Struggle of the Training Process with Maya Laylor

Clance: Do you enjoy the training process and if not, why? So I guess we’ll start with the first question. Do you enjoy the training process?

Maya: No, I don’t enjoy it.

Clance: Why don’t you enjoy the training process?

Maya: Because it’s long. It’s tiring. It’s grueling. Very, very mentally draining and it’s hard to find the motivation to get yourself going. You do the same thing day in and day out, and it gets very boring, so I have to find ways to keep myself interested. Like I play videos and think of other competitors just to get myself going because I trained by myself mostly like no one really does the training I do. So I just find other ways to keep myself motivated.

Clance: So you said a very important thing because we’re in Canada. We don’t have like a national team and you’re a national team member. So yes, you train amongst different athletes, but they’re not athletes who are going through the same difficulties, the same pain, the same struggles you are. How is that?

Maya: It’s not that great. I want to train amongst other elite-level athletes as myself, Olympic weightlifters. When I feel like pain and like grueling tiredness, I want to like look around and see we’re going through the same motion.

Clance: And helps to drive you. So that team environment where people, I think that’s one of the biggest things for me as a coach, I think we are missing. I commend a lot of Canadian athletes ’cause you’re not doing one a lot of different cleaning out these ethic. They have to find that motivation like you say, sometimes you put on a TV, watch other athletes and so on and so forth. I think one of the most difficult thing is that mental part of it, that just training on your own when you’re going through really heavy grueling cycles is the toughest for you.

Maya: That’s the most toughest. The toughest.

Clance: Do you miss those cycles when they’re gone?

Maya: No. I love the tapers, just training heavy and short, no volume, quick in and out of sessions. That’s what I like.

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