How Often Should You Compete in Weightlifting?

I love this topic, and with the Olympics coming up, and the the process it’s taken for the lifters to make the team, it’s fairly topical!

So first off, competition frequency is going to be determined by your experience level. It also very closely mirrors the SRA curve, but that’s for another article.

As a beginner, you can make progress incredibly fast, so you should compete as often as possible. My recommendation is about once a month. Getting practice competing allows you to gain a mental edge on other competitors, as you will feel calmer at meets, and less erratic from nerves.

As you become more intermediate, maybe qualifying for lower level national meets, and your training becomes more structured, then I would recommend competing less often. Instead of 10-12 times per year, maybe compete 6-8 to allow more time to build on your training.

Once you move up the ladder in the national rankings, maybe now you’re in contention for a medal, you should begin competing even less. Competing every 3 months will give you more time to build on your training, which will be required to continue making progress. Though you can still do one off local meets to stay sharp, but you must train through the meet instead of training for it.

As you reach an advanced level, and are competing internationally, then you will unfortunately need to compete more often to make teams, and will need to meet minimum competition frequency requirements for your team. The important distinction is knowing which competitions are important and which aren’t, and training through the ones that aren’t and peaking for the big ones. If you are trying to make the Olympics, you probably don’t need to do the state championships. Most people at this only train for 1-2 meets per year, then train through the rest of them, and don’t try to push for PR’s at the smaller meets.

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