, but it was growing.
Speaker 2:It has become a really huge need. You know, there's a lot of demand for the information now, but because I was in it so early, when there wasn't really a lot going on, I had this giant head start and so I was able to pump out a huge amount of content very early on, before anyone else was really doing it to any significant degree. And so at this point, yeah, my archives are kind of absurdly extensive, to the point where I forget 90% of it and I have to search my own website to see if I've written an article or done a video on something if someone asks me a question. So, yeah, I think it was again the, the happy convergence of a kind of burgeoning need for the information and me just happening to be in that place at that time with the abilities and the experience that I had.
Speaker 1:So can you tell us, if you talked about being a teenager learning the lifts, what did that look like? Like how old were you when you started to learn the lifts and who was some of your did you? Did you have any coaches or mentors at least?
Speaker 2:Uh, so I would have been 15 probably. Uh, no coach, no mentor, I didn't know anybody. And and the most frustrating part of all of it was I grew up, uh, in a town about 45 minutes South of San Francisco. I found out many years later that Jim book from South San Francisco to look for weightlifting coaches about it. I remember seeing like this allusion to it in Charles Poliken's first book and these kind of these little snippets here and there and again, no whole picture stuff. I didn't really understand the sport, how it worked. I just knew that there were these two lifts, that they were these explosive, you know strength related lifts that really appealed to me for a number of reasons, and so I kind of just tried to figure them out in my garage and I did an okay job, I guess, but I wasn't able to really take it seriously until, you know, 10 years later when I actually encountered people who were experienced in the sport that I could work with encountered people who were experienced in the sport that I could work with.
Speaker 1:So so, um, thinking back to that time, were you practicing both the lifts, like learning both the lifts, virtually on your, on your own? You didn't actually have any guidance. Did you, um, have like picture form or any type of text form? Nothing, you just worked it out. Picture form or any type of text form, nothing.
Speaker 2:You just worked it out, a few photos and some very general descriptions, yeah, and the interesting thing, though, is that I think so many of the lifters prior to this current era, you know, even through the early 2000s, the way they learned is very different from the way most lifters learn now, and it was. It was very much a dependence on someone's natural athleticism, and kind of like here's this lift, go do it, and you just kind of figured it out Right. So just like being a kid, like oh, that's running, I'll just make my body do that Right, and I think that's the reason. Excuse me, one of the reasons why the the number of people was so small, but we had extremely successful weightlifters, is because it naturally self-selected for people with a natural athletic ability that was suited specifically for that type of activity, right, whereas now we have a massive number of people engaging in the sport because of the greater exposure it's gotten, primarily through CrossFit, but that means it's attracting people from all manner of backgrounds with different athletic experience to no athletic experience, and so the needs of learning, the needs of teaching have totally changed, and you can't simply just rely on some talented person happening to walk through your door.
Speaker 2:We all still want that, right? Because that's the big secret of coaching is that you can't turn a mule into a racehorse, like you have to have the raw material to work with to, you know, produce the greatest athletes on earth. But I think it's good in the sense that it is. It has forced coaches to become better coaches. Right, you have to become better coaches, right, you, you, you have to become better teachers. You have to learn better ways to communicate, to present and package information and you know to, to create relationships with people, so they are invested and you know all these things that maybe weren't quite as necessary prior, because you kind of just let people figure it out and then you recruited when you could, and and and kind of just, so to speak, muscled your way through it, rather than this current approach, which I think is a lot more nuanced and the barriers to entry are much lower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you believe in thinking about that? I think about that as an experience that I had when I was very young, coaching a teenager. I was coaching gymnastics at the time and I'd been a gymnast myself and I used to coaching gymnasts at quite a high level. And then one day the club that I was coaching for said Leanne, you're taking the two-year-olds? I said what the two-year-olds, the two-year-olds? I said what the two-year-olds, the two-year-olds, they can't do a forward roll. And they're like that's right, you got to break the skill down. Okay, so. So then from that moment, that was the moment that I recall really understanding the art of coaching in being able to look at a movement and break it down. You know, piece by piece, movement by movement, position by position. So this is actually something that I believe you know, if you can coach a gymnastics movement, if you can coach a round off, backfliptwisting layout, and then you compare that to the snatch or the clean and jerk, you know there's only one plane of movement in the snatch and the clean and jerk, so it's looking at the position of the body at any given time. And then the third piece to that would be adding the speed and the explosiveness, as you talked about. To that would be adding the speed and the explosiveness as you talked about.
Speaker 1:So this was a question that I had from one of the coaches. In preparation for this episode, I did consult a few of the club owners around Queensland and Australia and said if you could talk to Greg over at what would be some of your questions and one um. One of those questions was talking about load and um, volume and loading um and how to apply that in different populations of the uh, of the way. Uh, you know different populations of people that we teach. So, by extension of that and what I just said about position and timing, how would you put those in order of importance?
Speaker 1:In breaking down a skill like that, you said, is the way that we do it. Now, when people walk into the gym who have had no experience, we teach the motor pattern first. So we teach where is the body, what position is the body in, where is the bar in relation to the body, what timing is important once they've learned where their body needs to be and where the bar needs to be. That's like an order of teaching. How would you teach that? So, for the coaches that are listening, what do you think are the most important order of teaching? How would you teach that? So, for the coaches that are listening, what do you think are the most important order of teaching an Olympic weightlifting skill? Snatch or clean and jerk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same thing and it's the I would say the same thing applies to gymnastics in a general sense too is position is first, and I include balance within position, because you cannot be in the correct position without also being balanced, but you can be balanced without being in the correct position, right. So position is first. That is the foundation for everything else you do. Next would be the motion itself, at any speed, right, which is generally going to be relatively slow initially, and you think about why position has to come first is you can't perform a correct motion from or to an incorrect position because, by definition, it is a different motion, right? So you have to solidify those positions, first and foremost, and you have to underscore to people their importance and why they're important. And you have to underscore to people their importance and why they're important because that's the one that people want to ignore most, because it is boring. What do you mean? I don't want to think about how I feel the pressure on my feet. I want to do this thing and explode and throw the bar overhead. Well, yeah, we're going to get there, but you can't do that properly without learning this. So, position slash, balance, motion. Then you add the speed or the tempo whatever, and the, the, the issue and again this is true for gymnastics too there are certain motions you cannot do at a slow speed. They have to be done at essentially full speed, right, you can't do a standing back tuck in slow motion, right. So it's like you can do the preparation, you can do things, you can get spotting and all these things, but you have to build the foundation first and then you just have to make that leap to that next phase of completing it, essentially at full speed.
Speaker 2:Weightlifting is a little easier, where we can do, you know, pulls. We can turn them into deadlifts, we can really keep them slow, we can do something like a tall muscle snatch where we're slowing down the upper body mechanics of moving under the bar. But in order to actually perform a snatch you have to at least perform the final upward extension and the pull under quickly, right? You can't do it slowly, at least not properly. And so after that, then you have loading. Loading is always the very last thing and one of the great examples I had a friend I shouldn't say had have a friend who had lifted for East Germany.
Speaker 2:He came up through the whole East German sports school system as a weightlifter and you know he would talk about how you know you come in as a kid and you have a wooden stick, a big dowel, and you just do thousands and thousands and thousands of repetitions of these very basic motions before you ever touch weights. And in the same way, you take the little two-year-old gymnasts and you teach them how to you know, keep their body straight or curl their body or you know how to shift their balance, and you break it down to these extremely basic things that anyone can understand. And then you can build on that.
Speaker 2:And I think the issue we have these days is that we don't have children coming into the sport of weightlifting. By and large they are adults, and adults tend to want to intellectualize everything we want. Explain to me how it's supposed to work, and then I will use my brain to force my body to do what it's supposed to do. And not only does it not typically work that way, you create these like over analytical monsters who just are continually stepping on their own toes because they're trying to think their way through complex motor skills. You know, a snatch happens in what a second, not a whole lot of thinking that can be done in that time Right, which is why you segment these things down, you start with basics and you build those things as habit and routine so that when you're executing the full movements, you are not thinking your way through a sequence of intentional actions, you're focusing on, you know, one to three very, very simple cues to kind of remind you what you've already learned.
Speaker 1:So do you feel as if, when these adults come into the gym, like you said, they just want to fast track? I just want to be able to do that snatch, and that's one of the true struggles of coaching adults, although it's nice to coach someone that you don't have to lead along the way, because I coach a lot of children and I have coached a lot of children in Olympic weightlifting and it's like I remember the youngest one I taught was six years old and every time he went to pick up the bar I'd have to remind him that a snatch. I ended up calling the snatch the snake because he had to put his hands out wide, like long, like a snake. So it's it's nice to be able to coach people that you can at least have a normal conversation with. However, they're thinking three steps ahead instead of the step that they need to be at.
Speaker 1:So for the coaches that are listening and in Australia I know that the people that walk into the gyms here are often someone that's had something to do with CrossFit. If it's an adult, someone that's had something to do with CrossFit and wants to explore more of Olympic weightlifting or make their weightlifting better for their CrossFit, or people that have been in the strength world, a little bit dabbled in the strength world and thought it would be pretty cool to learn like a clean or whatever it is. What would be your advice to those coaches, especially if they can see that that person has a little bit of raw talent and they'd like to develop them into a national lifter, for example? What would be your advice in establishing the foundations with that person and not skipping three steps ahead?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, there's a lot going on there, because when you say when, when someone comes in with a lot of raw talent, there is a need for discipline on the part of the coach, because the coach's natural thing is going to be want to fast track the process too, not just the lifter, you know you, you see you start drooling. You see someone come in and you're like, oh boy, you know I, I could have a national champion on my hands right now, and that could be true. But you also could have just a potential national champion who gets injured early or who burns out because you're pushing them too hard, too fast, or only gets to a national championship when they could have made a world team because you didn't build that foundation. So that's number one. As a coach, you have to be disciplined to stick to I don't want to say formula, because it's not too formulaic, there's a lot of flexibility but to the process that you know is going to work, and that process can go at different speeds and needs to go at different speeds depending on each individual's needs, experience, the way they respond to things, but it is a process either way. The other part of it is that it's the coach's responsibility to do everything in your power to encourage investment, right Buy-in, as people like to say it and you do that by always looking to find ways to show these people why they want to do this, why they want to do this, like to remind them what is so interesting or meaningful or exciting or interesting or valuable about this activity and, more specifically, why this foundation and this process is so critical for them achieving these things that they are interested in achieving right and I think that's the biggest struggle is especially in a, in a group setting where you have multiple levels.
Speaker 2:So, let's say, in a gymnastics coach, you've got a bunch of two-year olds. They're all going to be pretty much around the same ability. There's going to be some variation, right, but that's how gymnastics coaching tends to work, is people are grouped by skill level, not even by age, necessarily, but by skill level, and that makes coaching infinitely easier from a process perspective, but also in the sense that those athletes are with people who are having a similar experience of a similar level of understanding and are progressing at at least a fairly similar rate, rather than in the typical, say, crossfit gym setting. You might have someone who walked in the door two days ago, and this is the first time they've touched a barbell training 10 feet away from someone who's snatching 150% of body weight. And so there's that constant comparison and that eagerness, like, well, how do I get there? I want to get there next week. You're like, well, hang on, you haven't even figured out how to tie your shoes yet. Like, let's, let's pump the brakes a little bit.
Speaker 2:And so your job as a coach in that case is to remind them yes, that's our goal, we're going to get you there and potentially farther, but that person didn't start there on day one. Hopefully it's not a person who actually did start their day one, because they exist. But you know, and remind them that you know these people you see on YouTube, these world championship level lifters and all these crazy guys you are in love with and infatuated with. They didn't start. You know training, the way that they train. Now they started with that broomstick doing 10,000 reps of a snatch, you know, across the gym from the guys doing the big lifts.
Speaker 2:And so you have to, you have to find ways to kind of make that experience enjoyable in the moment, right, don't not not just as a tease like, ooh, if you do this horrible, boring thing. You're going to. You, you know, get this great experience in two years. You have to make this current thing enjoyable, right? Um, it's not gonna be 100 enjoyable the whole time, like any training, but you, you have to create that rapport with people and have that energy, um, and create that gym culture where you have those more advanced lifters supporting the beginners and doing part of your job for you in saying, yeah, yeah, I remember I started there too. I know it's boring and it's frustrating, you want to hurry up but, trust me, it's going to work.
Speaker 2:And so, as a coach, that's your job too is to create that culture, whether it's a team, a gym, a club, whatever, where you have everybody collectively, um, you know, fostering that sort of supportive environment and reinforcing these lessons that you, as the coach, are trying to teach.
Speaker 2:That can be very difficult to teach and to kind of keep people on board, and that's, you know, I think honestly, that's what keeps people on board long term is having that kind of collective energy that's helping to keep them on track, keep them engaged, you know, pick them up when they're down, and and then they get to chance to do the same thing with other people and they feel a part of it. So it becomes way more than I'm learning weightlifting. It is I'm learning weightlifting because it's this great thing and this is, you know, doing this for me and I get this value out of it, but also I'm a part of something and helping other people, they're helping me and you know, it's this. We like to think of it as this great, uh sort of utopia of of gym culture. Um, that's what we all ultimately should be seeking, I think, where it's a positive experience overall for everybody involved, even if individually, you know, people are having bad days, tough times, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you touched on that because one of the coaches that I talked to, who is actually an Olympian, went to the Olympics for gymnastics, who is now a coach and a lifter mainly coaching has her own club. She really wanted to delve into that concept of, although we compete in Olympic weightlifting as an individual sport, so it's just you and the barbell we train in teams. So that supportive team environment is really what I believe, what I've seen from my experience, is what keeps people coming in and out of the gym every day. So, yes, the movements are exciting, it's great to go in and, do you know, do your training and progress and regress and progress, and you know it goes on. However, from my experience, most people are turning up because they're part of a team. They want to talk to. You know, like, for example, I've got in my gym. I've got a master who's just started, sue, she's 62 years old. I've got Angela, a younger lady in her early thirties who's not been doing it long, and then I've got a national champion who has represented Australia at Junior Worlds, and they're the best of training partners and they are all like their ability level is completely you know, at each end of the scale. So that connection that you're talking about is really important part of keeping people engaged in the sport and happy to work on wherever they're at, because they're motivating one another.
Speaker 1:And so you just said you know if you could create that culture within the gym, because this is really at a gym level, um, you know, at individual gym level. Well, it is in australia, you know, we have. Very rarely do we have get-togethers where where people, um, you know, go and do a training camp, for example. It happens every now and then, but not very, very often. So it's up to the you know each gym to create that team culture and that connection that you're talking about. And, of course, it's led by the coach, it's led by the head coach or the team coaches, the club coaches and, from what you just described, I believe it's also, you know, if you can get everyone in on that process, if you can get the national champion in on a few words of encouragement for the 62-year-old master that's just started, then that's where the real magic happens. Oh, absolutely, is that something that you do in your club, in your training environment?
Speaker 2:in your training environment. Well, actually, at this point, I don't have everybody in one gym together anymore I did for years but so, yes, that that is key. And the first point you, you made is it is 100% the coach's responsibility to create the model, to create um, the. The model to create um, the, the model for everybody to follow, to emulate. Right, your lifters are going to reflect you as a coach, uh, whether consciously or not, and you see that in a lot of teams, you can, you can, like, recognize, you go to national championships, and you're like oh, I don't even know that person and I know who they lift for, just based on their behavior, and it's, it's really fascinating, Like, how easily you can pick up on that with certain coaches, Um, but so that's number one is is you are setting the example for your lifters to follow, and it's an active, ongoing thing. You can't just do it their first day and then revert to your own bad habits and negativity or or kind of lack of interest, because everybody's going to see that. The other part of it, though, is um, you, you, you have to be very careful and intentional about who you bring into that group, um, and I don't mean this in like an exclusionary sense, like you're not good enough for us. I mean it in a you don't support this atmosphere and this environment that I want in this gym and that my lifters want and need in this gym.
Speaker 2:And so I'm of the mind that you give pretty much everybody a chance. You tell them exactly what is expected of them, you show them that that is really what's going on, it's not just lip service. And if they do not get on board with that, then they leave. And I think everybody listening who has a gym knows exactly the kind of person I'm talking about, where everybody's in the gym and they're laughing and having a good time and then the door opens and it's like a rain cloud comes in and all of a sudden everyone gets quiet and everyone slows down and they're looking at the floor and I feel bad because I know a lot of times it's not something those people are doing intentionally by any means. You know maybe they're just going through a really rough patch in life. But that's why you give them a chance and you give them those expectations and you do what you can to help them kind of begin learning how to behave in this way in the gym, and some of them are going to flat out just refuse, right? Well, I'm paying you so I can do whatever I want. Well, no, you don't. You know it's my gym, so I get to decide whether or not you train here. If that's how you want to train, you can find a different coach that's willing to put up with it. I'm not Now, it's easy for me to say, because I'm at a point in my career where I get to be very picky about who I coach and who I get to turn away.
Speaker 2:There were many years where I had to take every single person who was even remotely possibly interested in thinking about considering doing weightlifting.
Speaker 2:I was begging them to come in through the gym and pay me a measly amount of money, and so I recognize that you can't always do that at certain points in your career.
Speaker 2:But when you are stuck in that position, you also have to ask yourself is retaining this one person worth potentially losing a handful of others, right?
Speaker 2:And so you have to look at that big picture and long-term effect of what a single person can do to a gym, to a team, to a club, and they can wreak havoc and they can really cause a lot of problems that linger for a long time. They create a bad reputation that's hard to overcome. They make potential new people stay away from your club because they've heard that reputation. And so, while it might seem like you are hurting yourself by getting rid of this one person a person more than likely you are, you know, creating an environment that's going to attract and retain way more people than you would otherwise. It will by far eclipse the loss of that one person's money. Those people don't last anyway. Right, you know they're in and out in four to six months. So it's like why are you investing your time and energy and potentially harming everyone else's experience and your business long term so that one person can come in and just like rain negativity down on you and bum you out too?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that actually brings to mind one of your quotes that I came across A great gym is less about athletes with great talent than people with great character. So that pretty much sums that up.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and that's the difference between coaches too, is because not everyone agrees with me on that. There are plenty of coaches out there who will take any athlete with talent, regardless of how horrible they are as people. Um and again, you recognize them right away. You can. You can spot them in a crowd, um, and to me that's just never been worthwhile. I, you know, I've turned down a handful of really, really good athletes because they weren't people I ever wanted to work with. It's not worth it. You know, I like I feel like I have a decent enough reputation as it's not worth it. You know, I like I feel like I have a decent enough reputation as a coach of being a competent coach. Now, like, I'm not going to sacrifice my own you know, uh mental wellbeing to have one more person that maybe someone is going to recognize as being great and then maybe give me credit for it just doesn't make any sense yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, your advice to like the coaches listening is um, basically, qualify you know, qualify your, the people that walk through your door, um, using more the values of your gym and the values of yourself to begin with. You actually have to know what your values are before you can create values for your gym, for example. So you know, qualify the people against your values and the values and the culture within the gym. And that's an easiest thing said than done, because what I've found since I've gotten into specifically into a lot more mindset coaching and this goes down the same vein as your book Tough that you wrote Some people know that they love coaching, or they know that they love the strength world or Olympic weightlifting world, but they haven't really stopped and thought what do I really value in my coaching and in the people that are around me?
Speaker 1:So how would you, what would be your advice to coaches with developing those values within the culture of the gym so that it is a supportive team environment where people can thrive, feel safe to be who they are and feel happy with what level they're at. When I say feel happy with what level they're at, always striving to be better, of course, right, yeah, but accepting that you know like I'm at this level and you know if I continue to work through and persist like persistence is one of my values, for example, just turning up and persisting and being consistent. And if there's one thing I've learned in the athletic world and coaching athletes over the years, consistency is number one. You might not have the best of talent, you might not have the right morphology for Olympic weightlifting, but if you're consistent with your effort and you love the sport, then over time you're going to get as close to your wherever your natural talent lays, as possible through consistency. Yeah, so you know that's one of my particular values. So what advice would you have for coaches of gyms to create that?
Speaker 2:of gyms to create that. Well, yeah, to reiterate your point, you have to understand your own values as an individual before you really understand values for your gym or your or a business of any kind really. And so you know, the typical business thing is well, what's your mission statement? I've never written a mission statement in my life and I've owned multiple businesses, but I've always understood what's meaningful and important and valuable to me and had a sense of the influence I wanted to have on other people, and to me, that's what matters. I don't need a catchy mission statement that I'm going to print on the back of my milk cartons or whatever, and so that's number one. And so, aside from buying multiple copies of my book and reading them many times and sharing them with your friends, you can, of course, just kind of sit down, you know, take some time, and not just one time, but multiple times, do this periodically and force yourself especially to write it down, so you can't cheat this, you know, so that you are forced to articulate. You know simple questions like what? You know, what is meaningful to me? Uh, you know, with regard to coaching, what, what am I trying to achieve? Uh, and and I, and with the achievement, accomplishment stuff I don't want to think about. Just you know, I want to produce a national champion or I want to get someone to the Olympics. I'm talking about, again, influence on people's lives. What is it that you want to achieve in the sense of, at the end of the day, when you go home, you close those club doors, how do you feel about what people took away from their experience with you and that's the bottom line is is that's what's going to get you and I hate to start sounding all corny here and tear up or anything but that's ultimately what is going to move you toward that long-term sense of fulfillment and contentment. If you are simply chasing like performance type metrics, you're going to be out there forever thinking you're almost there and never getting there and instead, like you said, you have, you know, say, a brand new 62 year old master's lifter who comes in the door every single day with a smile on her face and she leaves with that same smile because you were engaged and invested and helpful and you were showing her through your words and behavior every single time she's there, that she was important to you, just like you are important to her, and the sport is important to her and the culture is important to her and to me. That's what you take home and you can say I did a good job today. You know, this is what it's all about. And again, this is all individual. Maybe that's not what's important to somebody, maybe it is only those performance-oriented goals and that's what people believe is truly meaningful to them and that's their business. I won't try to talk them out of it necessarily, but I will say you probably want to keep digging because it's probably not really that. It's probably more something like and again, I'm not a therapist, but it the performance oriented goals. When that is your overwhelming focus.
Speaker 2:Typically what's really going on is a some kind of need for validation, right, is you need to prove yourself to other people? You feel like an imposter, you feel like you're inadequate, whatever. So, ah, man, if I get that world champion now, everyone's going to really know I'm a great coach and I'm super cool and they're going to want to be my friends and people are going to fall in love with me, and so, again, that's an extreme example, but it's really, really accurate for a lot of people that that's what's going on. So if you can recognize that and then say well, hang on, if that's really what I want, I can achieve that in ways that are way more sensible. I can get there way quicker, I can enjoy way more of my life and I can help all these other people enjoy their lives better and learn these things about themselves along the way. So to me that's a fairly obvious choice. So I guess, to answer your actual questions that have just like rambling around aimlessly like usual, um, I would again sit down and and force yourself. I'm going to come up with you know, I don't care if it's two or three more than that, if you can.
Speaker 2:What are your primary values? What is your intent with this job or with this business? And then you have to move on to the practical side. Well, what does that translate to into what I'm actually doing and saying on a daily basis? So, for example, if you stick with kind of the values I just described, that means that you are keeping your attitude positive. The way you are speaking to your lifters is positive.
Speaker 2:You can make jokes that have kind of a so-called negative tone. I'm a big fan of sarcasm, but there's always the very clear positivity underlying it, and I don't do that with people until I have an established relationship with them and they know they understand clearly my investment in them and my intent. And they know if I'm saying, wow, that was the worst lift I've ever seen in my life or something like that, they know I'm just joking. So you can't do that day one with people you don't like. Oh my God, this guy's terrible. He just told me I'm an awful lifter. I'm never going to get better. Why do I come here? You know, when you follow that up with, here's what we're going to do, here's what I want you to do. And oh, remember, last week, you know you, you couldn't even do this, and now look how much better you're doing, then they recognize, oh, okay. So he's paying attention, he knows what's going on. He's thinking about ways to help me get better. He's there supporting me the whole time.
Speaker 2:So the you know that's the practical side of things that you have to figure out and that you're going to refine those over time. You know with experience, as you see, how people respond and you kind of learn to to better read people and and how is best to speak to them and behave around them. You know some people you have to be a little more aggressive and forceful with your instructions. Some people you have to be, you know really you know calm and and kind of quiet and understated, and you know some people need you have to be more jocular and some people want it very serious. And so you, you adjust your approach within the parameters of your personality, right, like you can't just be a different person that's not fair to yourself but you can be that same person in different ways to different people to help them as well as possible. I really don't know if that answered your question at all. I hope it did.
Speaker 1:Well, it, yeah, it, it certainly, it certainly helps. It gets people. What I, what I think the audience, will really get out of that is stopping and looking so much at the process and starting to look at the why. So, so a lot of coaching is the how, how, how, and sometimes I feel coaches forget to step back and go why and what's what, what is important to me and what do I value, and what comes out from me listening to you talk. There is the value of connection and, honestly, being a coach is it's an art. It's an art To be a good coach. You need to be able to connect to a wide variety of people. Would you agree? Like a wide variety of personalities, a wide variety of abilities and people's wants, like, why are the people there? And here's my thing with coaching If you really want to be able to establish that connection, like you just said, you need to understand the person. So if you're a coach that has 70 people in your gym, good luck trying to establish those type of connections, right? Yeah, so it also does come down to you spending time to get to know the person the person, not the body and the machine and what numbers they're doing, right. So I'm glad you sort of talked about that, because that's something that I've always been really passionate about is having that connection.
Speaker 1:And I remember the first time I went to a national championships as a coach in Olympic weightlifting. It was my first ever youth lifter and I turned up and I was just there, as I wasn't there as a team coach, because in Australia we have team coaches. This is youth and if you're not in the team you don't get to talk to your lifter, like you can't be with your lifter, you can sit in the audience and watch. And my lifter, coming from yeah, coming from the Whitsundays, you know this tiny little town, we went down to Tasmania, which is right down the bottom of Australia, freezing cold, and it was her first ever competition, my first ever youth lifter. It was her first ever big nationals competition probably only her third or fourth competition her entire life, mind you.
Speaker 1:And she's in this national competition environment and I went to walk in with her and I remember one of the coaches saying to me you can't come in here, you're not a coach, you're not, you're not a team coach, right. So this is where the connection comes in that I'm talking, telling, talking to you about, and she looked at me and she was like desperate I could see it in her eyes please come in with me then. You know, let's um. You know. The gods reigned and someone with a bit of sense looked at the situation one of the other team coaches and said it's all right, leanne, you can come in, just sit in, just sit next to her. Don't, don't, you know, don't interrupt the team coaching, but you can sit there. And so she feels more at ease. Sure.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So that's the thing You're there for the best interests of the person that you're coaching and in that process you get to know the person, to a certain extent to support them. So when you talk about journaling and working out, you know what you're there for and then creating those connections. I feel like that is what for me, and that is what coaching is. It's the connection with people, connecting with people.
Speaker 2:It is ultimately it's a personal relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I do believe that in some instances, like you said, the coaches that are, you know, focused on the process, the how, the outcome, that connection can go by the wayside a little bit in that process, depending on what you're focusing and on what your values are. And going back to, you know, your books and the way that you've created so many awesome resources for people that are lost in the wilderness in Olympic weightlifting. That takes me back to, because that's what it can feel like right, especially now because there's so much information. There is so much information now and I just wanted to quickly track back to your book Olympic Weightlifting A Guide for Athletes and Coaches, and that book was, in fact, my first coach, because I was in a situation similar to you, where there was no coaching. There was nothing much on the internet either. It was around 2010, 2009,.
Speaker 1:And that was just in Australia, when CrossFit was just becoming popular. There certainly weren't weightlifting coaches floating around and there were no books that I was aware of that were easily accessed, and certainly none that could teach you how to coach. So, going back to your book, that was an integral part of my journey, firstly, learning how to lift myself, and I remember going to the glossary and this is in one of my earlier episodes. I used to go to the glossary and this is in one of my earlier episodes. I used to go to the glossary because it would say power clean and I'd literally have to pick up the book and go and go what's a power clean?
Speaker 1:and read step by step yeah how to do a power, clean, right and um I that that's the way that my co, the, my co-coach, that I still have now, 11 years later into the process, one of our club coaches. We learnt from that book and it's like dog-eared, it's sitting right here.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Twelve years old. Yeah, so the reason I'm bringing that up is I believe that you've done a very good job in obviously creating connections one-on-one with your lifters in your own gym, even though you're not in that position now but also even connecting with people like I'm in Australia. You know, like I'm in Australia, you know getting that connection with people through your resources that you have produced. That's an amazing skill. And what other experiences have you had with people using your resources and giving you feedback? And I remember when I went in 2015, I went to my first world championships master's world championships in Finland. I won the world championships and won.
Speaker 1:A couple of the people that were with me, competing with me, said where did you learn to lift? And I said I learned how to cut Olympic weightlifting book, greg Everett. That's what I said. I said that's actually my first year of lifting. Was the book? The book was my coach. And the guy that was with me said oh, I know, greg, oh, I'll do a video. And I'm not sure if you recall and I totally understand if you don't, because I'm sure you get so many videos but he recorded me with my medal in the pub, mind you, that night sitting in the pub going. Thanks, greg, I learned to lift out of your book.
Speaker 1:I actually do vaguely remember that, believe it or not, yeah it was quite a while ago, but you know, that's sort of that. That's even a connection through your resources and you haven't literally spoken to the person. So what are your experiences through your resources, like that?
Speaker 2:at a national championships and they'll say, hey, uh, I don't have a coach, I got here just using your programs. Um, I remember at a at a Pan Am championships God, this would have been 2016, 17, maybe, um, I was uh sitting at the bar one night and the coach of uh, one of the best us lifters we've ever had uh sat down and said hey man, um, you know, I just wanted to tell you like when I first started this guy, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so all of his programming was just straight out of your book, um, and so there, I've had a lot of experiences like that where, where it's? It's an interesting process where you create this content, you kind of send it out into the ether. You're not really sure where it's going to land or what's happening with it and you just kind of have to hope that it's being received well and it's being used in the way you would hope it's being used.
Speaker 2:Always really reassuring and encouraging and rewarding to actually hear real people telling you their actual experiences and that you know recognizing like, oh hey, this thing actually did what I hoped it would do in helping these people get to where they were trying to go and so yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's been wildly rewarding and gratifying to to see that effect and now, especially because I've been doing it for God 20 years practically, there's such a. It's almost like the next generation right Is like someone learned how to lift from my book and then they went on to coaching and now they're kind of starting that process over again and and using my material in a new way and and so that's been really interesting too and seeing the longevity of it, um, and and trying to kind of keep keep up with those people from the quote-unquote olden days and still support them and also trying to reach new people who every year they want shinier and shinier and flashier and flashier presentations and stuff. And it's like, well, how do I get this audience engaged without completely sacrificing everything about myself as a person and what matters to me and just being a huge knob?
Speaker 1:Well, actually and on that subject, a lot of our audience and I know a lot of my club members, for example really enjoy your current Instagram breakdown of technique, where people send you in a video and you break down that technique and explain, you know, explain your take on where their technique needs work, or wherever the lift's going wrong or right needs work, or wherever the lift's going wrong or right, for example, and that's something that you've introduced recently.
Speaker 2:Is that correct? Yeah, and then I unintroduced it more recently because that was one of my great disappointments, because I did a few of those. They initially got this incredible response People were falling all over themselves. This is so great. I love it. Please keep doing these. And it was like the clearest response ever from Instagram, where it just tanked my visibility, where all of my other videos those videos just got less and less. They were put in front of fewer and fewer people and everything just dropped and I was like, well, I guess I can't do these anymore. And so it's this really frustrating process where it's like I have this idea for this content that's going to help people, but I can't do it because then it's blocking my other content that is helping people. And then, eventually, I'm going to help people, but I can't do it because then it's blocking my other content that is helping people. And then eventually I'm going to have to get a real job and we can't have that. At this point in my life, I'm not qualified for anything anymore. So, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:The algorithm got you.
Speaker 2:It really did, and so that's a frustrating part of my job is trying to work within those constraints while still helping people the way I want to. So I might try to bring those back only on YouTube, because the longer format videos are a little more acceptable there. But they're a lot of work, and right now I'm just like kind of barely keeping my nose above the water.
Speaker 1:There's certainly a lot more platforms now for coaches to address, and I think trying to have a finger in all the pies is a recipe for disasters in some cases.
Speaker 2:It's simultaneously impossible and necessary. It's a dilemma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Take us back to the honestly, those days that you talked about the way you didn't have a coach and you had to work the lift out for yourself. It seems to me like the utopia of how to learn something now, because it was like I'll just and even for me, learning out of your book reading the glossary start here, do this, you know. Start the bar just below the knee, get the thigh to the bar, you know. Those simple instructions where you can just focus in on the very basic foundational skills of weightlifting is something that is hard to find now, as strange as that sounds, because of all the different formats that people are teaching Olympic weightlifting in.
Speaker 1:So I know we're almost out of time. And in saying that, one thing that I wanted to very quickly touch on, because a good friend of mine and my current online coach because I've never had a coach stand next to me and coach me in my 12 years of weightlifting I've had your book and I've had online coaches, but my online coach and myself included coach and I did mention this to you coach a lot of youth athletes and what happens is they grow up, they leave school and they get a real job and the five to ten years that you've invested in them is and they've invested in themselves comes to a pretty a screaming halt in a lot of cases. What's your experience of keeping you know youth lifters in the game like keeping them in there?
Speaker 2:So I have a lot of thoughts on this. I'll try to keep it somewhat concise. First and foremost, as a coach, you have to understand that there will always be attrition right. You are always going to lose people. Some you're going to lose in very short periods of time, some you're going to lose after very long periods of time. You know I've had lifters that I've coached for 10, 12 years and then they retire. I've had lifters that quit after six months and so the coach I eventually ended up working with Mike Bergner. It was my first actual weightlifting coach. Turner it was my first actual weightlifting coach.
Speaker 2:He told me a story where at some point in his career he was complaining to his coach friend, steve Goff, about losing some lifter. And Coach Goff said something like do you know how many weightlifters I've started in my career? And it was something stupid like 3,000, some huge number. And he's like do you know? It was something stupid like 3000, you know some huge number. And he's like do you know how many you know stuck around. And of course it's a tiny number. And so his point was you have to accept that. That's kind of the natural order of things is that you're always going to have a larger group starting than finishing. It's just how it works. People drop out. So that's number one is you can't. You can't put uh, you can't have unrealistic expectations about retention.
Speaker 2:Um, the second part of it is that it goes back to what we talked about earlier about your job as a coach is helping a lifter invest in themselves in the sport, if that is what is meaningful to them, and that's the key is that. If part it's, it's not about what you want for them or what you think they should want, like oh, this talented lifter, this lifter should want to be a great weight lifter. Well, they might not. Some of the most talented weightlifters on earth want nothing to do with weightlifting. They have no interest, and so, as frustrating as that is, as a coach or as an athlete who's like God, I would kill for that talent that they're not even using you. You can't force your values or your desires on another person, and so that's the second part of it is you can't force retention on someone who does not want to be retained. But the other part of that is you have to do a good job as a coach, communicating with your athletes and helping them understand.
Speaker 2:This goes back to the values, helping them understand their values and what's meaningful. And hey, why is weightlifting important to you? Because if you can get them early on understanding that and then over time they understand it to greater and greater detail, they become more and more invested and it becomes part of their identity, rather than this tacked on activity that they can so easily drop when something changes, like, say, graduating from high school or college. Because if it is this integral part of their identity, this extremely important, meaningful, valuable thing to them, they will find ways to make it work and to continue doing it. Even when their routine changes and all these circumstances change and maybe it's a little less convenient and more difficult, they will make it happen. Right?
Speaker 2:I sold a house and moved several hundred miles to go work with a coach at a time when most people wouldn't even be bothering to do it, because it was important to me. So if someone who graduates high school and goes to college and they can't be bothered to find a new gym to continue weightlifting, weightlifting doesn't matter to them. It's that simple and so, as irritating as that might be as a coach, because you thought you saw this long-term potential, that's the way of life, right, and you can't force that on people and you have to get pretty I don't know almost buddhic about it and just accept things right. This is the path. You accept it, you move on, you go on to the next person instead of moping around like God, I lost this lifter and so, finally, the last thing I'll get to is and I guess I kind of already talked about this, but that is making it as enjoyable and meaningful for people as possible, right? So just like we talked about creating that club atmosphere, is making it something irresistible for people Like I call God.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine not doing this for the rest of my life. Or my parents want to take me on vacation and I'm freaking out. I'm not going to be able to train for seven days. That's the kind of desire you would like to encourage. You can't create it, but you can encourage it to grow by giving them this consistently great experience with the sport so that they want to continue doing it more, and then they get more and more invested in it, and doing that without ever pushing them right.
Speaker 2:So it's like you know, teaching a little kid or being a parent the more you try to force a kid to do something, the more they're going to resist. Right, it doesn't mean you can't guide them in the right direction, but it needs to be more about that positive reinforcement and, again, the modeling and the guidance rather than the. You know, you have all this great talent. Don't waste it. And it's like well, so you're telling me that doing what I love in life is wasting something, even though that's what makes me happy. Like people don't respond well to that. They're just like, well, okay, bye, I'm going to go do something that I enjoy. And so, again, it's that discipline as a coach is like you want to encourage and help and do all these things to get someone invested, but you can't cross that line over into pushing them into something because it's important to you rather than important to them. So I guess, to summarize this, you're screwed, they're going to leave and you just got to get over it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, I call that. We live in the most transient place in Australia.
Speaker 1:I believe People come and go all the time and because it's a small place, you know, someone will come to you at 10 or 12 years old and they'll get to 16 or 17 and they'll go see I'm going to the big smoke. You know they go to the cities, so that's. I believe that I've done my job. If, when they go to the city or wherever they're going, they go and seek out the local gym and continue to lift, to me that's a successful coaching experience and a successful experience for the lifter because their love of lifting has been established. Yeah, and I do believe that a lot of the people, the younger people, that drop out if we want to call it that, or give up the sport, is a direct reflection from my experience of how much competition they have been exposed to directly prior to them going. I've finished school and I'm I've had enough oh yeah, they get burned out pretty quickly yeah, they do and, um, I know in my experience I've even kept.
Speaker 1:I've kept people in the sports and younger people in the sport by saying, hey, why don't we go and just do us? Why don't we go try like, for example, dark side? Why don't we go do powerlifting for six months and have a crack at just getting strong legs? And you know, and it's worked. It's like let's step back from olympic weightlifting, stay in the gym doing something that you love doing and that might be squat bench dead for six months right and then what you'll find is they'll, you know, they get that different experience and then they'll go oh, had enough of that.
Speaker 1:I might come back to Olympic weightlifting now. So it's like we've said right through this podcast understanding the person that you're teaching, that you're coaching, and having that open communication and that great connection. So that's a great, great way to finish off the episode. And, greg, before we do finish, can you, for those people that haven't delved into all of the resources that we've been talking about, where do they find you? And I know it will be in the show notes, but where do you sort of, where do you spruik your stuff, mainly these days?
Speaker 2:What's your?
Speaker 1:favorite platform.
Speaker 2:Well, my, I don't know favorites the right word but my, my most, uh, the best platform to find me on is instagram, so that is at catalyst athletics, um, and then catalystathleticscom is the website that will have. Every single weightlifting thing that I've ever done and will do is there. And, of course, I have YouTube channels, also Catalyst Athletics, which, for the most part, is the same content with a different orientation. You know, it's a landscape instead of portrait orientation. That's basically the only difference between my Instagram and YouTube content these days. And then, yeah, like I said, every you can find everything else from those two spots.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Um, I know that in our gym we share I regularly share your Instagram videos that you put out. It's just, it's amazing, it's like you're in the head of everyone. I coach, like I'll be, I'll be going along with this. You know, one lifter that's you know like, for example, like the jerk set up, one of my really good junior lifters has a real problem at the moment with her, you know, keeping straight in her dip and drive. And then along comes Greg's Instagram reel on the exact same thing. So it's a regular thing that we share in our gym and I'd just like to thank you for all the hard work you do in that space, because it really is making a massive difference worldwide.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I appreciate you saying that. I'm very glad to know that is true.
Speaker 1:Yes, so all right, thank you. Thank you so much for your time and um and we will no doubt well, we'll be keeping an eye on what you're doing and um. Best of luck for the future with all, with all your um not favorite platforms, all right, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Bye.