Noorin Gulam took part in her first weightlifting competition just six weeks after starting the sport – and she hasn’t looked back since. Gulam began lifting in her GCSE PE lessons and soon developed a talent and love for the sport. She was crowned 2022 British Champion in the 49kg weight class and holds the British Records with a 73 Snatch, 89 Clean & Jerk and 161 Total in the 49kg class. This summer she represented England at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The 26-year-old has faced numerous ups and downs in her career through injury but never fails to bounce back. Outside of her own sporting achievements, Gulam is a weightlifting coach and content creator.
In this episode Noorin discusses:
- The start of her Commonwealth Games journey back in 2014.
- Why not being funded has been beneficial for her.
- Her battle with injuries over the last few years.
- The constant challenge of weighing in at 49kg.
- How her qualification came down to 1 final opportunity in front of her family and friends.
- The experience of a home games and the athlete village.
You can listen to the episode in full here.
You can keep up to date with Nooring via her Instagram: @noorinn .
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Rob Anderson
So let’s talk about probably the biggest competition, I guess the for date, you know, the Commonwealth Games or home games as well? What did that the beginning of that journey look like in terms of the qualification to the point where you realise, okay, I’ve made the car, I’m going to stepping on the platform at Birmingham Talk Talk me through the start to end of that journey and some of the some of the emotions and some of the experiences you have.
Noorin Gulam
So so the way the qualification works is, it actually does start about 18 months before the competition. But it was a little bit different from team England, because we’d obviously already qualified a whole team. But team England wasn’t going to take a whole team, they weren’t going to take just one person, every category, even though they could, they were going to take, you know, the most competitive team, they wanted to go out there. And we were kind of on a mission to performance to win medals, I guess. But my I feel like my journey to the Commonwealth Games started, you know, before even the last Commonwealth games when I was trying to qualify for, for Gold Coast in 2018. And that whole situation from, you know, trying to go at 53, realising that talent was too strong 53, and then making a last minute decision to cut down to 48, which is a weight class that I’ve never been in before. And that also doing that, you know, at the world unity games, which was in Taiwan, I’d like never been to that part of the country, you travel that far before that not the country, the world and travel that far. And I’ve never been to that weight class before. And I gave myself four weeks to do it in six kilos. And, you know, it was my first ever World Stage and multi sport events. So quite a lot of pressure on this one event. And if I didn’t do it at that competition, I was not going to be eligible, and I couldn’t qualify. So I did really well at that competition. And the next one was the complete polar opposite. And I had a shitter and I actually bombed out. And as a consequence, I bombed out. And then my competitor did really, really well and had the best day ever and got six out six. And you know, PB had her lifts by 10 kilos. So it was a bit of controversy around that whole last minute competition. So obviously, that’s this is a long time ago now what, like five years, so not a lot of people or Yeah, not a lot of people, no, two people might have even been part of that sport before but the sport for but the competition, where we have final qualifier wasn’t actually a competition that could get you on the rankings. It will. So anybody who did anything at our competition, technically, that results at this competition didn’t count towards the rankings. But team England still held this competition as a last minute qualifier as an internal thing. So there was a bit of controversy around whether any of that should have been allowed to happen, because there were quite a lot of people who were, let’s say, third on the list that ended up then going, because they did really well at that one competition. So I don’t know how team England kind of got away with it. But they had to reject that say, reject my invite, reject the next person’s invite, and then accept the third person as invite because in theory, that person had done the most during the qualification period, but it wasn’t at an event that should have qualified them to do so. So there’s a few incidents like that, where some, some individuals kind of they got lost last minute lifeline. And some of them did really well. And obviously, the girl that I was competing against did really well at that at that point. And that, for me, was like, heartbreaking, kind of, because 2014, I went to Glasgow and watch the games, and I was like, I really want to go to a Commonwealth Games. So I’d been working from 2014 to get to the 2018 games, at the last second been kind of knocked out of the running of going since 2018 games. And then that’s when I then was like, right, there is no, there’s no way that I’m letting myself feel like this again, like, I’m gonna get to the next game. So every single kind of day off, so that was everything and anything that we do now is kind of going to get us to the games. So it started way like way back before even quite a lot of people who even went to the games if some of them didn’t even know about sport, or when weren’t taking part or went didn’t even have you know, aspirations of the Commonwealth Games in their minds at that point, but so it was kind of like a long four years. Because then we had COVID as well in the mix which in in my store It was a blessing because I got furloughed, which meant that I had a lot of time. And then I was very fortunate to be living somewhere where I could have I had a garage gym. So it was, I basically started living like a full time athlete. And there was no other responsibilities because we couldn’t do anything. So you know, we would eat sleep train, and that was literally it. So made a lot of gains during during that time.
Rob Anderson
You’re training in a garden shed, right?
Noorin Gulam
At some points, I was in a garage, and then I moved to a shed. The only kind of like, limitations was space there. And like I didn’t, I didn’t need for mass, I didn’t snatch massive amounts in my shed, because I was scared to death. Like, I think if I hit 65, in the shed, I was a very, very good day. But so we were meant to start a qualification process about 18 months out. And but like, there was no competitions, there was no conversations, no competitions, you couldn’t go to competitions. And then we’d been told that we could go to a competition. And I think this was so the British in 2020 2021, maybe last year is British. So last year is British, which went ahead behind closed doors. So this was specifically for people to qualify for worlds and for the Commonwealth championships. So this was summer 2021. Just before this British I was away with work. And I did like a trail run with work. And I woke up the next day and I couldn’t bend my my leg, I couldn’t bend my knee and very like swollen, like fat pad in my knee. So what happened was obviously all this rocky surfaces that we were running across, like irritated my fat pad on my knee that swirl up, that’s all up. And that basically put me out for a long time because I couldn’t I couldn’t even like bend it enough to go up the stairs without it being in pain. So the first qualification, which was that, so that was actually a qualification event as well. So that event could put you on the rankings. So I had to sit out of that event. And which meant that like I was in a tricky position, because that was during COVID, we didn’t have very many chances of actually putting our name on the list to get on the ranking. So obviously, we qualified like in teaming, we’ll have a whole team but you had to put yourself on the roster, you had to do a qualification event to get on the rankings. And then obviously, you can be selected from that. So that was one out of it was meant to be three opportunities down. So it didn’t have a total at the British. Because I was injured I was allowed extenuating circumstances to do a qualification comp at a catchweight for the Commonwealth championships. So I did this in September. So I rehabbed my my knee for the best part of like six to eight weeks. And then I managed to get myself in shape for the September competition, which was the Emily got the competition. And I hit total, qualified myself for the Commonwealth championships. This was great. So we had all this time for the Commonwealth championships. So it’s September, the Commonwealth championships is in December. At this point, I’ve got a really, really stressful month at work. So training just kind of takes a back a backseat and I’m had a really stressful kind of six weeks at work. And it gets to a point where I’m like, Okay, I’m eight weeks out of the Commonwealth champs and I’m weighing 57 kilos. And I got to be 49. So at this point, I’m like, Okay, I need help. I’m not I’m struggling to do this on my own. So I get a nutritionist and we work to get myself down for this competition. And I’m not gonna lie to us. It was one of the hardest things having to work and my job requires me at the time to be out and about quite a lot got up and down the country. I’m very regularly like away from home. So prepping your meals, making sure that you’ve got everything that you need training and being in like a really heavy deficit during winter was not easy. We get to about a week out of flying to the it was the World Championships combined with the Commonwealth championships and this is when there’s a new Coronavirus strain that comes out. And then all of a sudden countries start backing out of these Commonwealth championships because it came from Africa. So obviously, the Commonwealth has quite a lot of African nations. So there is like coming and sharing about whether the Commonwealth Champs is even going to go ahead and then we get told that the Commonwealth is going to be cancelled so we pull out the team England then pull out of this competition, and at this point I’ve been like cutting really hard to make it 249, I have only got two opportunities left to get myself on the rankings. And I’ve just been told that one of them has gotten. So this then leaves me with one final last chance to qualify for the games. And obviously, it’s not so bad for my cut, because it means I’ve got longer to cut down. But at this point, I’d made it to about 51. And I, you know, I was only a week out. So I’ve done quite a lot of the legwork to getting down to a week where then you know, then it’s just like water and fibre manipulation and all those sorts of things. So I head into the British champs knowing that that is this is literally do or die. Like if I bombed out here, I am not going to the games, like I can’t, like we’ve gone from, we were going to have multiple opportunities throughout the 18 months to just three opportunities because of COVID to then just two opportunities, and then content, just one opportunity. So it was quite a high pressure situation for me at this point as well, I decided that I’m going to quit my job. Because I was like, I cannot continue to do this to cut to 49. And to be out and about and because it was like really taken a toll on my lifting at this point with the whole eating and working and training. And I could feel that it was it was at a detriment to my lifting at this point. And I was like I have this goal of going into the Commonwealth Games, if I really want to achieve that and do it well. Because I was like, Well, I can’t just go now like I want to go and I want a medal. Because my opportunity to, you know, to debut that’s gone that missed out on that. So now this time, it’s, it’s, I have to go and I have to perform. And that’s kind of that’s what I thought in my head. So I, I quit my job. Because I was like, I’m going to just go full time athlete kind of lead and I’m going to just work enough to live and train. And that’s it. So get to the brush. And thank God, do not bomb. So get myself on the rankings then. But again, I did really well at that competition, which was great. But at this point, so the girl that beat me last time she’s coming, she’s making a comeback from pregnancy. And then there’s another girl in the mix who really, really strong Gala, lots of potential to do really well and to potentially like knock me off the list. So there is another internal qualification by team England. So that wasn’t sort of enough. So that put me on the rankings. But this last qualification, if someone had beaten my total, that was it, that that person was gonna go. So it was like there was a final qualifier, whoever lifts the most in the time gets to go. So in my head, I was I qualified and I was a fair decent, like a decent amount ahead of all these girls. But I was like in my head, I was like, last time I got knocked out last second, I don’t think I can really leave it to chance here. And you know, leave the kind of door open for someone else to just walk through. So it was it was a bit annoying, because I had to pick between cutting for that competition and cutting for the Europeans. Which was kind of shortly after that competition, or shortly before the competition. But yeah, so basically, I had to pick between them. I was like, do I cut for that? Or do I cut for the Europeans. And I decided to cut for that because I was like, I don’t want to give anyone the opportunity to, to kind of take it from me last second. And that was probably one of the nerve like the most nervous I’ve ever been because it was almost like flashbacks to the last time. I was in this situation. And it went so badly. And not only was you know, I had that kind of lulling over me there was it was at Oxbridge in at Brunel. So it was I had quite a family there and it was like the first time that my dad had ever come to watch we left as well. And the morning of I woke up a kilo over weight I woke up a kilo overweight so I had to shed a kilo in literally like a couple of hours. And it took like so I was staying at a hotel. But the hotel was useless. It didn’t have a bath it didn’t have like the hot shower wasn’t even getting hot. So I actually call my dad and I said get get a hot bath running right now. So I went from the hotel near Heathrow to my house which is luckily down the road from Grinnell went for a couple of runs in the bathroom it was like 15 minutes in like scorching hot water like basically it was burning myself and I managed to get down like point six, then luckily there There is a
Noorin Gulam
there’s sauna. In the hotel like the campus in Abu now says I’m just gonna go there, weigh in on the official scale, see what I’m at, and then go from there. So get back to there and it’s like point, I still got like point three or four to go to run to the sauna. So I’m I’m in sauna and get to the sauna. I’m like having a nosebleed on the way back. So I’m in the sauna and this this point we’re eating into my way in time. So nine o’clock weeknights, I’m I’m eating into it. I’m trying to shed this last like point three, during just rounds in the sauna of 10 minutes on my own, and I’m just thinking, my dad’s gonna come watch me yet. And I’m not even gonna make it to the platform like it’s in such a bad way. I was contemplating all my life decisions was like, do I even bother because, you know, technically don’t have to do this when and when you’re so deprived, and you’re sitting in a sauna, and you’re on your own. And I didn’t even prepare to be in sauna. So I was I didn’t even bring like appropriate attire for this one. I just have to sit there and like a towel. So I run from the sauna to the way in. And during that time, I’m then having a nosebleed. Obviously, as if anything else could go wrong at this point. But thank God, I made wait. So I made 49 At this point, we’ve I think I’ve eaten into the way in time. So for those who don’t know, I don’t know if there’s anyone but so weigh in starts at nine.
Rob Anderson
Is that my door to start? No worries?
Rob Anderson
Sorry, it’s all happening time. You weighed in? And oh, yeah, I
Noorin Gulam
weighed your time. No, it was so easy. And so you safe weigh in. So you know this, but like weighing starts at nine. But the competition starts two hours after when. So if you eaten into your weigh in times, if you don’t weigh in on time, like, as soon as like the first call, then you’ve only got an hour until you start lifting. So I think I’d eaten in like 45 minutes into this time at this point. And I just remember I was in such a bad way. stoom and he came up to me and was like, You’re right. And I just kind of looked at him. And like, in my head, I was thinking, Am I okay? Is that even? Like? No, that’s like, I’m not I just, I just need to be left alone. And I basically just said to him, No, I You just need to go away. I just need to be left alone right now. And I need to eat and I need to drink some water. So that kind of threw me because obviously wasn’t expecting to have to lose a kilo morning off and just did everything I could to to rehydrate and I actually ended up having the best competition. Yeah, one of the best competitions ever. Really. So I think I snatched 71 that day and clean jerked 89. So I think, I don’t know if it was both British record. I think they’re both British records. And obviously then lead to a British record total. And yeah, so that that was that was then when I kind of won solidified my ticket to the game. So it was that I think was quite special because it was like hometown where I started lifting like, in front of my family and my friends. Although like the competition itself wasn’t like I didn’t really mean so I kind of weighed out because I like the I looked at the stats from the Europeans. If I had quite a fight actually weighed in what Europeans there was a very good chance. I think the bronze medal was 163. So my total that time was 160. So I was like, okay, that that’s like super close, like I could have been in for a European medal this year. But instead, I kind of chose that competition to be the 49 competition but almost in hindsight like I know you do sport for yourself in a way and as much as it would have been great to do that. Like that was in Albania where, you know, I wouldn’t my dad wouldn’t have been out there. My cousin’s my family wouldn’t have been out there to see me lift. So it was almost like it was a trade off that actually in hindsight, almost. I don’t mind because I think having my friends and family witnessed me live lifting and lifting so well as well. It’s like the, I think when you do six, when you’re six, because six out of six, and that for PBS as well, it’s almost like the stars have aligned for you after, you know, such a tragic morning and lose weight. That it’s that’s almost like that’s one of those anomaly competition days where you, you don’t people don’t tend to have them very often, you know, people are getting people going six out of six all the time you think they’re not going heavy enough. And I think that’s usually what said, so that in itself, that was that was a really, really good weekend that was like, you can’t as I couldn’t really couldn’t really have asked myself for anything more than, you know, six for six t to the games branch records.
Rob Anderson
I remember watching and obviously, you could tell you were happy. But now knowing the backstory of 24 hours before I could see why, you know, you, there was that extra level of intensity to how happy you were with the performance.
Noorin Gulam
I know, it’s like, you know, I’ve been lifting now as it’s coming into my 12th year of lifting. And I think I’ve gone six to six, maybe maybe a third every time going six for six in a competition. So it’s, it’s like a big deal to go six out of six as someone who like I always kind of do push myself in competition, I’m not someone who tends to open really light and be like, Okay, we’ll just kind of go how we feel and be in her comfort zone. Like I do like to push myself out of my comfort zone during competitions. And because historically, I’ve been a competition lifter. And I think there was a big long period of time, especially going down to 4948. And then nine, where I struggled to back myself to be that competition lifter. And I ended up being someone who lifted more in the gym, or who was capable of doing sort of, you know, the same competition that I did in in the gym. Whereas before, it’d be like, Okay, if I was lifting 75 kilos on the regs, I’d open it at and it’d be fine. So I didn’t really have to do the heavy lifting in the gym, to prove to myself that I could do it on the platform, whereas I kind of grew to be someone who was more like, no, no, if I if I don’t hit 70, every single week, like, there’s no way I could possibly hit it on the platform. So it kind of self doubt really started to creep in during those those days. I think it was like, what, especially after bombing out, you know, probably one of the important, most important qualifying competitions that I’d had to do like today, like I think that really did knock my confidence in, like being able to go for it during, like in competitions, because I, you know, had loads of that opportunity after that. So even after, if even after that happened, I got selected for European under 23. So I got to go to that. And then I got during the time of the games, because they were over there were in April, when historically there in the summer, but when in Gold Coast there that happened during April, there was the similar the same time as a European, so I got selected for Europeans. So I got an opportunity to go to international competitions, you know, during that time, but yeah, there was just something about, I think that competition that really started to knock my confidence. And it’s not until recently that I’d I’d got that back. But yeah, it was great to then go to the Europeans and have the Europeans this year and have that kind of run through on an international platform, because I’d been out of international lifting since 2019. So September 2019. And then we were in we’re 2022. Now, so been at practice, and I’d only done two competitions. No three competitions between, you know, 2019, and all begin sorry, beginning of 2020 and 2022. Because of COVID, and the lack of competitions, like in real life, so we got the opportunity to go and do that, which was great. And then you kind of had into the game. So I I left my full time job. And I was just going to do a bit coaching and just kind of get by but then I had an opportunity to I got approached to buy virus international so I got approached by them so I ended up doing some contracted work for them during that time. So I was working part time I didn’t end up being a full time athlete during that time anyways. So work part time and then I trained and I ended up moving to Loughborough for three months heading into the games. So I was living in London before that, which was fine. But I think the issue with London is it’s so big and everyone’s so spread out that you kind of don’t end up having unless you specifically unless I specifically moved let’s say to Dartford and train at Europa. Anywhere that you go is quite a there’s a commute in somewhere. So though, going to Loughborough meant that I could literally walk to the gym in about 20 minutes, I had Chris and Holly who I lived with both going to the games. So it was, you know, three of us, we had very similar goals. And, you know, everything was just aligned to the games. Whereas before I was living on my own, it was very sad and almost a bit depressing. And I’d go and train and I kind of would train on my own most of the time, or I commute into the city. So it was great to go to Loughborough, and to train with Holly, because we, well, we have like similar top end numbers. So when I say my, my numbers is a 55, kind of the same as hers. She’s certainly one lifter, but my 49 numbers are maybe a little bit less, but that’s like five kilos between us. So it made it great, because we could almost like push each other a bit, I always tried to keep up with, with what she was doing. And then you know, great to have a training, a training little group that, you know, we held each other accountable to what we were doing our goals and, and everything kind of everything that we did facilitated, you know, our performances at games, which was, which was just great to have, I think, as an experience leading up so it was like a training camp before the training camp. Because we also were very lucky to have a holding camp in Nottingham, where we train for about 10 days together with the rest of the team before heading into the village. So that was great. So we got like, obviously, the coach, you’ve got to get to get used to the coaching team. We had obviously, physio. So Liam, who’s our physios? Great, um, helping us out and making sure that we were in top shape and it was almost like, okay, like, literally everything now revolves around weightlifting in the Commonwealth Games and preparing for, you know, for some of us being on the on the biggest stage that we’d we’d ever been on. And being host nation and home nation really does come with its parks like we did, we just, it was just unbelievable. Like how well we were treating, treated throughout the whole process, you get like, everything’s just nicer, you get more kit, you get better kit, you get to it was it was very strange. Like when we were in the village and especially during those times, where, let’s say we’ll go into the, the opening ceremony, we had all of the volunteers. And because we because it was like multiple, like there’s obviously so many volunteers who we then have multiple locations, but we’d walk out heading into the you know, get the bus to go to the opening ceremony and everyone’s like cheering and clapping and obviously because your team England as like, has a real sense of like, oh my God, all of these people are here for for us and for sport, which is which was so nice. And I think like I don’t know if you went to watch any of the lifting, but just this the crowd in the arena, like I’ve never lifted in a setting like that. I know that it was quite similar during like Gold Coast. And you just don’t get that turnout. Like even if you’ve got seats. I’ve been to venues where there’s loads of seats, you know, I’m not internationals, it’s a great stage. It’s very grand, there’s loads of seats. There’s not very many people in those seats, usually, so to have an arena that’s pretty much packed out I had I did when the luck of the draw when it comes to like time, so it was in the middle of the day on a Saturday. So it was it was a pretty packed stadium as well. So no, it was just it was just amazing. Like he just I can’t really compare it to anything else because I’ve not had an ever had that experience. But yeah, I think it’s it’s definitely something that an experience that I am, I’m so glad that I kept going for. Like I’m I am quite glad that I throughout everything just kept going. Because I think people and there’s been so many people and you you know we’ve we’ve both come from, almost from weightlifting in a similar group similar time. And there’s been so many people that have had really big aspirations in the sport and you think like, it is hard, it’s not easy to keep going and to have a career alongside weightlifting to have to be able to stay in one piece for that long to survive, you know, training that long and, and not letting things get to you. But I think it almost like I guess like with anything, it’s like all of these experiences and all these setbacks like they either tell you how much you don’t want it, you don’t need it. Or they almost give you a sense of like, that’s that kind of fuel to the fire where it’s like okay, no, you either want to keep going or you want to just quit altogether and there’s been so many times where I know individuals that we started off with that have just gone now I’m going took the towel in and continue on with life and I’m so glad I didn’t like I’m so glad that I didn’t because it was worth it so