STRONGMAN SPORT GIVES ARIELLE A REAL LIFT
WHEN Arielle Chard looked in the mirror, she didn’t like what she saw.
The Gold Coast woman weighed 47kg, but thought she was overweight.
Struggling with confidence and body-image issues, she took up the sport of strongman four years ago.
Since 2016, the 26-yearold has been competing in the rapidly growing sport that, despite its name, is now making some of its biggest gains among women.
Built around a series of strength-based disciplines that can include lifting logs and boulders, flipping tyres and walking with heavy loads, strongman competitions are held across Australia and the world.
They attract men and women of all sizes and experience levels.
Ms Chard said getting involved in the sport had changed her life.
“When I first started, I was very underweight and had no muscle tone,” she said. “I weighed 47 kilos and thought I was overweight. Then I got involved in strongman. I wanted to gain weight, I wanted to gain muscle.
“I’ve gained 10kg and I feel the best I ever have.”
She said while many women had previously been wary of strongman as they did not want to “look like men”, this was changing and the sport was surging in popularity among women, across all weight divisions.
“You get that misconception that if you lift weights, you’re going to look like a man and you’re going to be rough looking,” Ms Chard said.
“But when you get involved with the sport, you see they’re just normal girls. They get dressed up, they go out, but when they come to the gym, they lift heavy.”
Ms Chard said aside from the health benefits, a lot of women were also attracted to strongman because of the sense of community.
Jean-Stephen “Coco” Coraboeuf has seen the growth in strongman since setting up Coco’s Gym at Molendinar in 2014.
The Bond University sports science graduate said while strongman had long been popular in countries such as England, Russia, Poland and the US, it was now taking off in Australia – largely due to social media and people wanting a change to their standard gym routine.