A couple of weeks ago, I got this text from Awesome Trainer:
STOP BEING A MENTAL CASE ON SNATCHES!!!! Just walk up to the bar and lift it!!!
She said exactly what I had been saying to myself for the preceding hour.
That day, the lifting portion of my programming had been snatches from the high hang. High hang snatches are exactly what I need because on a good day, I’m having issues extending fully and pulling myself under the bar fast enough. But the day I chose to do this workout . . . it just wasn’t working. I missed my first one at 75% and kept missing them from there. By my third miss, the one I pulled past my eyebrows and just didn’t turn over, I knew I had a problem.
Snatches have always been a challenge for me. I can find plenty of reasons they’re a challenge. My proportions of long limbs are the opposite of what’s ideal in weight lifting. My mobility in my ankles and hips hasn’t come back as much as I would like since I started lifting again. I have a shoulder that has subluxed during a snatch before on more than one occasion. Every time, it hurts. Badly. And it sets me back in training by weeks. The idea of that happening again scares me. There’s enough of me that I feel like I physically get in the way. I’m still not comfortable bailing from a snatch if something goes wrong. There are tons of very good reasons to be a mental case about this! But in reality, my biggest mental challenge with snatches comes down to one thing:
Self Doubt.
Despite having landed snatches the weights I was working with plenty of times, I let myself tell me that I couldn’t do it: that I wasn’t good enough, or strong enough, or deserving of having a killer lifting session.
Sometimes in life, doubts start creeping in.
My solution for that day was simple: move on. There are days in weightlifting that things just don’t go right, and you just have to move on for the day. After making enough attempts, I stopped and moved on to my next exercise, making sure they were perfect and finished my workout on a high note. But what about a long-term solution? I’m still working on that one.
I’ll probably always struggle with my self doubts. If I’m not doubting my abilities to accomplish something, I’m not reaching far enough. I can only promise myself to treat myself with kindness, patience, and compassion, taking each day as it comes.