‘Instant hit of dopamine’: Olympics put niche sports like weightlifting in the spotlight

SAN ANTONIO – With the Olympics playing on TV around the world right now, a wide variety of sports have their chance to capture viewers’ attention.

For the athletes at Bexar Barbell on San Antonio’s North Side, Olympic weightlifting is the competition that lifts their spirits. But it’s not necessarily a sport many people are familiar with.

“A lot of the times people will be like, ‘Oh, like you lift. Oh, like, what’s your bench?’ It’s like, actually, we don’t usually bench,” said Emma Walton, a competitive lifter who trains at the gym.

Weightlifting has been a part of every Summer Olympics for more than a century. The modern form of the sport includes two lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk.

The snatch is where a weightlifter picks the barbell off the ground and lifts it overhead in a single motion. The clean and jerk is a two-part move, comprised of bringing the barbell to the lifter’s chest and then pressing it overhead.

They’re technical and challenging lifts that require extensive practice. Walton trains five times a week for an average of three hours a day.

But when it comes together, Mark Pulido says you can feel it.

“It’s like day and night between, like, kind of grinding something up and kind of doing all of the cues you’re supposed to do and getting it up. It just feels really nice,” Pulido, who lifts recreationally, said of a properly executed snatch.

“And to me, it’s just like that instant hit of dopamine. So, also putting up hundreds of pounds over your head feels pretty nice sometimes, too, you know?”

The weightlifting events will take place on Wednesday, and Pulido suspects the higher the American weightlifters go, the higher the public interest will be.

But for him and the other members of USA Weightlifting gyms like Bexar Barbell, there are even more personal connections.

“We have a couple of people here that are super, super competitive that have a chance to go eventually,” Walton said. “So knowing that like they could go, I get more excited about watching it because it’s like, ‘oh, that’s our sport. That’s what we train for,’ you know?”