Medford Woman To Compete in the Strongman World Championships

Brittany Diamond trains for her first appearance at the arnold amateur strongman world championships. photo provided to bostonmagazine.com.

For lifelong athlete Brittany Diamond, fitness is more than just a way of life: It’s like a second job.

The 22-year-old Medford resident is in full-time training mode for the 2015 Arnold Amateur Strongman World Championships, a weekend-long international strength competition that begins March 6 in Columbus, Ohio. Diamond, a marketing professional whose trip is being sponsored by her employer, an Andover-based startup called Looped In, has been logging serious gym time nearly every day to prepare—with good reason. When she faces her female competitors in the 140 to 180 weight class in just a few weeks, Diamond will need to outperform other athletes in a series of events, including a 450-pound yoke walk and lifting a 4-door sedan for multiple reps.

That’s right. She’ll be lifting a car. And more than once.

Although it’s Diamond’s first time competing at the invitation-only World Championships, she’s no stranger to physical challenges. She ran track in high school, and was a member of the Division I women’s rowing team at the University of Rhode Island. Diamond says she discovered the Strongman while surfing the web one day during the summer after her junior year. She stumbled across the website for a group called Starting Strongman, which offers a free 12-week training program for beginners.

“I started doing some research and found a local competition. I decided to compete that August and, from there on out, I kind of fell in love with it,” she says. “I had one more year of rowing and as soon as my career was over, I took two days off and literally just did a complete turn and started training for this sport.”

Diamond says she chose to move to the Greater Boston area after graduation because of its proximity to two gyms with the necessary training equipment: Titan Barbell in Medford, and Total Performance Sports (TPS) in Everett. Since her Strongman debut in 2013, Diamond has excelled in both state and national contests, including a first-place win at the TPS Massachusetts State Strongman Competition in August 2014. Some of her Strongman personal records include lifting a 250-pound Atlas stone from the floor to a 50-inch platform, walking 50 feet with 200-pound weights in each hand, and nailing a 350-pound dead lift.

Although she hopes to win, Diamond says that she’s most looking forward to the competition experience. One of the things that Diamond says she loves about the sport is the encouragement she gets from her fellow athletes.

“The support you receive is amazing,” she says. “There’s nothing else out there that your biggest competitor will literally sit there on the sidelines and cheer you on.”

Photos provided by startingstrongman.com.