‘Weightlifting’ is a sport, ‘weightlifting’ (lower case w) is just something you can do, and ‘powerlifting’ is a different sport all together. “Gross, why have such similar words for similar but distinct things?” Shut up nerds, we do it for everything. Weightlifting, for me, was something completely inaccessible and that was sad. I thought it was for hypermasculine or super fit people who made loud noises at gyms and hung out in packs. It turns out, I was wrong :fist-pump:

The first part of this post is about what Weightlifting is, in an attempt to break the stereotype and make it more accessible. The second part is how I came to do weightlifting myself, so you might as well stop reading when you get there.

About Weightlifting

Weightlifting is a sport where people compete to try and lift the heaviest weights over their head. It is also known as ‘Olympic Weightlifting’ which is a name that comes from the fact that the movements that are a part of the sport go all the way back to the first Olympic games in 1896. But that’s the only reason why. You don’t have to be an Olympian to do it.

Anyone can do it. There are gyms and clubs all over the world with coaches who teach classes and individuals the proper way to do it. It’s not just HEAVE! There’s a good deal of technique involved.

And there’s an interesting community around it. There’s a YouTube channel called Weightlifting House with experts, who don’t seem like meat heads, who talk about Weightlifting, and weightlifters, in a very informed, educated way. And the Weightlifting gyms I’ve been to (granted only 2) have normal people who enjoy themselves, like any other hobby.

If you’re interested, have a Google around for the nearest class and give it a try. It’s a bunch of fun.

How I came to do weightlifting

Every now and again I would try to learn more about it, because yes, I like the idea of lifting heavy things over my head. Sue me, I watch a lot of films and read a lot of fiction. But whenever I would try to learn I would get put off by the nomenclature: ‘weightlifting’, ‘Olympic lifting’, ‘Olympic Weightlifting’, and ‘Powerlifting’, sometimes accompanied with another term that had the same accessibility problems for me ‘Cross fit’. Then if I decided to ignore the noise I’d find YouTube videos of super fit or hypermasculine people talking about ‘Cleans’ or ‘cleaning weight’ and ‘Snatches’ and ‘Jerks’ and ‘Clean and Jerks’. And that’s as far as I would get before saying, ‘ah fuck it, I’ll continue doing what I’m doing, what week am I on in couch to 5k?’

Well, obviously something changed, as a result of a series of coincidences. When I was young, sometimes ‘The World's Strongest Man’ competition would be on telly. I remember watching it and thinking ‘Bloody hell.’ Then one of the people who was on that show appeared in Game of Thrones, Hafthor Bjornsson, the Mountain. And I recognised him. So, as I’m want to do, I looked him up and followed him around online for a bit. It wasn’t all that interesting, it’s an interesting competition but what the people behind it were talking about wasn’t interesting to me.

Except then I found a video with Hafthor featuring Martins Licis. Another ‘strong man’ competitor who seemed quite fun. I stalked him around the internet for a while, and while he is a massive (in the most etymologically true sense of the word) human who lifts heavy things, he’s also an anime nerd and talked about Dragonball and robots, and his nickname is ‘the dragon’. I like dragons. So I started watching his videos.

As part of his training, he was doing an exercise that looked super cool. And he was crushing it because obviously he’s an enormous person, but has incredible mobility too. It was cool to see. And he said in one of the videos that he was doing ‘Olymipic lifts’ and that he’d always enjoyed the sport of ‘weightlifting’. And I thought, huh. Yes, he’s a super athlete, but he’s not a hypermasculin douche. Hmmm. Maybe I could get into that?

And then recently, when I started living in Bristol in Feb 2022 I was trying out a gym when a fella approached me to say ‘Hey you can’t train in this space, this is a private space even though its in the public gym.’ I took my headphones out and said ‘huh?’ He repeated himself and I apologised but we got to chatting and he handed me a flyer. (Flyer? is that an American thing? It was just a piece of paper with some headings and dates on. huh.) And said there was a 7 day free trial thing going on at the moment, all I had to do was sign up online, no card needed, and turn up to some classes. And so I did.

And now, 3 months later, I’ve bought weightlifting shoes, know what my current max lifts are, and am writing this. Would recommend.

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