Powerlifting competitions are not just a test of strength and muscular power but are performances like many other sports with an aesthetic dimension. Various federations have different cultures, values, and criteria for the lifts while maintaining the same overall general form. I want to focus on the lifting criteria itself.
Lifting criteria are set for one dimension of proficiency in the lift. There is a work component: weight traveling over a distance in time. While we do not explicitly consider time measurements, we do, to some degree, have distance parameters. Not necessarily of bar travel over distance, but there are parameters for grip-width on the bench press and controlled movements like the pause and hold of the lockout. Disagreements about “sumo is cheating” and “squat depth” are also part of these performance parameters. But we pay attention to the weight measurement on the bar, which is the other dimension. While the weight on the bar is the strength criterion, the form proficiency tends to be where there are more controversies. My position is that the psychomotor skill and lifting form requirements are aesthetic performance criteria that, while related to strength, are more about what makes a “good lift” good.
Bloom's Taxonomy of Lifting
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a typographical educational objective and testing tool. In Bloom’s Taxonomy, there are three domains of learning: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The psychomotor domain was developed for trade or vocational training programs (Simpson, 1972). In psychomotor skills objectives, proficiency is a combination of skill mastery demonstration (100% correct in each step) within a prescribed time – correct performance ≤ minimum time = proficiency. The first level of psychomotor skills acquisition is “Set,” which means a mental, emotional, and physical readiness to begin. The second level is “Guided Response,” which involves imitation of the skill while learning through trial and error (Simpson, 1972). A powerlifting coach teaching beginners will see these phases and must first begin coaching the gross motor movements and reserve the fine-tuning for later. “Mechanism” is the third level that still requires significant cognition and meta-cognition during the skill performance (Anderson et al., 2001; Simpson, 1972).
Reflect on a time when you watched a child’s dance performance. The children have learned the choreography to different degrees of proficiency. It looks like this when a group knows the choreography at different proficiencies. Some of the dancers move with a kind of mechanistic robotic movement. You might even see their facial expressions indicating some active recalling of the steps and positions, maybe some lip movement to self-dialog in recalling (Mechanism) the steps. One or two others are watching the other members out of the corners of their eyes to prompt their memory of the steps (Guided Response), but they are about a half-step or so behind. And then the top dancers make it look easy and natural.
Complex Overt Response
The final level of psychomotor proficiency is called “Complex Overt Response” (Simpson, 1972). During complex overt responses, the performer moves seemingly automatically and does not break down the choreography into discrete steps anymore but clusters movements into phrasing. The expert powerlifter performs the competition lifts with overt complex response accuracy with a one-repetition maximal (1RM) effort indicated by the weight. “Fast is strong” is a phrase popularized by the late Louis Simmons (2022) of Westside Barbell. In powerlifting competition, the time of the lift is not explicitly measured, but it is sometimes indirectly measured through form criteria.
When one performs a psychomotor skill with an overt complex response, the entire movement is coordinated to the degree that it is also done with maximal speed. Psychomotor automaticity means that the lifter can use minimal, if any, cues to perform the lift with “perfect form.” Onlookers can see the perfect lift by its ease and seemingly effortless grace, while the lifter experiences the lift in terms of The Flow (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). The Flow is when the athlete’s physical abilities are in relative proportion to the challenge of the task. Strain is experienced when the task challenge is more on the difficult side relative to athletic ability. A task that is too easy, on the other hand, flow-state is not experienced by the lifter.
Recent: Powerlifting Federations
Consider what this means to a lifter’s “opener” performance on a lift. If the weight is selected to approximate or edge into the flow, the subsequent lifts will be approached with a psychological advantage of confidence. Nothing builds confidence and motivation like flow. The more often one can get into the flow, the more and more he or she can do it (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). When a lift is done within the parameters of the rules in a flow state, the aesthetic quality of the performance emerges.
Non-Flow Powerlifting Lifts
Competition lifts that get out of position, stall, or “ain’t pretty” are non-flow lifts. Lifts that do not meet rules specifications are likewise regarded as “bad lifts,” or I would say, miss their aesthetic objective. Federations have rules against “hitching” or “ramping” a deadlift, jumping the “press” and “rack” commands, and failing to “hit depth” or “jumping the squat” and “rack” commands. This is where the federation’s culture calls for certain aesthetic qualities to the lift, to indirectly require lifters to perform with proficiency, not just move the weight from point A to point B. The crowd cheers when they see a “beautiful lift,” and rarely, if ever, does a beautiful lift get disqualified for a rule violation.
However, controversies arise when a lifter performs the lift in an unorthodox manner that is not explicitly a violation. Whether it is an extraordinarily short range of motion by a lifter with unusual flexibility (i.e., back arch on the bench press or uber-wide sumo deadlift), these lifts tend not to pass the aesthetic form test implied by the rules. In other words, they tend to be judged by the culture’s spirit of the lift criteria rather than by explicit rule violations. Moreover, if the lift is performed with visible ease, it increases the sense that the lift was a “b#!!$h!+” lift. It was not beautiful.
Beauty is often considered to be in the eyes of the beholder, but there are instances of beauty that rise to unarguable levels. Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1987) describes beauty as a subjective universal claim which means that the thing is declared beautiful with such conviction that the claimant expects no argument to the contrary. That means no objective criteria are met, but the claim is “as if” to have met some universal objective standard. This is why a lift that violates the aesthetic sense or intended form of the lift is unappealing to the audience, even when no objective rules are broken.
The Importance of the Aesthetic in Powerlifting
Competition performance is more than strength demonstration. While the competition lifts are not as form-technique technical as required in sports like gymnastics (highly aesthetic), performance involves doing the feat at a particular time and place for a public audience. No points are awarded for a more beautiful lift, but they are implicit in the form-oriented technique rules. Moreover, there are uniform/costume requirements in powerlifting that are more or less strict depending on the aesthetic preferences and politics of the federations. Some federations restrict logos or t-shirt prints. There are footwear parameters and various equipment limitations. Some costume rules are safety-oriented, and others are arguably safety-oriented but tend to be driven by equipment company fees paid to “authorize” their products. In the early 2000s, a federation expressly prohibited hiking boots on the squat because they lacked the classiness the federation wanted to maintain.
Therefore, while powerlifting is a strength sport, there are still essential spectator aspects, beautiful lifts, aesthetically pleasing lifting platforms, and uniforms/costumes for the people involved in the display. It has been said on more than one powerlifting podcast that these issues are constitutive in whether or not there ever truly is a professional powerlifting: One by which the lifters make a living.
Psychomotor Skills
We can boil this all down to the psychomotor proficiency of the lifts. Part of the conversation must be about technique rules that enhance the game or are merely tradition or arbitrary preferences of those running the federations. Many of the latter make cross-federation comparisons of performance problematic. As such, “All-Time World Records” (ATWRs) become a dubious claim because of this or that technical preference. Nonetheless, each lifter must spend time in training doing form and psychomotor practice. Moreover, muscular coordination and form become much more tenuous as the weight approaches one’s true 1RM (Simmons, 2022). A lifter breaks each competition lift into “phrases,” similar to how a performing artist divides dance choreography or songs into musical phrases to work out the rough spots. These partial movements and weakness-focused practice are vital to proficiency and weight increases.
There is also another aspect to overt complex response, that is the resolution of uncertainty aspect (Simpson, 1972). There is a general rhythm to the meet flow and the athlete’s preparatory routine leading up to the lift performance. When these are disrupted, the lifter must adapt to the uncertainty and dysregulation of ordinary processes and procedures. This is not doable when a lifter does not have a sufficient degree of proficiency and expertise in competition lift performance. Regression in psychomotor skill performance leads to poor performance.
Helpful Routine
A psychomotor skill is regressed when the performer has to back down from the overt complex response to the mechanism, or worse, to the guided response levels. “Getting in your own head” or overthinking is when one’s metacognitive (i.e., thinking about your thinking) processes begin attending to peripheral to lift performance issues. When one begins to break a complex overt response back down into a “step-by-step” process, the lift becomes vulnerable to mechanical breakdown. The best remedy is to visualize a flow-state performance and focus on only one crucial cue. For example, if the squat depth is one’s most vulnerable part of the lift, the lifter should focus on “what it is like to hit depth” in their experience of successful squats. The lifter should be mindful of his or her performance vulnerabilities but not get fixated or fearful of them.
Furthermore, suppose the lifter has broken down their performances into routine parts (aka phrases). When unexpected factors pop up in competition, they can rewind and locate a routine performance milestone from which to restart the routine. For example, if wrapping your wrists, hitting the chalk bowl, and a nose-tork are your pre-performance last steps before the platform when there is a stall in the platform activities (i.e., misloads), one might strip off the wrist wraps and get ready to re-wrap. The lifter shakes off the last preparatory sequence and returns to the wrist wrapping to restart the sequence and get to the platform to follow it with their routine setup and lift performance flow. It all flows together like a melody.
Learn From Failure
Finally, a competition that does not go well will reveal your proficiency points. When dysregulations of meet activities, delays, and differences in equipment are there, the overall proficiency in the psychomotor expertise in an overt complex response overcomes these problems. Moreover, the lifter has to use routines, rhythms, and flow to their psychological advantage and take care not to negatively thematize competition problems as a cosmically caused “bad day,” “just not my day,” or “everything is off.”
If an opener is messed up, the lifter has to shake it off and regroup his or her psychomotor performance flow. And if one cannot recover after some glitchy thing, then it indicates that there are things to work on regarding routine, form, and flow. It is psychomotor expertise and proficiency that allows veteran lifters, judges, and coaches to “know” whether the lift will go or not by the initial movements of the lifter. Beautiful lifts are strong and proficient performances in powerlifting.
References
- Anderson, L.W. et al. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
- Jackson, S., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Flow in sports: The keys to optimal experiences and performances. Human Kinetics.
- Kant, I. (1987). Critique of judgment, 1st ed. W.S. Pluhar (Trans.). Hackett Publishing
- Simmons, L. (2022). The conjugate method: Enhanced through the research of Westside Barbell. Westside Barbell.
- Simpson E. J. (1972). The Classification of Educational Objectives in the Psychomotor Domain. Washington, DC: Gryphon House.
Dr. Rodger Broomé, Ph.D., is a psychologist and recreational powerlifter. He spent 22 years in Law Enforcement and Fire and Emergency Medical Services before retiring to become a professor and practitioner. As a fire training captain, Dr. Broomé was the primary strength and conditioning trainer for 8 basic training academies for recruiting firefighters in the Salt Lake Metro Area. While in the fire service, he competed in the USPF and WABDL as a 220 lifter and then took a hiatus to attend graduate school.
After graduate school and a career change, Dr. Rodger Broomé has reinitiated recreational competition and contributed to his local powerlifting community with his knowledge of lifting and performance psychology. He is a state-level referee and seeks opportunities to help lifters succeed in their endeavors as powerlifters. Dr. Broomé's psychology practice has focused mostly on helping young athletes with motivation, focus, goal setting, mental skills, psychoeducation, and integrating their mental game into their physical training and play.
