A 27-year-old personal trainer was awarded the title of powerlifting world champion after just one year of praticing the strength sport.

Jessica Clark, from Basingstoke, successfully tackled three lifts totalling 420kg in the AWPC World Powerlifting Championships in Manchester on September 9. She received this title within the under 67.5 under category.

After weight training for the past six years, Jessica found her love for power lifting in September 2021. Alongside this she also runs a coaching company with her partner Mike Carter called Radical Coaching.

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For the competition Jessica was required to complete three different lifts three times, a squat, bench and deadlift where the judges took the best lift with the heaviest weight and gave a total, reflecting three combined weights. 

She said: "It felt really good to receive that title, I sort of fell into power lifting by chance so to be able to have a title that shows all the hard work I have put into it is really satisfying."

Whilst working alongside a coach, Jessica decided to take part in a powerlifting competition in Salisbury to just see how strong she was and set a bench mark with where she was at.

After coming first in that competition, that is when she decided to give power lifting her best shot and set herself the challenge of trying to get to world levels. 

Jessica added:"I really want to give it a proper go, so I set myself that challenfe and it just so happens that I turned out to be quite good at it."