I've been lifting weights since I was 13 years old, played football in high school and then two years of league football afterward. I really enjoyed lifting and during my adult years, I trained on and off but without a purpose or goal.
In 2006 when I was 40years old, I was introduced to olympic weightlifting and I really enjoyed the challenge. I trained hard and competed for 6 years in the Ontario Weightlifting Association. While I was training in early 2012 someone introduced me to powerlifting and that was quite the eyeopener. I was always training with the squat and bench press in my regular routine and the clean was so similar to the deadlift. The powerlifting training style was a natural fit for my body and I began to excel in my training. Things went so well that I decided to enter my first competition in July 2012 at the age of 46 and wow, what an entrance. I competed in bench press only in the morning and powerlifting in the afternoon and did really well. I entered the contest as a novice lifter and came out as a top ranked bench press athlete in the open catagory.
My training is three to four days a week and I train for about two hours at a time. The harder I train the more I seem to lift. I believe that weight training is a lifestyle and it can improve our quality of living. I currently work in a christian ministry called Athletes in Action, where I am a Sports Chaplain and Strength Coach. I connecting with College and University students to share about faith in Jesus Christ, life and sports. I also volunteer at the university in the High Performance Training Center to help the athletes develop strength skills in lifting weights.
My current goal is to retake the three lift Open record in the bench press. I currently hold National, Commonwealth and IPF World records and keeping them has been quite a challenge. I believe that I still have a lot of lifitng left in me! I also believe that genetics and hard work has a lot to do with my lifting success and this is what God made me for.
Some people are born to run, some are born to swim, but I was born to lift (and especially, the bench press)!
