They are the lions of the sporting jungle.  They silently drift into visibility, petrify those around them with their hulking sillohette and snarling features, growl, roar and pounce, and disappear again seconds later having vanquished their victim. 

If they are successful, they get greedy.  Hungry for more, they come back and continue ravaging, in ever dwindling numbers until only one exhausted behemoth is left standing.  Not for the timid or weak. 

With their bulging eyes and gritting teeth, veins swelling and sinews straining, they are the weightlifters, the strongest athletes in the world.  Clad in latex and coated in chalk, they force metallic discs and bars of up to 260kg (40+ stone) above their heads in the ultimate test of grunt and brawn. 

But they are no clumsy, lolloping oafs.  Though they sport necks, arms and thighs a rugby prop would envy, they also posses a gymnast’s precision execution and the mental toughness that can only come from years of pushing their bodies to their uppermost limits; And in a sport where strength, rather than size, is what matters, you are just as likely to witness a David as you are a Goliath in the arena.

Yet, for all its skill, variety and awe, the sport of weightlifting rarely sees the limelight it deserves, asides from the occasional Olympic or Commonwealth outing.

But that is of no consequence to Tommy Yule, one of Britain’s most decorated weightlifters, who has one a total five medals over three consecutive Commonwealth Games, and is a 2000 Olympian to boot.  He is busy enough to be bothered about publicity.

Born in South Africa to Scottish parents, but having grown up both in Scotland and England, Yule is one of sport’s anomalies, having represented both England (1998) and Scotland (2002, 2006) due to a bizarre naturalisation rule, making him a truly all-round British competitor.

But then again, it was never in doubt that Tommy was going to grow up and become a winner.  It was in his blood, and he was exposed to a sporting environment from very early on in his life.  Weightlifting became second nature to Tommy and his twin brother, Stuart.

“My Dad did weightlifting,” he told In The Winning Zone.  “He competed in the 1974 Commonwealth Games for Scotland.  So we did all sports when we were young – rugby, athletics and so on.  And then we would just do general training with him from when we were quite young.  We would just do some pull ups, press ups and handstand push ups when he was lifting, we would only have been 9 or so.  And it just evolved from there.  When we got a little older we started using some weights, and he would show us how to snatch and jerk.”

Of course, the training is only one aspect of any sport.  How you harness that training is what really counts, and Tommy saw the benefits quicker than you can say ‘snatch and jerk’.  “When I was 13 I took part in my first competition and enjoyed it, then when I was 14 I was competing at British Schoolboys level, and I won that.”

He also realised the advantage of weightlifting over other sports he tried out.  “I didn’t like the team aspect of rugby.  You could play well and everyone else could be crap, and I didn’t like relying on other people to win.  I was getting success in weightlifting, and when you are a kid and winning competitions and getting nice trophies, you like it!”

Tommy’s career has progressed somewhat from there.  His last major medal was a bronze at the 2006 Games in Melbourne when he was 30 years old, lifting under the 94kg category.

However at next year’s Beijing Olympics and in the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games, Tommy may be attending many more medal ceremonies, if he gets his way.  Because, as Strength and Conditioning Coach for The English Institute of Sport, Tommy is playing a role in developing the next generation of athletes, in all sports, to go out and take on the world’s best. 

Over the years and months of his career, he has trained athletes and coached coaches in disciplines as diverse as diving, boxing and track and field athletics, with the sole purpose of ensuring each individual is as physically ready as possible to compete and win, which, unsurprisingly, isn’t always an easy task, as he explained.

“As an athlete moves through their career, progress becomes harder and harder to get. Initially, when you are a kid, progress is easy.  You just turn up and do a bit of training.  But that progress will slow down. 

“It is simple to get a talented athlete to get a 100m run from 10.6s to 10.3s, because it is part of the process, but it is much more challenging to get that same athlete from 10.3s down to 10.0s or 9.9s.  That’s where it becomes really challenging; it’s not as straightforward as going to the gym three times a week, doing some weights and a lot of sprint training.  That will only get you so far.

“The challenge I am faced with is: How do you get an athlete to keep making progress as they become more and more experienced?”

Tommy is in a unique position to help here.  Asides from the obvious experience he has gained in the field and from his upbringing, he has also studied sports science intensely.  He can approach his role from an educated and practical viewpoint.  Furthermore, he suffered the same frustrations of the ‘plateau’ himself in his weightlifting.

“I achieved my best lifts when I was 23.  Eight years later I can’t do it anymore, and it frustrates and baffles me.”

The most likely reason though, Tommy professes, is due to a lack of a sound development structure for weightlifting in the UK.  Tommy may be an Olympic athlete, but when it comes to Olympic preparation compared to say, runners, rowers or swimmers, his sport is miles off the pace.

The big boys of weightlifting in Tommy’s weight category (94kg is one of the heavier ranks) are the Eastern Europeans, particularly the former Soviet nations; Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians (lighter lifters and female lifters tend to come from China and greater Asia).  They aren’t, or at least weren’t, genetically stronger than Tommy.  At junior level he competed on an even keel (or bar), finishing as high as fifth, and within 10kg of the winner, in the European Juniors.

But from that point onwards he and his competition were going in different directions with their sport.  “When I moved up into the seniors I carried on making steady progress, and even when I was lifting at my best, there were still lots of things that could improve, because there was no way that I could truly maximise my performance.”

“The top lifters in the world will train twice a day, every day with coaches in an environment with other lifters.  I train on my own every evening after work with no coach, and until that is changed, there is no way we can compete with these other nations.”

Besides the fact that Tommy wasn’t involved with a coaching environment (because it didn’t exist) where he could optimise his talent, because there is no money in his sport, he also had to hold down a job.  And while working in strength coaching may seem a natural, indeed almost beneficial option, it doesn’t always pan out as such. 

“I think when you have worked all day, and you spend a lot of time in the gym anyway with other athletes, then you have to go and do your own training, sometimes it is really hard.

“I don’t want to say I could have won a medal in the Olympics, you just don’t know that.  A lot of people just sit there and say ‘I could have done that if things were different’.  But I’ve never felt that I have reached my limit, and that is why I am still doing it.”

“If I just gave up, I would always be thinking I could have done more.  I don’t want to be thinking that when I give up, I want to give it my best.”

With an attitude like that, maybe Tommy should consider going down the sports psychology route, rather than conditioning.  But what his sporting career has taught him is that if you can train in an environment where you can push yourself, and be pushed, consistently harder, you will continue to improve, little by little.  It is a basic mantra, but it works.

“Everyone can improve their ability to train, but the environment plays a massive role in an athlete’s development.  For me you are only looking for sessions to be continually slightly better. If every one is 2% better than the last, you aren’t going to notice it on a session by session basis, but over a year or a few years, you will see significant differences.

“That’s one of the reasons I think I’m reasonably successful as a strength and conditioning coach, because of the way it has been part of my life.  I have a lot of empathy for the athletes and coaches because I understand what they are trying to do.”

Thankfully, for sport in general if not weightlifting, the Institutes of Sport both in England and in Scotland (where Tommy’s twin brother and fellow Commonwealth athlete Stuart once held the same position) have provided the opportunity for athletes to develop within a structure that caters for all the needs and demands of a life committed to sport.

“You can definitely see the benefits.  The athletes here really appreciate what they’ve got.  They have everything in place for them to succeed, so it is basically down to them.”

However, having come from a personal background of simply training and doing, practice and mastery, Tommy worries that sometimes there may be too much going on within such environments, to the extent that it may become too much a distraction to a young athlete.

“All these people are trying to help them, but if we don’t get the balance right in terms of supporting them, there is a risk that it may affect them on the start-line.  Athletes worry about their training, or an injury.  They can start thinking too much.  When all this support wasn’t there, the athlete would just go and train, and try to get better.  But now there is a lot for them to soak up.  Sometimes it works, but sometimes we maybe need to take a step back, because it is too distracting. 

“And instead of putting in maximal effort, they worry about what the physio told them, or they are more aware that they are not quite right in terms of an injury, rather than just doing a set or a rep to the best of their ability.  By reducing something by even a percent, there is a risk over time that if it’s not done right it actually becomes detrimental, you just mess their head up.”

Tommy Yule is a man who knows no other way than giving 100%.  He may not have won on a global stage, but in his achievements, and more so in his attitude towards his sport, he has proven to the most important person, himself, that he is a winner.  

Some athletes may become distracted by the multiple components of modern day elite sport, but Tommy will always be in the background, ensuring they keep their feet on the ground and head in the game.

RO

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