What others said. But just for the fun and the practice.
The hot squat works well. Make sure you have a pair of leather gloves. Practice first so you have a good technique. Try it with a cold WSM with the gloves on. I.E. do a test lift.
I have done this way in the past and got good at it. Thing is - as others have posted it's not necessary as you learn how to lift cook temps or modify cooking/prep techniques to achieve the same results in shorter time.
I mastered it using a filled water pan
I also have a large auto style drip pan handy. You need to lift straight up and circle right over to your drop/rest point. Mine was that pan which the WSM was actually sitting on and it has enough room to accommodate. This way if you spill it stays in the pan. Dry water pan - no worries.
If you drip some water on the coals not a big deal. You just don't want to have been drinking and drop the whole water pan. Practice with a full water pan if you are going to have it loaded during the cook.
An alternate that I found excellent - load coals through the side door. Have a poker or rake (which I've posted about previous) Say from Tejas Smokers. You open the side door, use the rake and stir things a bit. Then load coals/fuel in from the side with those long gauntlet leather gloves or make a slide from HD foil or sheet aluminum that you can get from home depot.
I mastered this technique only to find that cook temps are actually flexible enough that 24 hour cooks are not typically necessary. But it was fun and I like to play withe fire
If this helps you learn about fire control it's worth it. You never know when you may need to know how to do a hot lift on the WSM. It might not have anything to do with cooking in the end but might have everything to do with correction, say if you dump a full water pan during a cook while trying to move racks around, etc.
I use a dry pan and have learned to adjust cook temps to keep things in range so haven't had to use the technique in a good long while.
Anyway it's a learning curve but this technique is very useful to know and be able to execute well.
Bottom line this technique will hold temps extremely well if you need to "fix something" with the fire. Good one to have in the toolbox if you need it. But - no need IMHO to go to the trouble of installing handles on the sides of the middle section unless you just want to - because in the end you won't really be using it all that much once you have fire control down.
On a side note - the side door technique is also good to master. Good for adding fuel in a pinch but also for adding water if you use water in your pan. Just have a transmission filler funnel handy. If not the HD foil aluminium flashing "chute" will work just as well.
