Page 15 - On the Road to the Canada Winter Games

ISSUE : Issue 44

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1987/1/1

(Was your father a weightlifter?) No, but I had an uncle. I think maybe that was where I got my first insights into lifting. I was only probably 5 or 6, along those years, I remember I used to go out and watch him, and I thought that was the greatest thing. He didn't have weights like we have. This is back in the 1930s, and people weren't as well off then as they are now. He couldn't spend the money, so he had home? made gear. But he did very well with what he had. I had homemade weights, too. I started when I was 15. And then when I started to work in the pit, when I was 16--that's when I got my first set of weights. Then we went from there. Knew nothing, I used to buy the magazines. And it would show the lifters. They'd be down in a split. And I used to look at the pictures, "What in the name of God are they doing in that position?" All I knew was just to haul it up here, and just to push, eh? Lorna: He didn't even know how to lift them till he saw a sequence in a magazine, Harry: He was the heavyweight champion of the world. He did a world rec? ord clean-and-jerk, and they had two pages of movie sequence in the magazine--like the clean, and then the jerk. That was when I got my first inkling. I took that magazine and I practiced. I'd look at the magazine and see what he did, and I just got the empty bar. That's how I learned to do it. Now, the snatch came la? ter on. Once Ihad the first one down, then I found it a lot easier, I knew what the reason was, why they did what they did. To look at one picture there's no way that you could--at least I couldn't--figure out why they were in that position. When I saw the sequence, then I had it. It was just something, like I say--probab- ly a seed was planted when I watched my un? cle. He didn't really have any proper lift? ing technique. He just lifted because he liked to lift. Now maybe it's in the fam? ily. I just lifted because I liked to lift. (You told me earlier, "You're only limited by your imagination," What do you mean by that?) I think, therefore I am. If you think you're strong, you're strong. The mind--it begins and ends in your head. If you have enough control mentally to tell your body to do something, your body will do it. If you really believe--if you believe--that you can do it, you can do it. But if there's somebody that tells you--es- pecially yourself--somebody that you lis? ten to says that you can't, well then you won't. But if you think, "Yes, I can," you can do it. (So that it's not just a matter of your strength.) Physical strength, no, no. It's mental. It's the mental strength. Your body will only do what your mind'11 tell it to do. That's why records continue to be broken. (How do you train Jim Dan to think like that?) Oh, a positive approach, A positive approach. And I try to tell him that there's no limit to what he can do. And then I have to turn around and tell him to take it easy, because I don't want him to get hurt. But until he's fully developed, it's a pretty touchy thing, to tell him he can, and then turn around and tell him that he can't, because I don't want him to get hurt. So I try to balance it out as best I can. "GAMES" CONTINUES ON PAGE 79 My sons. Grandsons, On the Road to the Canada Winter Games continues on page 79 400 KINGS ROAD, SYDNEY 1564-4567 (902) 1 "Oid Fashioned Hospitality nnakes The Castle Inn the Traveller's Choice" - OVERLOOKING SYDNEY HARBOUR 105 BEAUTIFUL ROOMS • ALL NEWLY DECORATED NEW TELEPHONE SYSTEM * AIR CONDITIONED * COLOUR CABLE 116 EXTRA LONG BEDS * 60 DRIVE-UP ROOMS CASTLE GATE LOUNGE Sir Arthur's Fully Licensed Dining Room 15)

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