Q&A KAILLIE HUMPHRIES
Q People think of your job as extremely glamorous, but what is it really like, flying all over the world with that equipment?
A Travel in reality is very different from what people think. It’s not the jet-setting, glamorous life. I love travel, I love going to new places — I hate travelling itself. I’m a bobsledder, I’m fairly big. On very little planes, your feet end up swelling hugely. Q On social media you share pictures and videos of workouts that look pretty intimidating to us. How much can you squat?
A My max squat is 160 kilos (352 pounds) for two reps, all the way to the floor. Ass to grass, as we say, all the way down.
Q What does the workout look like generally?
A I work out a lot like our Olympic sprinters. I share a coach with Andre De Grasse. We do a lot of sprinting, very similar stuff. We just do it for 40 metres. Our reps are not nearly as long, we just get more of them in a shorter distance, focusing on the explosive side. All of our warm-ups and the physical, technical aspect of sprinting is the same as the Olympic-level athletes.
We do a lot of Olympic-level lifting, as well. We have the strength component built in, so a lot of our workouts are pretty much taking an Olympic lifter and an Olympic sprinter and putting them together. We want to be as big, as strong and as fast as we can possibly be. We’ve got a sled that weighs 170 kilos and we’re trying to get it up to 40 kilometres an hour in five seconds. Speed is a portion, but strength is, as well, so we work really hard on explosivity.