After facing devastating injuries, Megan Signal has made a remarkable recovery and has been selected to compete in the weightlifting women's 71kg event at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Megan Signal didn't know that the horrendous pain she had felt just days ahead of her Olympics debut was her shoulder dislocating. She had never dislocated a shoulder before. When she accidentally popped it back into place, she immediately started to feel like a drama queen. "I think it might be OK", she said to herself, and later to her coach, willing her body on. The weeks leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics had been a whirlwind of stress and uncertainty. She needed her shoulder to be OK. Just hours before her flight to Japan, she attempted an empty barbell over her head. Her shoulder popped out once more. "Oh, nah, it's not OK". When she had finally made it to the Olympics, still hopeful, she lay on a massage table, and her shoulder popped out again. "Definitely not OK", she would finally realise.
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When she's backstage, Signal tries not to think. It's the thing that can trip athletes up, worrying about what others are doing around them. The thinking is done by her coach. She trusts him, so it doesn't matter what her competitors lift around her. He watches a screen, looks at numbers intently. He will swivel around and tell her a weight to put on the bar. She gees herself up. Goes over her cues. A burst of energy is needed for the lift. When her coach tells her to sit again, she tries to conserve that energy. Calm is needed, music in her headphones, she'll try to forget about it all for a while. Then, she will repeat the process. A flurry of activity, and then a lull. Waiting to step out onto the platform.
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Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Signal had a frantic, condensed four days in Japan trying to get herself onto the platform. She recalls boxer David Nyika, who had overcome his own adversities to win a medal at the Tokyo Olympics, on a physio table next to her offering words of encouragement, trying to keep her positive, reminding her that all athletes have something going on, some kind of injury they're dealing with. Signal listened, knowing her shoulder was not in its joint. "I don't know how I'm going to put 100kgs over my head," she thought.
She pulled out just before she was due to compete, with some watching at home on TV still expecting her to walk out. The thought of having to tell people was tough. As was the thought of surgery. Exhausted, she told her coach, "I don't think I can go through another one."
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
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There were no clues growing up that Signal had any capacity to become a world class weightlifter. She admits she was good at an 80m sprint, but laughs at the idea that she showed any hint of athleticism until she began CrossFit at the age of 22. Just one year later she entered her first weightlifting competition, and continued to dabble in the scene while focusing most of her efforts on CrossFit. By 2017, about four years after her first competition, the dabbling had turned into a love for weightlifting, frothing over all the things to make herself better technically. By then, she and her coach and partner at the time, Callum Gifford, had started to connect with the weightlifting community, first with 2014 Commonwealth Games champion Richie Patterson, and as she progressed further into the sport, she began working with her current coach Simon Kent. She had started out qualifying for nationals, then winning her first national championship, attempting NZ records, and then beating those records, and from there it was looking to international competition. The 2018 Commonwealth Games started to look possible.
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
To believe in her abilities for a goal so lofty was not something that came naturally to Signal. "It didn't really feel like what I was achieving married up with who I was, or who I believed that I was." Her mental performance coach told her to get out of her own way, and as her belief in herself grew, so too did her progress. "The fear of failure is such a real thing. I think learning to fail was a big part of that process."
Just as all the pieces were starting to fall into place, just as she had clarity that this is what she loved and what she wanted to do with her life, just as the 2018 Commonwealth Games were on the horizon, she would suffer an ACL injury. Megan Signal was conditionally selected for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, but would ultimately not compete.
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
"Well of course initially, I thought the world had ended … It didn't help that the surgeon told me my knee was never going to be the same again." Her surgeon was right, her knee never was the same again, but her obsession for the sport would soon spill over into an obsession for anatomy and injuries, and the learning of rehabbing. Training was her happy place, and while there was no pinnacle event to work towards, she kept going, kept training, kept working to get better. One day she realised, "Oh crap, I'm stronger than I was before."
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When it's time for Megan Signal to walk onto the platform, her coach will double tap her shoulders. It's a trigger that lets her know the clock is on, and it's all on her now. She takes deep breaths as she walks out, it's important not to switch on too early. She takes her time, and tells herself, "You're on the platform, the lights are on, but it's not scary, you're fine." With every step she gets closer to the bar, she is bringing her energy up a little more. When her hands are on the bar, she tells herself simple technical cues, different ones for each lift. 'Stay over, pull high' she'll repeat over and over, ahead of her snatch. 'Tight, stay close, fast elbows', is the mantra for the clean and jerk. She is calm, present, and on.
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
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Signal had visualised herself sitting on the floor, calling her mum to tell her that she had made the Olympics team. She had really wanted this for her family, for all the times she'd made the difficult choice to spend time away from them. She had visualised the moment so often, she would get emotional at the thought of it. When that moment did come, it felt like déjà vu.
Back in New Zealand from Japan, after two weeks of MIQ and finally getting access to an MRI, Signal would undergo shoulder surgery. In her recovery, she would visualise every little muscle healing within her shoulder.
Recovering from her knee injury had built in a fear of having to go through something like that again. But Signal was a different person now, more experienced and used to the realities of high performance sport. "The world wasn't ending for me when I re-injured. It was devastating and I honestly couldn't quite believe it. But the world wasn't ending."
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
With the 2022 Commonwealth Games now in sight, the journey to recovery had to be condensed, and it was more difficult than she had imagined, "In every aspect. Physically, emotionally, mentally." It was hours of boring daily rehab, eating zero processed foods for a chunk of time to give her body every chance of healing, doing everything her physio asked of her to the letter, going to sleep early, waking up every day thinking about recovery, making sure her body was moving every day, while still looking after her mind. "It was such a grind and it was often done, it sounds so dramatic, but it was often done through tears."
Signal has gone as heavy as 118 kg overhead for her clean and jerk in competition. In the build up to this year's Commonwealth Games qualifiers, she was coming in to training move an empty bar at 15kg. Every now and then, she would lift 35kg. They needed to regain the technical movement, so that when her shoulder was strong enough, she could throw what she needed overhead. And she needed to recover three months ahead of what most people are expected to. "It's kind of wild to know what's achievable when you, even now it's hard to say this about myself," Signal pauses, "When you are that persistent and that consistent. I'm pretty proud of myself for actually doing that."
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
By the time she made it to the qualifying competition, she had lifted 80kg just a couple of times. To qualify, she needed to beat the woman warming up in front of her, and she needed to put up a total that placed her in the top 8 of the Commonwealth Games top Ranking list. She did both of those things with her 83 kg snatch and 108 kg clean and jerk. "Even now where I am, from the outside looking in, it may not look like a medal, it may not look like I'm in my best shape, but I still believe that I will be."
The Birmingham Games is Signal's third team selection for a pinnacle multisport event. It will be the first time she actually gets to step on the platform. "I'm so ready," Signal says, "This time, I think maybe I'm a little more grateful for the positions I'm in because I've had to work so hard for them and I know how easily they can be taken away."
Weightlifter Megan Signal Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
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Just before she makes her lift, Signal must be focussed, calm and centred. At the same time, she needs to feel the energy coursing through her veins. She is about to lift a huge amount of weight. When she makes the lift, she feels light and joyful. It is literally a weight off her shoulders.
Sometimes, a lift will feel heavier than she wants, it won't feel like she expects it to. That's when she has to fight for it. When it's a struggle to stand up, she has to work for it. For a moment, she may not want to. Because it's really hard. It's a scary place to be in. But those are often the most rewarding lifts.
