A powerful feeling pulses through your body as the barbell is lifted off the ground. Feet and hands are in place, and form is good. The barbell is now fully off the ground, and you are standing all the way up to complete the full motion of the deadlift.

It takes everything in you to keep going, to get another rep in. 

Form is one of the most important aspects of weightlifting ensures that someone is working the muscle they want, and at the best of their ability. It is also important to actively engage different muscles. Focusing on different aspects and muscles while constantly staying focused can make it challenging. Lifting isn’t something that is supposed to be easy.

“It’s more of the mentality and knowing that you’re only cheating yourself out of it if you don’t test your limits,” senior wrestler Jessica Mendez-Gil said.

Weightlifting increases strength and gives lifters the results that they want to see. Growing stronger and continuing with weight training can lead people to compete in powerlifting competitions.

Arguably one of the hardest parts about weightlifting is staying committed to the process.

“It’s made me more confident as a person,”  junior wrestler Ava Payne said. “To be able to know that you can lift heavy and you’ve worked hard enough to improve yourself, it really helps your confidence.” 

Weight training is on the rise and has become more popular, especially since gyms reopened from being closed due to COVID back in 2020. More and more people are coming to the gym to lift. Gym culture can be what you surround yourself with at the gym. The best people, equipment, and supplements. Some aspects of this culture include discipline, motivation, determination, and being intense and consistent.

“You have to push through the pain. You push through it and even though it sucks, in the end, you really see the results,” Payne said.

Many gym goers opt into new nutrition regulations in order to show more results and properly develop. Results do show, but only with patience and to make sure you are eating right. Protein is one of the most important muscle-building nutrients to eat, even without lifting.

For many sports, lifting helps a lot. This can be applied to wrestling since strength is a key factor. Strength can help to take down an opponent and to pin them to the mat.

“Weight lifting and gaining those muscles are really important to success,”  Payne said. “You can’t really succeed in wrestling without them.”

Weightlifting also becomes helpful outside of the gym, and can make someone’s daily life easier.

“Lifting provides you with metabolic and structural adaptations that [have] long lasting benefits,” girls wrestling coach Maxine Lisot said. “I’ve learned how much I find refuge in consistently lifting every week, and that it provides me health and function when I make it a part of my lifestyle.”

While being in the gym, you learn more than just how to lift and become strong. You also become stronger as a person in all the right aspects, not just physically.

“You gain more than physical strength from weightlifting,” Lisot said. “You gain this awareness that you are capable of performing hard things and handling them.”

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