Zoe Smith announces partnership with Sealy
About Zoe
Zoe is a record breaking weightlifter and Commonwealth Champion from South East London. Having started out a gymnast, Zoe has been competing internationally for nine years. She holds the British clean and jerk record and won gold at the Commonwealth Games in 2014, as well as bronze at the European Championship. Zoe hoped to represent her country at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 but suffered from a shoulder injury, which blighted her chances. She is now training for the Commonwealth Games in 2018.
Zoe’s training regime
Zoe trains in the gym all year round, focusing predominantly on lifting, supplemented with core exercises and assistance work to reduce the risk of injury and maximise her ability to perform.
Each training session starts with a dynamic warmup and stretching to make sure Zoe is prepared to lift up to twice her bodyweight above her head. Sessions concentrate on the Olympic lifts ‘snatch’ and ‘clean and jerk’ with deadlifts, pulls, squats and press ups too. Zoe also focuses on assistance strength and conditioning work addressing weaknesses and imbalances, before finishing the session with more stretching.
Sleep routine
When training, Zoe aims to get eight hours of sleep a night to make sure she is fully recovered and alert. Describing herself as a restless sleeper, Zoe often experiences problems drifting off. She often goes to bed early to ensure that when she eventually falls asleep, she still achieves her full allowance of solid sleep.
Zoe has suffered back injuries during her career, including a disc bulge in her lower back which meant she missed the European Youth Championships in 2011. The intense pain meant Zoe had to stop training and when she did go back to the gym, was only able to do gentle core exercises. The injury - which prevented Zoe from going to Rio - has required an intensive programme of rehabilitation. She now does everything she can to protect her body from injury, which includes sleeping on an appropriate mattress and ensuring she gets the quality sleep needed to rehydrate her spinal discs. We at Sealy gifted Zoe a profile bed to help with her recovery.
World of Sport
Zoe feels that training, nutrition and sleep are the most important things when it comes to improving performance – that’s why she’s teamed up with Sealy for the World of Sport campaign. Recognising that sleep helps the body to naturally restore and repair itself, especially after an intensive session in the gym, Zoe takes her sleep seriously.
Zoe’s words
“During the day, athletes are surrounded by an entire team of support staff to make sure every last thing we do is going to aid our performance, but come night time, it’s not uncommon for subpar sleep to set back the whole process. Sleeping on my new Sealy Hybrid Fusion bed means my body has also got support from experts on a night time too – I can’t wait to experience the results.”
