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“You Can Do It”: The Gurnows’ Rise to Powerlifting Glory
Michael Gurnow, formerly of New Madrid, created the Thor Challenge as he transformed himself into a bodybuilder then added a challenge to bench press his own weight 20 times in less than a minute.
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It took Michael and Heather Gurnow less than two years from their powerlifting debuts to shatter national records together.
That kind of progress is almost unheard of, but the married couple out of St. Louis made sure everybody heard it with their performances at the World Raw Power Mid-American Regional Championships this past May in Benton, Ill.
Michael broke the national male Masters Division bench press record after putting up 402 pounds in the 100-kilogram weight class. Heather made even more noise at the competition, smashing the national female Masters Division squat (336.2 pounds), bench (188.5 pounds), and deadlift (407.9 pounds) records at 100 kilograms. She now owns 20 powerlifting titles dating back to her competitive debut in 2022.
“Even though I’ve competed before, this presented me with a different caveat,” Heather said. “It was a whole new federation for me to compete in and we had to travel for this one – all our other ones had been in St. Louis. So, there was just a different dynamic. I was prepared, but I was still super nervous. Once I did my first lift, I was comfortable, I was at home, and everything went away.”
While this was not Heather’s first hurrah, Michael made his competitive powerlifting debut.
A college instructor-turned-author who has been chronicling and documenting his entire powerlifting journey for a new autobiography, it was Michael’s first and final shot to write a happy ending.
“I've been doing this for seven years along with this project I'd undertaken,” he said. “And the problem I had is if I didn't pull this off, I wasn't going to be able to try to do it again. The book would have to end on a downward note. So come hell or high water, that bar was going to go up because I didn't have a choice. I didn't have the option of failure that day. I wanted to break the national record on the first attempt, so I could get the nerves out of the way because it was done. So, I did. I broke it on the first attempt.”
Heather Gurnow poses with her World Raw Powerlifting medal.
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Discovering a Passion
Michael and Heather’s paths to national stardom are hardly linear.
A jack of all trades, Michael, who grew up in New Madrid, was a literature and pre-law instructor at Southeast Missouri State for a decade but also worked as an author, farmer, film critic, animal shelter operator, and park ranger.
He has written two internationally best-selling books, “The Edward Snowden Affair” and “Nature’s Housekeeper.”
The idea of powerlifting initially crossed his mind at a Halloween store in 2016.
“One of my last classes nicknamed me ‘Thor,’ but not for my physique,” Michael said. “I weighed about 140 pounds and was a string bean, but I had long hair. And that October, we were out looking for Halloween costumes and I just pulled out of the rack with one of those puffy muscle costumes of Thor. My wife looked at me and said, ‘You know, that looks good on you.’ I was sitting down, and I said, ‘I'm a literature professor, I can’t do justice to this thing.’ I'd want to actually fill it out.”
And so his journey began.
After pitching the idea of starting a bodybuilding career to his publisher, Michael began training for the purpose of transforming his physique and chasing down his new goal.
Then he had a change of heart.
“I wasn't happy,” said Michael. “I didn't like the size of some muscle groups. I didn't feel strong enough. What I didn't know at the time is I developed muscle dysmorphia.”
This led Michael to transition from bodybuilding to powerlifting, which allowed him to feel more confident and in-tune with his overall progression and appearance. That’s when he finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Seven years later, I broke the national record,” Michael said. “And I told my wife, ‘Look, I went from bodybuilding to powerlifting because I realized I was much better at strength than I was at accruing muscle.’ But at the end of the day, I needed an interesting way to end the book.”
Heather’s backstory goes a little deeper.
Born and raised in Kelso, Heather, who was overweight at the time, witnessed her mother die prematurely of obesity-related causes at a young age. At her weakest, at her most vulnerable, and on her way towards heading down a similar path, Heather became her strongest – strong enough to make a life-altering change.
In what was a slow and gradual process, she began avidly exercising while she was a college student at Southeast.
“I started by getting up and moving my body,” Heather said. “After I felt like I was walking enough, I went to the Rec Center, and I was interested in hiring a personal trainer through the university that helped me focus on losing more weight and becoming familiar with a
gym like setting. So, I found a student trainer that I worked with, and she helped me out a lot with machines and cardio equipment. I didn't step into a weight room for probably a couple of years after I started losing weight.”
From that point on, Heather embarked on a new lifestyle centered around health and fitness, which eventually led her to discover her love for powerlifting.
“Eventually it just kind of evolved into knowing what it's like to be stronger,” Heather said. “So, my husband surprised me one day with a weight bench, various types of different weights, and a barbell for our house. And then it just kind of took off from there.”
The Process
In a sport that is so intensely strategic and reliant on preparation, it took Michael and Heather much more than weekly gym sessions and protein shakes to climb to the top.
While they frequently give each other feedback and advice, the Gurnows do not train together due to their conflicting work schedules. Heather is a veterinary technician who works 50 to 60 hours per week and wakes up to begin her day not long before Michael falls asleep following a long night of writing.
She says that her dedication to powerlifting is what fuels her ability to balance such a rigorous schedule.
“Powerlifting is a passion of mine, so I schedule a time for it,” Heather said. “It's not something that ‘oh, I'll get around to it.’ I make the time because it is important to me. So, I get up at three o'clock in the morning and I train. Then I go to work, come home, and wake up and do it all over again.”
Heather trains four days a week, focusing on her three main powerlifting exercises each day: squat, bench, and deadlift. She calls her fourth day an “accessory day,” which is dedicated to refining any weaknesses in her training and development.
Unlike his wife, Michael mainly focuses on bench press and dedicates most of his training days to developing his chest and upper body, as well as his leg muscles to help with proportion and stability.
However, powerlifting goes beyond just barbells and weights.
Like any athlete, regardless of the sport, emphasizing sleep and diet is a prerequisite to success and performance.
“If you don't get enough rest, your body doesn't have enough time to recover and build that muscle,” Michael said. “It's just going to cannibalize existing muscle to repair itself instead of using the resources you're giving it, which is why nutrition is so important.”
Heather, who went back to school to earn a nutrition degree amid her early powerlifting days, claims that dieting is something that she struggled to pick up on at the beginning of her career.
“I follow a macro-based diet, so I'm concentrating on not so much the calories, but on proteins, fats, and carbohydrates,” Heather said. “I watch those pretty closely and I have an overall calorie goal to hit daily. For any woman that's reading this, you have to eat your food. If you're not eating your food and you're training, you're not going to see any progress that you think you're making.”
Leaving Their Legacy
The powerlifting community has seen Michael and Heather’s highlight reel and rise to national prominence, but they never saw the inspirations that led them there.
Now considered a generational talent in the sport, Heather is a huge advocate for encouraging women to follow in her footsteps and get comfortable in the weight room.
“I am a woman who came into this game late in my late 30s,” Heather said. “I was grossly overweight, and it took me some time to discover the powerlifting world and find my place in it. I basically built myself up from nothing to a national champion. That’s incredible. What I want to be remembered for is that if I can do this anybody can do this. If you have a dream or goals that you want to achieve, but you think you’re too old or overweight, I’m here to tell you that you can do it. At the end of the day, it comes down to you and what you want and your desire to change.”
Michael was fueled by a similar emotional past, and, like Heather, he wants men and women to realize that they don’t have to listen to what society tells them to be.
“I’m a dweeby college professor who wanted to write a cool story,” Michael said. “I have a great respect for the craft and art of the narrative. I knew there was many great stories written about failure if I didn’t do it. I used my intelligence to get strong and I think that speaks volumes to any 98-pound weakling in glasses who got picked on in high school. That was me. And it’s the story from both of us. It’s the tagline: ‘You can do it.’”