The Hunter River Times

BY JEM ANSHAW

It started as something that seemed like a bit of fun, but three years on Emily Lambkin has just won her second NSW Strongman title.

From her home gym in Jerrys Plains mother of three Emily Lambkin has trained hard to beat out the competition at the NSW Strongman titles in Sydney recently.

The event was a qualifier for the Arnolds Sports Festival Australia, the largest health and fitness expo in Australia that features a range of fitness tests – including Strongman.

“I qualified for the Arnolds this year but it was cancelled five days out,” Mrs Lambkin said of the achievement.

“This is the second year in a row which is exciting.”

It was no small feat to take out the Open Women’s category with placings in five events throughout the day tallying a total score and the win.

“We started off with a 240kg yoke walk, followed into a 90kg per hand farmers carry, so that was the first event,” she said.

“Then we followed up with a deadlift ladder – we had three deadlifts with a standard power bar which started at 130 then went up to 150 kilo, 160 kilos then we did an axel bar for reps at 170 kilos which I got 4 reps out.”

As if that isn’t enough to make anyone feel like they need to sit down, Mrs Lambkin also did a 75-kilo axel overhead clean and press, 75kg log press, truck pull and finished it off with lifting a 100kg stone over the bar as many times as she could in 60 seconds.

When asked about how she prepares for events like this her response is quite simple.

“How do I train? However, Jarret tells me to,” she laughed, referring to her coach Jarret King from Fit For Kings in Rutherford.

“I train four to five days (a week) leading into it, it isn’t a lot of reps it is just a lot of heavy weights.”

There is no rest for Mrs Lambkin who has another competition in six-weeks’ time that is a qualifying event for the Strongman Games in Florida next year, attendance of which would depend on travel bans.

Strongman has become a family affair, with Mrs Lambkin’s three children often joining her in the home gym and her husband Trent is her main support on competition days.

“I am just glad to have the support of my family, without them I wouldn’t be able to do it,” she said.

“My husband does a lot behind the scenes, then on comp day he has my food ready and he makes sure I’ve got everything I need for each event so I don’t have to worry about anything, so I can get into my own headspace that I need to be in to compete.”