Sports

Holbrook's Own Strong Woman

Allison Bradshaw wants to be the strongest woman in the world.

Most women express signs of dominance and fortitude throughout the day, but to be called the strongest woman in America is one title most desire.

For Allison Bradshaw, that's her actual goal. The Holbrook resident and strength and conditioning coach at Hofstra University was like any track and field athlete in high school and college, excelling in the shot put and hammer throw.

"I always loved training in the weight room," she said, expanding her interests greatly during her junior and senior years at Clemson University.

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By the time she was going for her masters degree in exercise science at Springfield College she was a gym rat, working out constantly and training for competition.

She's been competing regularly for over a year now, power lifting and growing as an athlete in a sport not in the national spotlight aside from the occasional strong man competitions on ESPN.

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She's been ranked as high as ninth in the nation in Olympic weight lifting and won an AAU world power lifting competition, setting three American records. She also placed sixth this year at the America Strongest Woman competition.

She finds time to train on the weekends and occasionally throughout the day at Hofstra when her athletes are in class. Her best events aren't the usual bench press and dead lift. It doesn't work like that in strong man or woman competitions. It's things like tire flipping or lifting atlas stones that separate strong people from the average athletes in the gym (see the YouTube videos above).

Originally from Connecticut, Bradshaw moved to Long Island – putting 240-pound and 200-pound atlas stones in seatbelts in her car on the way north – in July when her position as a strength coach at the University of Florida expired after one year. She worked at Equinox, a gym in Woodbury, and it was only a day into her tenure when she received a call from Hofstra's head strength and conditioning coach Scott Wilks about an opening on the staff with the Pride.

Since power lifting and strong man competitions are not drug-tested sports, the competition can easily be laced with dirty athletes.

"I don't idolize a lot of the big names because of that," said Bradshaw, who placed as high as seventh in the ACC in shot put during college. "I don't believe in steroids. I'm that athlete that doesn't even take some protein shakes because you never know what's in the products."

There has not been a world's strongest woman competition since 2008, so for now, Bradshaw is fixated on being the strongest in America, a goal she looks to achieve in the next two years.


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