Muscle Fitness Muscle & Fitness UK - April 2018 | Page 123

M A RC H I NG ON TO G E T H E R
“Before I was 13 I used to play any
sport that I was allowed to try. I come
from a Rugby family and enjoyed
playing that until I was 17, I also loved
Basketball but at 5’6” I am not really
sure I had much of a future there” he
jokes. “I was always doing pull ups,
lots of climbing and all the usual
bodyweight exercises too, I would try
anything” says Oliver. But there were a
few sports that he did not take to quite
as easily, “I was terrible at racket
sports. I tried Tennis and after just one
session they asked me never to come
back” he recalls. But who needs a
Tennis racket when you have 7 feet of
steel to throw around? When Jack
Oliver first walked into that
Weightlifting club at 14 years old he
weighed 42kgs and managed to squat
45kgs. Within two years he achieved
his first 200kg squat with a
bodyweight of 69kgs.
If Jack’s entry into the world of
weightlifting was through luck, then
Sarah’s was most certainly down to
fate. She arrived in Leeds in the
Autumn of 2011 and was studying to
become a PE Teacher at the same time
British Weightlifting were preparing
their London 2012 Olympic squad in
the very same place. The two met,
became a couple, and six months later
the best chance Sarah had of seeing
Jack was to see what all this
Weightlifting malarkey was about.
“I was surrounded by O