04/16/2018 Employee Spotlight: Janet Chow Competes in National Weightlifting Championship Congrats to Agile Coach-Scrum Master Janet Chow on the Digital Media team for placing second in her group at the National Masters Weightlifting Championships in Buffalo, NY earlier this month. At just 4-foot-10, Janet lifted 49 kilograms (about 108 pounds) over her head during the competition, ultimately qualifying for the world championship in Spain. With such success in her first national competition, you wouldn’t guess that weightlifting is fairly new to Janet. She said, "I joined the barbell club at my CrossFit gym because I didn’t love the CrossFit workouts. I was a long distance runner and triathlete for 15 years, so my endurance background made me realize that I wanted longer workouts. I went to my first local weightlifting competition in September of 2016 and did well enough to qualify for the state championships! From there, I continued to compete." Janet competes in Olympic-style weightlifting, which consists of two types of lifts called the snatch (lifting a barbell from the ground to overhead in one continuous motion) and clean and jerk (two motions of lifting a barbell to the deltoids, then lifting it overhead). For now, Janet will forgo the world championship competition in favor of more training. She’ll attend the Masters Camp at the USA Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs this summer. She said, "My goal is to be able to snatch my body weight by the world championships next year. I can lift about 85% of my body weight right now and clean and jerk almost 20 pounds over my body weight. There’s only going up from here!" Read the Naples Daily News story about Janet and another local weightlifter that ran before their competition. Category: Company Culture
