Owen Putman

My athletic history started when I picked up a lacrosse stick at 7 years old. I played lacrosse competitively my whole life, from 4th grade to my 5th year of college. I played 5 years of D3 lacrosse at RPI, with two years as a captain. At 15, I took my favorite winter hobby, Nordic skiing, and started racing. I raced competitively while playing lacrosse through high school, and I ended up competing at Junior Nationals twice. After finishing high school, I found CrossFit as a way to get in shape for college lacrosse. I instantly fell in love with crossfit and was at the gym 6 days a week for multiple hours working out. I quickly realized that the weightlifting movements were my favorite parts of CrossFit. This lead me to doing exclusively Olympic weightlifting as a sport. Once in college, I fell in love with the sport and trained continually through my lacrosse career. During this time, I competed in multiple local meets, qualified for Junior Nationals, and competed in University Nationals in 2020. I have continued training and competing with the goal of qualifying for the national championships. I started coaching in 2022 with the hope to help others fall in love and learn from the sport as I have.

Olympic weightlifting is a very challenging sport. But that is why I am so passionate about competing and coaching. The weight on the bar is the least important part of weightlifting. As it is such a technically demanding sport, I believe everyone can benefit from practicing it, both physically and mentally.