Looking for the big lift
JEFFERSON TWP — New year, new goal.
For Knoch High School student Liam King, it's a goal he may not have thought much about a couple of months ago.
King broke the Pennsylvania state dead-lifting record for his weight class in the 16-17 age group a month ago during the Lifts for Gifts charity tournament in Hubbard, Ohio.
Weighing 143 pounds, King dead-lifted 435 pounds.
“At the time, I didn't know if that would even qualify for the state record,” King said. “It was just a local meet. I didn't know what counted as official or not official.”
King is fairly new to the lifting game. That was only the fourth meet of his career.
All of a sudden, he's found himself in the neighborhood of the national record.
“He's only about 30 pounds off of that,” said Kurt Martin, one of King's trainers and co-owner of the All Around Fitness Center in Valencia, where King trains.
“I feel like I can take a shot at that record in the next year or so,” King said.
While King puts a lot of time into his lifting and workouts — hitting the gym five or six days a week during the summer and fall, three days a week otherwise — he is involved with other things.
He competes for the Knoch swim team in the 100-yard breaststroke, 200-yard freestyle, 200 free relay and 200 medley relay. He runs the hurdle events for the Knights in track and field while also competing in the 4x400 meter relay and high jump.
“Liam is a driven kid,” Martin said. 'He loves challenges. He just turned 16 recently, so he has another year and a half to break the national record.
“The way he work at it and how he reacts to competition, I think it's very possible he'll do it.”
While King has been working out at the All Around Fitness Center since April of 2016, he said he began getting into fitness training at age 12.
“I got some 15-pound dumbbells for my birthday and began working out with them at home,” he said. “My dad started helping me along ... I started researching stuff more, watched some videos to get some ideas and it just grew from there.”
The All Around Fitness Center began an after-school program for kids to promote youth fitness and King began attending those sessions.
“We do an after-school wellness and strength program,” Martin said. “Liam was working as a life guard at Penn Valley pool and we did an outreach program there. That's how he found out about us.”
King had never done any type of power-lifting before.
“They did a youth team lifting program (at All Around Fitness) three days a week and I got into that,” King said. “I love competition.”
Now he loves chasing records.
“I'm doing training to break that (national) record,” he said. “That's what's challenging about this sport. You know what the record numbers are and you just try to get there.”
