WATCH: Powerhouse Yazmin Zammit Stevens talks weightlifting in first YouTube video
We all know what a queen local weightlifter Yazmin Zammit Stevens is, but she’s now raising the bar (no pun intended), talking all things weightlifting in her very first vlog about her training, struggles and competitions with the sport.
“I already share quite a lot to my Instagram, however, it is a completely different story to what I tend to show on the 'gram,” she begins, introducing herself and Malta, which she describes as “the most beautiful island in the world.”
“I am actually the first Maltese woman ever to go to Worlds,” she says referring to the recent competition in Thailand she participated in, and the biggest one this year. She talks about her journey leading up to the decision to taking on weightlifting full-time following her university graduation, and her favourite training style – that of a big competition of the sort that lead her to Worlds. “Everything was just falling into place and I was the happiest I’ve been in so so long.”
Yazmin also got real with the struggles of the mental and physical pain that came with training for Worlds. “For this specific competition I definitely did not have the best ever preparation. I woke up one day, tried to step off my bed and couldn’t even hold my own weight on my feet. This happened back in June. Went to the gym, tried to pick up a barbell, could barely get the empty barbell off the floor. It was just giving me shocking pains throughout my entire body.”
She says she thought a rest weekend would help and she’d be back on her feet, but it turns out it got worse. “When I eventually went to check out what was wrong with my ankle I found out I had injured my tendon in two different places. I was honestly devastated.” She explains she visited doctors and physios on the daily, iced her feet twice a day, experienced quite a lot of pain, but also anxiety and panic attacks. “I was mentally drained. I was almost ready to just give up on going to Worlds again.”
“Eventually I was given the go-ahead to get the ankle moving and then, all of a sudden, everything seemed great and it seemed like I was going to get somewhere,” she admits. “Little did I know that once I started training that’s when the biggest challenge actually started,” she says about lifting so much less than her personal bests before the injury and struggling. “I felt I had overcome such a big hurdle already and more hurdles were just coming in my way and it just kept feeling like something’s telling me to just give up.” She reveals that talking to her coach, parents and boyfriend removed so much weight off her chest and helped her get a good frame of mind to continue training.
The rest of the video shows her experience at the World Championships, training hard, travelling around and visiting gorgeous Thai spots and slaying the competition. “Malta is an incredibly small, tiny island, but our passion and our belief is huge and I feel that for my country. I feel the love, the support and I really want to make you guys proud.”
Watch the vlog here: