Scottish strong woman on big breakfasts, femininity and flipping 300 kg tyres for fun

Emmajane Smith started yesterday with her usual breakfast bagel of three turkey rashers, two eggs and two slices of Edam cheese. Then, she went into her yard, put on a harness and practised pulling a 7.5 tonnne tractor.

Emmajane Smith, twice name Scotland's strongest woman, who is heading to Northern Ireland later this month to compete in UK championships which will be broadcast on television for the first time. Picture: Contributed

It is the last full week of intense training before Smith, 35, of West Kilbride, heads to Northern Ireland to represent Scotland in The UK’s Strongest Woman competition. This woman - twice named as the strongest in the country - is feeling good about the event ahead, which will take the female version of the sport onto the television for the first time.

“Things are getting amped up now. It’s all about making sure that the body is as well prepared and primed as it can be. It’s high intensity at the moment. I’ll be flipping tyres that are 300 kg and I practised that all last week. It really gets your heart and lungs going.”

Smith is training four times a week, for around two to three hours a session. In peak training mode, she will eat five meals a day after her breakfast bagel.

"Things are moving very well. At the moment, it’s all push, push, push but next week I’ll be more rested and getting ready to go to war,” she said.

Smith, a showjumper who runs the Goldenberry Stables, in West Kilbride, took up weights seriously in 2015 to help improve her overall fitness in the saddle. By 2017, she was named the Scottish Powerlifting Champion for the first time.

The following year, she was named European Champion in France and won silver at the world championships in Hungary. Then, she became the first woman in history to lift unassisted the Dinnie Stones in Aberdeenshire – two granite hulks with a combined weight of 332.49 kg

Smith said: “I was getting a sore back and sore hips while on the horses so I started lifting weights. The trainers were saying to me ‘you are really strong’ so when I saw the strong women contests advertised, I thought ‘well, let’s see how strong’.”

The sportswoman said powerlifting made her think and feel differently about her body.

She said: “It’s not the thing that drives me, but I do really like the effect it has on my body. But the weights also changed the way I think l about my body. I look at my body and I can see what it can do. It’s like a tool – but the way it looks is another positive. People always think that the weights make you big and bulky, but I definitely feel feminine. It’s still nice to put on a dress and show off my curves.”

Despite the low profile of strong woman events, Smith said she had always felt supported in male-dominated gyms and body building studios, with her sex never being a barrier to her being taken seriously.

Smith, who is looking for sponsorship to help her attend competitions, said: “A couple of years ago I said in an interview it would be really cool to see the women’s sport on television. Now in a couple of weeks, I will be competing on TV. It shows how far we have come in the sport. They can’t not notice us. They need to pay attention to us now.”

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