“I started weightlifting when I was 13 after one of my soccer coaches scouted me and thought I’d be good at it. I continued weightlifting because I love being strong. I love the community around weightlifting. It’s a lot of women, surprisingly, in Olympic weightlifting, and so it’s just really empowering to be a strong woman.

We train four days a week for two hours. It’s a lot of snatching, a lot of clean and jerking. Basically, those are the two lifts that we focus on, so it’s a lot of strength work like squats, deadlifts, to get better at those two lifts. My snatch is 83 kilos and my clean and jerk is 105 kilos right now.

In Olympic weightlifting, we compete in the snatch and the clean and jerk. You get three attempts at your snatch, three attempts at your clean and jerk, and then whoever lifts the most out of your weight class and your age group wins.

My next competition is the National University Championships. So, it’s all the university aged student athletes competing for national results. Last year, I ended up getting fifth, but this year, it’s looking like I’m in place to get a medal, which will be really exciting.

We’re trying to get a spot on the national FISU (International University Sports Federation) team so that we can go compete internationally, which is really cool.

To compete in the Olympics, there are a lot of hoops I have to jump through first, but weightlifting is a lifelong sport, so I’m just excited that I get to do this for a long time.

Getting involved in weightlifting just starts with working out in the gym. That’s how you pick up interest. Contacting your local gym or CrossFit gym is a really good way to get into it. They’re really good at intro classes, and we’re just a super welcoming community because we’re really small, so anyone who has any interest, we’re just so excited to have them come.”

—Chloe Pickett, health and physical education major, and Olympic weightlifter