Is ‘Thor’s daughter’ the fittest woman in the world?
She can lift 164kg. She eats five eggs just at breakfast. She spends her days ‘off’ swimming and cycling, writes Jane Mulkerrins
ON a wet morning in New York, I set off to meet Annie Thorisdottir, who has been described as the “fittest woman on the planet”. The 25-year-old Iceland native, who has twice won the Women’s CrossFit Games, an annual four-day feat of endurance and strength, is big news in the fitness world.
Her success has made Thorisdottir the face — and unfeasibly impressive body — of the rapidly growing high-intensity sport of CrossFit, endorsed by the sportswear giant Reebok, which owns the “boxes”, as CrossFit gyms are known. The cavernous black-walled basement of CrossFit’s flagship gym on Fifth Avenue looks less like a gym than a scene from The Hunger Games. Ropes and rings are suspended from the ceiling, black bins are filled with lethal-looking sticks, and there are endless racks of weights.
Thorisdottir — whose surname translates as “Thor’s daughter” — has a formidable physique, with sculpted shoulders and arms so powerfully muscular she could surely crack walnuts in the crease of her elbow.
At 168cm, Thorisdottir weighs 68kg but can heave more than twice her own body weight — a total of 164kg — in a deadlift. Despite her immense strength, her waist is tiny. “It’s not about getting as big as possible, because then you’re going to be slow in the cardio rounds,” she explains. “You need to find a balance between getting strong but not too heavy.”
The only thing distracting me from Thorisdottir’s muscles are those of her training partner, boyfriend Frederik Aegidius, also a CrossFit champion, who has just taken off his T-shirt.
You don’t get bodies like these without some work, of course. Thorisdottir trains for four to five hours a day, six days a week, with a combination of cardio, gymnastic conditioning and Olympic powerlifting. On days “off”, she cycles and swims.
CrossFit was founded in Santa Cruz, California, in 1995, by Greg Glassman, a former gymnast who discovered that by using dumb- and barbells he became stronger than gymnasts who were working with their body weight alone. In 2010, there were 1 500 CrossFit “boxes”, mainly in the US; today, there are more than 10 000 in 80 countries.
The appeal, Thorisdottir believes, lies in the rapid, tangible results. “It’s easy to see when you’re getting fitter and stronger. You can say that today you did a pull-up, jumped higher . . . Everyone is competing against themselves.”
Impressive though the physical results can be, critics believe that intense CrossFit training carries a high risk of injury.
Assistant Professor Eric Robertson, of the University of Texas, says the lower back is “one of the main areas of risk, followed by the shoulders, with injuries such as dislocated shoulders and torn rotator cuffs”.
“People lift extremely heavy weights in CrossFit, and that power-based training, with speed and time components attached, predisposes you to these load-type injuries and overstretching injuries.”
Perhaps surprisingly, given the raw, almost ascetic feel of the gyms and the emphasis on weight-training, CrossFit is extremely popular with women — the ratio is about 50:50 worldwide.
As well as bragging rights to the title “fittest on the planet”, the winner of the CrossFit Games in California receives $275 000. Anyone, of any age, can enter, and there were 210 000 first-round entrants in last year’s competition.
Thorisdottir was born in Vík í Mýrdal, a coastal village in Iceland about 180km southeast of Reykjavik with black sand and just 300 people. Her mother taught aerobics and her father was a keen runner.
Thorisdottir showed her prowess from an early age, beating her two older brothers and cousins in pull-up competitions organised by her grandfather, winning money for each pull-up. “If there was a challenge, especially one with a reward, I had to win it,” she says.
When she was eight, the family moved to Reykjavik, where she began to focus on gymnastics. “My one goal was to make the national team, which I did when I was 15, then I quit,” she says. “I could see I was getting too tall for it and I would never be the best in the world.” She tried ballet, but her frame wasn’t suitable, so she turned to pole-vaulting. She became national champion but found it “quite repetitive”.
In 2009, an instructor signed her up for the CrossFit opens. Although she’d never heard of the sport, she won the open, the regionals (the second round) and a coveted place at the games. “After that I was like: ‘Yes, this is what I’m doing. I can give up pole-vaulting,’ ” she grins. She came 11th, having been doing CrossFit for just two months.
In late 2012, after two triumphs at the games, Thorisdottir was lifting weights without warming up properly when she collapsed, unable to feel her legs. A scan showed that she had a bulging disc in her lower back, and she spent a week in bed — without telling anyone, “because I was so embarrassed”.
Ten days later, she was back in the gym — but in February 2013 her back suddenly gave way again. This time she had caused serious nerve damage: her left leg was numb for months, and she was forced to sit out the 2013 games.
“It was really hard mentally,” she confesses. “I was close to just giving up so many times.”
She finally felt fit enough to compete at the games again in July, when she came second.
Aegidius, with his T-shirt now back on, has popped by to deliver his girlfriend’s midmorning meal, a large microwaved container of scrambled eggs, beef and sweet potato. This comes, Thorisdottir explains, from a company that prepares and delivers nutritionally balanced meals in exchange for mentions on her social media streams. “It’s hard for me to eat enough, so I have two or three meals a day from them,” she says.
Breakfast is usually five eggs, sweet potato, bacon and orange juice, a green smoothie with protein powder before training, and this protein-packed meal afterwards. In the afternoon she’ll have a chicken salad, and snack on nuts and bananas. “Then I’ll have a really large dinner.” How large? “Well, we’ll heat up three of these,” she says of her substantial boxed meal. She doesn’t touch pasta or bread. “Just because I feel really heavy the next day,” she says. “But I love Mexican food — I have quesadillas pretty much every other day.”
She drinks alcohol only once or twice a year, but every Saturday indulges her sweet tooth. “That’s when I have my ice cream and my chocolate-chip cookie and my chocolate cake.”
Thorisdottir espouses the maxim “strong, not skinny”, and would like to inspire all women, and particularly girls, to focus on what their bodies can do, rather than simply what they look like.
As a teenager in the worlds of gymnastics and ballet, where eating disorders are rampant, she was not entirely immune to the pressures. “I had Russian
Critics believe that intense CrossFit training carries a high risk of injury Why should I have to quit just because I won, if it’s something that I still love doing?
gymnastics coaches, and they were constantly poking and prodding,” she recalls. “I went through a stage where I didn’t eat enough.” At 15, she still hadn’t hit puberty.
“Then, the year after I quit gymnastics, I grew really quickly, and went through puberty, and became a proper woman.”
Her goal is to win back her crown at this year’s games.
“People ask me why I didn’t quit when I was on top,” she says. “But why should I have to quit just because I won, if it’s something that I still love doing? It’s not all about winning. Though obviously it is more fun when you win.”