A Few Favorite Lifters

There are superstars in every sport that people idolize for one reason or another.  Being a strength & conditioning coach by profession I always get asked about my favorite sports or athletes.  Or I'll get a "hey did you watch the game last night?"  Honestly my answer is while I will cheer for specific teams, I don't really watch sports.  I like going to games, atmosphere always makes a huge difference, or I'll watch something like the Super Bowl but in the end I really just don't give a crap.  The only thing I will watch sports-related on a regular basis is lifting videos and since that's not a mainstream sport here I can spend endless hours watching online.

Some of the really old lifting videos are awesome to watch.  I don't mean like 20 years old.  We're talking the realllly old school, black & white videos.  Those guys were strength athletes, true specimens.  

But this post isn't about old school lifting.  It's about a few of the lifters out there that I admire.  Most of them will be US lifters, I like to support where I came from, honor those who came before me, and those who are still cutting a trail.  I'm also going to start with the female lifters first.

Tara Nott & Cheryl Haworth
The first female Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting under the current style of events and the last females to place in the top 3 at any of the recent Olympic Games.  Do I really need to say much more than that?   In the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games Tara captured the gold medal in the 48k class.  At those same Games, Cheryl took home a bronze in the +75k class.  Both amazing women, trail-blazers.  I have been fortunate enough to train under and work with Tara's personal coach from those Games.  Cheryl was also part of a short film called "Strong!" which I highly recommend you check out.

Sarah Robles
Sarah is one of our current Olympians from 2012 and is working towards 2016 in Rio.  She competed in the London Games in the +75k class where she took 7th overall.  Teammate Holley Mangold finished 10th at those Games.  Sarah is one of my favorites because she's probably one of the most exuberant upbeat people I've ever met in my life.  She's passionate about the sport and is so positive about life.  She's currently the strongest woman in America and it really doesn't get more awesome than that.  She even co-writes the blog Pretty Strong with another female lifter and they tend to get quite humorous at times. 

Other favorite female lifters include Melanie Roach of the US.  She's a wife, mother, business owner, and Olympian.  She's beautiful, successful, and strong.  A quick little jaunt over to Google will show you everything I just mentioned.  Then I'll briefly mention Lidia Valentin, a 75k lifter from Spain.  She's crazyyyyy strong, beautiful, and just a total bad ass.  She's also in the weight class that I compete in and finished 4th at the 2012 London Games.  Definitely someone to watch endless clips of on YouTube. 

Now on to the men.  There's no beating around the bush here.  It's all about the gigantic guys picking up stupidly heavy things and throwing them over their heads.  It's also about all of them being juussst a bit on the crazy side.  I just love watching these guys compete live or watching their videos online.  It's all insane!  From the US there are three guys that I like watching lift.  From the Super Heavyweights (+105k class) a good friend of mine, Zach Schluender, and of course my very own teammate, Shane Maier.  Both have represented the US on international stages and both are ridiculously strong.  Both are great people on and off the platform.  Zach has been around the sport for quite some time, is insanely smart about lifting and a great motivator.  Shane is also a great motivator and it's a blast training on the platform next to him.  I definitely encourage you to YouTube both guys.  Zach has a couple of videos that start out with "CRAZY" in the title. 

 

 

Then there's the perennial favorite of CrossFitters and man-crush for many of my male lifters, Donny Shankle.  Donny is a 105k lifter but he's lifting almost as much as the +105k guys.  YouTube has no shortage of Donny videos.  As mentioned in my previous post, A Day with Donny, I was actually really impressed with his coaching abilities as well.

And last but not least a foreign lifter, Matthias Steiner of Germany.  He's got an incredibly inspirational story leading up to the 2008 Beijing Games where he took the gold medal and which you only get a small taste of in the clip that I'm going to share with you.  Not only is he pretty inspirational but he's an all out beast.  In the 2012 London Games he dropped 196k snatch on his neck and walked away from it.  Obviously he ended up withdrawing from the meet but damn it's just a little bit crazy to get up and dust yourself off after something like that.

 I love watching lifting.  These are just some awesome individuals that I enjoy watching more than others.  To each their own as I'm sure people will have their own opinions on who they like to watch.  Who are your favorites to watch?