Hassle Free Barbell Club churns out champs

Hassle Free Barbell Club in Belmont is one such a gym and founder Kevin Doherty is leading the charge on the Peninsula. His gym took 41 athletes to the USA Weightlifting National Championships last month and HFBC brought home 25 medals — 15 gold, and five each silver and bronze.

“That’s the most we’ve ever taken,” said Doherty, who started Olympic-style training from his home 25 years ago, but is now in a building along Old County Road in Belmont. This was the 24th year he’s taken athletes to nationals.

Doherty’s 9-year-old son Kayden was a two-time national champion.

Additionally, a trio of three San Mateo County high school residents — Gianna Van Hofwegen, Jade Morales and Kaya Malia Henn — brought home national titles.

Van Hofwegen is a rising sophomore at Carlmont and a rising star in the world of weightlifting. The recently-turned 15 year old won her second age-group crown, 14-15, adding to the 12-13 title she won in 2023.

But not only did her score of 269.984 win her weight class, 69 kilograms (152 pounds), it was the most weight lifted among everyone in her age group, making Van Hofwegen No. 1 in the nation in the 14-15 age bracket.

“She’s a special kid,” Doherty said. “She is super focused. She could go to the Olympics.”

Van Hofwegen first came into the gym with her twin brother, Preston, when she was 11 years old and by then she was already a well-seasoned athlete.

“I have always considered myself an athlete, (but) I had little to no experience with weightlifting. I was a swimmer. I played soccer. My parents both love running — total cardio enthusiasts. [Training at HFBC] was definitely a different dynamic I had with working out,” said Van Hofwegen, who played varsity water polo and wrestled for Carlmont as a freshman last school year.

“It was cool to find another sport. I had (played) a huge variety of sports, but nothing stuck like weightlifting.”

Olympic-style weightlifting is not what you would normally see in a fitness gym. Many might be familiar with the bench press, arm curls or leg press.

You may have seen Olympic weightlifting but didn’t know the terms.

There are two disciplines and every athlete competes in both. The first is the “snatch,” during which an athlete grabs the barbell with both hands and snatches the bar straight from the ground to over their head, locking out their arms.

The second is the “clean and jerk,” during which the lifter brings the bar off the ground and rests on their upper chest, before thrusting the weight above their head.

In Olympic weightlifting, the technique is more important that brute strength.

“You don’t win if you don’t have good technique,” Doherty said.

It’s that aspect of lifting that has led Morales to winning her fifth national championship. A recent Sequoia graduate, Morales won the 53kg (116 pound) class in the Junior Division, where she posted a total score of 265.423.

“[Morales] came to us during COVID. She started (lifting) when she was 11 and she started with us when she was 15. That’s when she kind of took off,” Doherty said. “She was always explosive, but technically, she is almost perfect.”

Doherty believes a path to Olympics exists for Morales, as well. So too for rising St. Francis sophomore Henn, a San Mateo resident who won the 48kg (106 pounds) weight class in the 14-15 division.

Unlike many other sports, there is not always a competition around the corner for weightlifters. It’s not baseball where an athlete comes back a day or two later for another game. Weightlifters compete even less than football players. Van Hofwegen, for example, just finished the national championships late last month. Her next event is the Junior Pan American Games in Paraguay at the end of August.

“You compete not often at all,” Van Hofwegen said. “If you’re going to be hitting the heaviest weights, your body is going to break down. It’s a pretty long cycle (to get your body back to normal).”

That means there is a lot of intensive training between events, something that took Van Hofwegen a little bit of time to get used to.

“I started off able to do the moments really quickly (in my development). But it took me a long time to enjoy the grind of weightlifting,” Van Hofwegen said. “I am a very analytic person. Being able to focus on just these two lifts and perfect them. … It’s amazing how little tweaks make a massive difference. … It’s pretty cool when you figure it out.

“I really learned loving perfecting my craft.”