Inspiring And Inspired

Double Olympic medallist Jazz Carlin speaks to M&F’s Mark Laws about changing people’s lives, changing sports and how important a simple pull up was for her career.

- Mark Laws

At the end of 2014 Jazz Carlin walked into a gym and couldn’t do one single pull up. Maybe she was weighed down by the two World Championship, one European Championship and one Commonwealth Games bronze medals? Or the one World Championship and two Commonwealth Games silver medals? Let’s not forget about the two European Championship and one Commonwealth Games gold medals that she had also already earned.

These medals weren’t around her neck weighing her down at the time – she couldn’t do a pull up because she wasn’t strong enough, but that was all about to change.

“I moved to Bath towards the end of 2014 to train at the National Centre for Swimming” explains Carlin, “Before I moved there I couldn’t do a pull up, I couldn’t do a press up and couldn’t even really hold my bodyweight up at all – this is after I had won the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games gold medal. Team Bath wanted me to be able to control my body better and to be able to stabilise my bodyweight, so I went into a much more focused strength training programme”. The four-time Commonwealth Games competitor had done a little bit of work with medicine balls and resistance bands prior to this but would soon see her dry-land training change drastically. “Now my gym training is a lot more strength focused. I am doing push ups, pull ups, dumbbell presses, bench pulls…my event is very upper body dominant and my legs don’t play a huge part, I do a little bit of squatting and some jumping drills but most of it is upper body to make sure I have got the strength endurance I need to compete”.