Stephanie Gowanlock Episode
In the latest episode of the Empowerography Podcast, my guest is Stephanie Gowanlock. She is a professional fire fighter and weightlifting provincial champion who lives in Grimsby Ontario. In this episode we discuss everything from being a firefighter to weightlifting to fitness and competition to trying to change the mentality the old boys club to comfort zones and motivation.
I am 36 years old and a mom of two boys (2&5 ) married and live in Grimsby
I am a full time professional firefighter ( Hamilton) for 13 years now!
I followed in my fathers footsteps and chose to become a firefighter when I was 16 years old.. and as I was finishing up highschool I signed up for a pre service fire college and waited on a list to get in to the school for two years !!
In between I worked many jobs from office jobs to working at a bar to coaching competitive cheerleading as well as doing random hazardous materials emergency response and construction in hopes to build up life experience and Build up a resume for my ultimate goal of Firefighting!
One I completed my pre service program ( which i did in Texas ) I stared applying to any city that was hiring and in 2007 I was hired by Hamilton when I was 23 years old and have been working since. I absolutely love my job and I take pride in doing it well ! I was lucky enough to go through the fire process with my sister who is also a firefighter and also my husband is a ff as well! Really runs in the fam!!
On the other side of things I’ve been an athlete my whole life!
I was a competitive cheerleader for 17 years where I competed at 6 world championships 2 years of which I was on team canada ( we won 2 gold medals ) which was an amazing experience.. Early on my cheer career I was also competing on power tumbling for numerous years as well as coaching gymnastics and cheerleading . At the end of my cheer career I started to become interested in Crossfit in my first year or CrossFit I competed on a team at the CrossFit regionals and as well the following year before I had my first child.. CrossFit took me to a whole new level of fitness but I was loving how it was making me so strong and ultimately that transferred over to being better at other sports as well as my job!
I’m 2015 after my first child was born I who my got back to CrossFit ( I did it while pregnant as well) to get myself back in shape and on track
In 2016 I competed in Miami at the wodapolooza for CrossFit on a team of girl and that was when I decided I loved the strength aspect of then sport more then anything and merged into Olympic style weightlifting And within a year of that I was qualifying competing at the Canadian Nationals
(2017 ) I think And have been competing on that ever since.
In 2018 I had my second child and by 2019 ( November I won the provincial championships as. Quantified to go back to Nationals ( which would have been this weekend ) but obviously was cancelled due to covid!
I have goals to continue to build on my weightlifting career in the next while and I would like to progress to eventually compete at international competitions!!
I also played tough football for many years pre children and i coached CrossFit for about 5 years on top of that all.
On the side I coached a trained athletes in the gymnastics skills aspect of CrossFit and am currently still working with a group of ladies for a company called stongnastcs where we travel around locally to run workshops for CrossFit athletes that want to improve their CrossFit gymnastics skills( ie. handstands , waking on the hands , handstand push-ups , pull ups and muscle ups and that kind of thing)
Clearly I’m big on health and fitness and and am a competitive person I feel I am very driven and motivated and positive and I just love aiming to make my self better everyday I am big on competing against myself and trying to inspire not only women but everyone to do the same to show that we are Stronger then we think and that so much is possible if u really have the passion and drive to want to improve u most def can!!!