By Dan Plouffe
It’s the start of a new year, and for many people, that means it’s time to head to the gym. The gym has long been a second home for Spencer Moorman, who’s entering his 25th year of involvement in weightlifting.
And as head coach of the CanAm Barbell Club, he’s hungry to build on a breakout 2023 when his club – barely a year old – became the best in Ontario and produced world-class performances by Olympic hopeful Shania Bedward and 10-year-old phenom Rory van Ulft.
“It’s important to stop and recognize your accomplishments and to celebrate them, no matter how big or small,” states Moorman. “Lately it’s just been one big success after another, and as a coach I’m incredibly grateful for the people around me who are making this whole thing be what it is.
“But everybody has a lot of work to do actually. I’m not a huge fan of potential, because I think potential doesn’t mean anything unless it’s acted on. I don’t want to get cursed with potential, I want to be blessed with potential.”
For Bedward and van Ulft, the potential is to be the best in the world, simply put.
Van Ulft might well own the title of world champion already if only the sport’s leaders would let her try, but for the moment, she can still call herself a multiple Ontario and U.S. champion.
Van Ulft has lifted the amount required to qualify for the IWF Youth World Championships on many occasions, but rules state that athletes must be 13 before they can enter the under-18 competition. She faces similar restrictions in other events, but has excelled whenever she is allowed to take the stage.
At December’s Ontario Youth/Junior Championships, van Ulft won her fifth career provincial title by lifting 52 kg in the snatch event and 76 kg in the clean and jerk for a 128 kg total.
“She’s the youngest lifter to ever clean and jerk double her body weight – as a 10-year-old,” underlines Moorman. “Rory is world-class, without a doubt.”
At the 2023 World Youth Championships, Canada’s Ivy Buzinhani won the women’s 40-kilogram division with a 120 kg total – 8 kg less than van Ulft’s mark at provincials, achieved despite being underweight for the lightest category at 35.6 kg.
Van Ulft, who has just shy of half-a-million followers on her Instagram page and is also a competitive gymnast, was an Ontario senior champion in November as well. She was the only competitor in the women’s 45 kg division, though she also placed third in the Sinclair rankings, which compares athletes in all weight categories.
A 10-year-old finishing as the province’s third-best female weightlifter, regardless of age, has spurred conversations about getting van Ulft exempt from age restrictions for higher-level competitions.
“I think it’s a good problem to have,” says Moorman, who occasionally hears comments that girls shouldn’t lift weights that heavy. “The best thing is to just be so undeniable that people can’t say that you shouldn’t do this.”
CanAm inherits weightlifter with Olympic potential
Topping the Sinclair chart at the Ontario Senior Championships was Bedward, who was representing CanAm for the first time after splitting with her previous club in Toronto.
Bedward is a two-time national champion who finished seventh in the women’s 76 kg division at the 2023 World Weightlifting Championships. The 27-year-old posted a 218 kg total at the worlds in Saudi Arabia, which was off the 231 kg mark she’d lifted to win her national title by a whopping 43 kg.
Bedward is primarily based out of the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario in Toronto, but she’ll visit Ottawa on occasion to work with Moorman, who also serves as her coach at competitions.
It’s a mutually-beneficial arrangement – Bedward needs to be associated with a club in order to participate in provincial, national and international events, while CanAm inherits one of Canada’s best.
“Weightlifting is hard and when you see somebody putting in the effort and climbing those ranks, you want to encourage them,” explains Moorman, a California native who always cheered for Bedward’s feats at events and knew her new primary coach from his gym back in Oakland. “It was a really easy connection to make and say, ‘When you need somebody in competitions, I’m here and can be that person.’”
Moorman says a big reason why Bedward excels is because of her previous experience in competitive gymnastics and track.
“Having that kind of background in explosive power sports is really advantageous when you walk into weightlifting,” he highlights, noting exceptional strength is of course required to lift big weights, but also finesse and technique. “When she transferred into weightlifting, it became just like second nature to her.”
Weightlifting just may be the most difficult sport to qualify for the Olympics out of them all. The sport has been punished with fewer Olympic athlete entries and divisions due to its difficulties controlling doping.
Canada can only enter a maximum of three women across the five weight classes to be contested in the Paris 2024 Olympics, and though she’s ranked third overall, Bedward’s 76 kg category is not part of the programme for these Olympics.
Bedward moved down to the 71 kg for the 2022 Pan Am Championships in Colombia and placed fifth before returning to her natural 76 kg division, which should be back in the rotation for the L.A. 2028 Games.
Making an Olympic berth even more difficult to attain is the fact that each weight category currently features only 10 athletes from around the world. Despite those long odds, Moorman believes a future Olympic appearance is within Bedward’s grasp.
“To have an athlete kind of fall into your lap due to fortunate circumstances, I can’t help but feel it’s my duty to give this person all the tools they need and the right environment to try to attain this incredibly hard goal that not many people can even say they came close to,” adds Moorman.
Bedward’s CanAm debut was a massive success. She set an Ontario record with her 132 kg clean and jerk lift and posted the best total out of all divisions with 235 kg – a personal-best.
“It was incredible,” Moorman recounts. “I think the other thing that makes her special is she’s really started to believe in her own capabilities – that element of not having doubt creep into the back of your mind.
“When you’re trying to clean and jerk 300 pounds as a 76 kilo, there can’t be any fear or doubt, because that’s the moment that weight’s going to crash down.”
Ottawa suddenly becomes a weightlifting hotbed
CanAm also topped the men’s Sinclair rankings at the senior provincials, with Moorman showing he’s more than just a coach. The 32-year-old won the men’s 109 kg division with a 327 kg total (3 kg better than the mark that won the 2023 Canadian championships in that category) to finish just ahead of Landmark x JustLift’s Nicolas Munro, the 89 kg winner.
“I tell my athletes all the time that I would way rather be in their shoes,” smiles Moorman. “‘Competition Spencer’ is far more relaxed than ‘Coach Spencer.’ I’m way more stressed out as a coach at a competition.”
His main role as coach at a competition is to count athletes’ attempts, judge how much weight to try next, and keep track of competitors’ progress.
“As a lifter at a competition, you just want to worry about one job – lifting the weights,” Moorman notes. “Just tell me when to lift and I’ll go lift.”
Moorman did his first weightlifting competition at age 8 and was a U.S. national champion in 2013 and 2014. He took his best shot at making the Olympic team in 2016, and has now progressed into coaching as the primary pursuit to fuel his competitive fires.
Moorman was drawn to Ottawa by his Canadian girlfriend. That happens to be the same story as Adam Blandford, a former Team USA bobsled athlete who co-owns CanAm strength & conditioning on Colonnade Rd. with past Carleton University Ravens basketball player Andy Stewart.
“Adam made this place feel very welcoming,” Moorman signals. “It was a really attractive opportunity to coach and develop something that you could be really proud of.”
The CanAm Barbell Club has only existed for a little more than a year just as gyms began reopening after COVID, which forced JustLift (the only other local weightlifting club) to shut down its original home gym.
Before JustLift rebuilt Olympic weightlifting’s foundation locally, the sport had been homeless for an extended period of time. There was once a club at the former National Capital YMCA-YWCA location at Merivale Mall, but other tenants complained about the noise of weights hitting the floor and that was the end.
“Finding a gym that has enough space to do Olympic weightlifting and has the proper equipment, it’s hard,” indicates Moorman, whose club now neighbours Sportstats and the Corona School of Gymnastics in Nepean.
CanAm has quickly grown into the largest weightlifting club in the province, while Stittsville-based Landmark x JustLift is close behind at #3. In November when CanAm hosted its first Ontario club challenge – a circuit designed for new lifters to get exposure to competition – the two local clubs entered over 60 athletes.
The gym was packed from start to finish at the roughly 4,000 square-foot CanAm facility (which includes another 1,000 square feet with its reception space and therapy rooms).
“One of the things that I feel like draws people into the sport is that there’s an obvious inherent risk that comes with lifting a heavy barbell over your head, and you see a person’s effort on display when they’re lifting, and it’s just human nature – you can’t help yourself but want to cheer for that person and to see them do well,” highlights Moorman, who loves the tight-knit and supportive nature of the weightlifting community.
Those are core philosophies he’s applied in establishing CanAm. Moorman does not fit the stereotypical image you might have of a gruff, hard-nosed disciplinarian weightlifting coach. He greets athletes with a smile, and throws compliments and encouragement their way, with pointers on how they can improve sandwiched in between.
“I believe that if you give people positive reinforcement, and keep them accountable to their commitments and to their goals, that good things are bound to happen,” Moorman outlines. “And, surprisingly, people will subject themselves to their chosen suffering of training through weightlifting,”
Weightlifting often draws in athletes with backgrounds in football, rugby and crossfit. It’s been helpful that many high-level athletes and teams from other sports train at the CanAm facility, including Canadian bobsled team members Mike Evelyn and Jay Dearborn (both 2022 Olympians), Pat Norton, Keaton Bruggling and Leanna Garcia – all coached by Blandford.
“I really think that the gym is for everybody,” Moorman underlines. “I want people to come in and believe in their own capabilities and believe when they join CanAm that they’re joining one of the best teams in Ontario and that they’re going to become real competitors in the sport of weightlifting.
“Right now, I feel like there’s a lot of potential lurking out there that I need to make sure we act on.”
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