Greg Everett has been in the sport of weightlifting for just over a decade and has evolved from student, to competitor, to coach, to writer, to producer, to running running the popular facility Catalyst Athletics.

Everett is still an avid lifter and will be competing in the American Open this weekend in D.C. We caught up with him to get his take on the sport and his approach this weekend.

Did you ever envision weightlifting being as popular as it is now, and can you foresee ESPN eventually broadcasting meets?

If you asked me in 2006, I probably wouldn't have expressed much optimism about its popularity growing significantly. However, the landscape changed very dramatically in the few years after that, and it became obvious that it would grow considerably. That said, it's still orders of magnitude behind the most popular sports in the U.S. and even behind CrossFit, which is the source of most of the new interest, meaning weightlifting will always lag behind it in terms of popularity.

I think it's possible that a company like ESPN will eventually be interested in broadcasting major meets, but it won't be soon and it probably won't be live (at least on TV - more likely online streaming). I think people inside the CF community have an inaccurate sense of its popularity; yes it's grown dramatically, but for the overwhelming majority of TV-sports-watching Americans, it's still unknown or uninteresting.

In your documentary, '[American] Weightlifting,' you said that the participation numbers were 4,000-5,000... USAW recently released numbers closer to 16,000. What are your thoughts?

The membership tripled or quadrupled in the four years it took me to make that movie, which is great, but it's only a start. By way of comparison, USA Gymnastics has 110,000 members - almost seven times USAW. We're not even in the same league. And gymnastics is a reactively small sport.

You also have to keep in mind that many of the new members are newly certified coaches - primarily CrossFit trainers who are simply adding to their credentials and often don't actively coach competitive weightlifters, which means that number is not a totally accurate representation of actual competitive lifters and coaches. I think what's happened is that, while all segments of the membership have grown, the segment of totally dedicated competitive weightlifters and coaches (i.e. those who don't also do CrossFit or who coach other athletes primarily) has become a smaller percentage of the total membership.

That said, it's still a good thing because it increases the number of spectators and interested parties in general (e.g. sponsors and media).

Do you think that the American Open is going to be run in a timely manner as opposed to previous events given the sport's growth, and do you have any thoughts on how the competition will play out for all of the athletes in regard torest between attempts?

For all the whining you may see on the internet about how horribly meets are run, they really are run quite well for the most part. The worst to date was the Dallas American Open, but in the meet director's defense, it was an unexpected and huge increase in lifters - something like double the previous year. No one could have been expected to predict it. And no one can run a three-platform meet perfectly and on time without planning well ahead of time.

The National Championships this year was a great event and there were only a couple sessions that had scheduling/timing issues. I had 11 lifters, I believe, and only one had a session with any considerable issue, and it wasn't that big of a deal.

Most people these days would much rather put their time and energy into public complaining instead of doing something to help the problem such as serving on one of the several USAW committees, the board, volunteering at meets, etc. Most of the complaints are unfounded or exaggerated anyway and often come from people brand new to the sport who don't understand how it all works anyway.

Regarding timing of attempts, I don't think it will be a big deal. The Gina start list is out and all of the sessions have only about 10 lifters, which is a perfect number.

The issue isn't really the total number of people anyway so much as the proximity of weights. That is, you could have a 25-lifter session (not within the rules, but just an example) that runs perfectly fine with no extended wait times as long as there is a big spread of weights. However, if you have a session of eight to 10 lifters who are all lifting about the same weights, then you have extended wait times. This happens at the world championships commonly and you don't hear anyone whining about it on Facebook. Coaches and athletes need to know how to handle situations like that effectively rather than throwing up their hands and quitting as if some egregious injustice has been committed.

How many athletes are you sending to Nationals this year and who are they?

It will probably be nine for 2015 Nationals in August: Jessica Liao (48), Danielle Durante (58), Jessica Salvaggio (58), Alyssa Sulay (63), Chelsea Ryan (69), Tamara Solari (75+), Blake Barnes (69), me (105), Brian Wilhelm (105+).

For the American Open this weekend, only Tamara Solari and I are competing. Because of the unusual date and location this year, our team opted to do a meet in San Francisco instead of the AO this year. I think we had 12 or 13 lifters last year.

You’re running a business, coaching, creating premium content for your website, writing, and somewhere in the mix still finding time to be a father, husband, and badass athlete. How do you manage to keep up with this?

I've just adapted to it over many years by learning how to work very quickly and efficiently as well as tolerate a lot of stress. The fact is that I don't get as much work done as I want because of the time commitment to training. But training is just as important to me as the business so I don't consider it an option to do less for the sake of opening up more work hours in the week.

What really kills me more than anything is traveling, which I do a lot for seminars and have been doing since 2007. Starting in 2015, I'll be sending my coaching staff without me to our seminars so I can focus on all of the creative projects I have back logged.

I have a list of projects and things I have to do that grows faster than I can check things off. The good news is that if I'm not busy with something productive, I'm not happy, so I suppose I'll be happy indefinitely at this rate.

How do you feel about your training?

My feelings about my training change very frequently because it's up and down depending on all of the factors outside the gym mentioned above. My traveling toward the end of this year along with a few other things meant I didn't have a day off for three months, which didn't help anything, and that exhaustion led to me getting sick several times, which is usual. I still have a lingering cold on my way to D.C. But on average I've been fairly pleased with how it's going. But really what matters is what happens in competition so we'll find out in a couple days.

How do you feel about your competition this year?

Honestly I don't really have any competition that I worry about. That's not because I'm the best, but because I'm always hovering right around the middle of the pack. My real competition is myself. Yes, I always want to place as high as I can, but my competition strategy is built on beating my own past performances rather than my competitors. You do well in weightlifting by lifting more weight, so I focus on lifting the most weight I physically can on that day. That's more than some and less than others. If I were in the mix for medals, I would probably approach it slightly differently, but ultimately I believe in a focus on beating your own best performance is ideal. Athletes become obsessed with their competition and usually all it does is drain their energy and distract their focus.

Are you confident about the original lift you had in mind to open with, or have you decided to switch it up last minute?

I'm as confident as I ever am going into a meet. I typically choose attempts several weeks before a meet and commit to them mentally. If you don't do that, you just spend time doubting yourself, and that's the best way to miss lifts. I'm also fortunate in the sense that I don't have anything on the line other than my sense of pride and self-worth (that's only partly sarcastic) - for example, I'm not battling for international team spots - so I've developed an interesting sort of acceptance regarding competition performances - I do what I do and I'm not going to lose my mind over it either way. I'm also about to turn 35, much older than the best in my weight class (the top guys in the class are 10 or more years younger than me), so even being in the A session with guys at that level is enough for me at this point to not feel like a complete loser.

As a competitive athlete, do you like to hit a large number before going on the platform, or do you stay light on purpose in order to keep an element of surprise?

If you mean in the warmup room of a competition, I warmup exactly how I would when going for a maximal lift in the gym, which means working up to it progressively. My last warmup lift is within about 5 kg of my opening weight so I'm not surprising anyone. It's not the kind of thing you can really do - you have to build to a weight. The only way to surprise competitors is by changing your attempt weights from your original declarations or taking unpredictably large jumps between attempts, but that's visible and they can also see you warming up so it's fairly obvious if someone is going to jump significantly - for example, if they're very close time-wise to their originally declared opener but far away weight-wise, you know they're going to bump.

Do you have any superstitions that you can’t get away from (ie: knee sleeves, wraps, belts, singlets, etc)

I definitely have habits and consistent practices, but nothing superstitious. The closest I can think of is that I don't watch the other lifters warming up or on the platform. It distracts your focus and if they lift poorly or miss, it gets in your head. You want nothing in your head that has anything to do with bad or missed lifts.

Have you ever missed a lift purposefully to win a meet?

I wish I had the luxury of being able to choose to miss lifts, but no, I only miss accidentally. You win in weightlifting by out-lifting your opponents, so you have to make lifts to do that. There is a lot of possible strategy with weight and timing manipulation but I can't think of a situation in which it would be beneficial to miss a lift. You could theoretically miss your opener to trick other lifters into being more conservative with their attempts because they believe you won't be able to make much more, but in a sport where you have only 3 shots at each lift, throwing one away for a dubious advantage is a risky game.