Biography

Born in Stockton-On-Tees, England, July 26th 1983. I spent my first 4 years in Nunthorpe near Middlesbrough and I was brought up in Bagby, a small village near Thirsk in North Yorkshire until I was 18.

My awesomely wonderful parents, Ron and Myra, have been married now for 40 years and life at home as a child was full of fun and laughter with my older sister Joanne. Joanne was an excellent ballerina, I was also an excellent ballerina and won an award at 3 years of age for my "ad libitum" (basically making stuff up as you go along) to the music played by the piano mistress.

My ballerina excellence ended when I had to jump from the floor and fly like I had wings. Even though this is how I presumed I looked in my head, the reality was somewhat different, and according to my ballet teacher - I was not actually leaving the ground! Much to my disgust - I took up tap dancing!

My dancing career really was shorter than I would have liked but I was determined that I would find something to suit me and it had to be in show business as I was convinced that I was already a Hollywood Super Star!

From an early age I showed a great talent for learning lines from movies, plays, musicals and such like. I remember my mother playing the "Wicked Queen" in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Nunthorpe Amateur Dramatic Society in 1987. She came on the stage looking more evil than a freshly woken Cruella Deville before her morning coffee, and most of the children in the audience either burst into tears or wet their pants. Noticing that there was an air of fear amongst the crowds, I took it upon myself to stand on my chair and as bold as brass let the people know that "It is OK everyone, it's my mummy and she is not really that scary!"
When the room had been brought back to order, my poor mother could continue her wickedness all-be-it not as scary as she had planned! I remember knowing every single line of that whole pantomine. I was dubbed by the production team the unofficial prompt and was given a prize for my services to the N.A.D.S!!

From then on I starred in many amateur productions from my first ever role as the "Mayor of Munchkin City" (Wizard of Oz), a delightful performance, aged 8, of "Queen Victoria". A supporting "Sister Bertha" role to my own mother's "Mother Superior" in the Sound of Music, to winning Best Actress for my portrayal of the "Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna" at Leyburn Amateur Dramatics Festival. Of course at that time, this was as important to me as an Oscar to Angelina Jolie, so in my eyes, I had already fulfilled my Super Stardom Goal!!

My mother, sister and I all shared a love of the stage, and both Joanne and I graduated with a Theatre Studies A-Level. I scored the highest grade recorded at my College for my monologue - I can't even remember what it was, but I do remember doing a lot of hormonal screaming and dramatic falling, apparently that gives good marks!

In 1992 I decided to turn my thoughts to horses. After spending nearly every night for a few months trying to convince my father that our back garden was totally big enough to keep a horse in, my attempts had started to be ignored, so I went on an adventure dragging a friend with me. We walked for what seemed like hours until we found horses.  I finally came to the house they belonged too, knocked on the door and explained to the lady that I had come to look after her horses!
I remember this very beautifully spoken lady saying, "Very well, you can come here tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock and help me muck out the stables." My friend didn't seem overly keen but I was ecstatic. The next morning I rode my bicycle to her house and started a beautiful life long friendship with a lady that taught me about animals and life. Mary is one of the biggest influences in who I am today, and whom I love with all of my heart. I went to her house every Saturday until 2001 when I moved away to University where amongst other things, I learned how to cook.

It was with Mary and her animal gang that I became strong both mentally and physically. I believe that horses have spirits like no other animal and their beauty, strength and power is something I have always loved and admired. No matter what was happening in my life, they were always there to listen and somehow gave much better advice than any human!

High School for me at first was frustrating. I was a very different character than the "norm" and I couldn't find a group of similar people until I moved to Ripon Grammar School in 1997. This was a very traditional and beautiful school full of wonderful people and memories where you were allowed to grow into who you wanted to be. They focused on my strengths and brought out the best in me. I even made the school start a Ladies Rugby Team, which I later learned wasn't for me, but at least I got the thing up and running!

Christmas time for me growing up, was not about the tree or gifts or church, but all about the week of World's Strongest Man on TV that led up to the New Year! As a family we would sit watching the heats and choose our favorite to win. I seemed to have a knack for choosing the winner from the start. I had seen people do this at horse race tracks, where you watch the four legged athletes walk around a paddock before the race and pick out the one that looked most like a champion. I used this technique whilst watching WSM and it worked every time!

In 1997, I remember getting a set of 2kg very "girlie" Weider elasticated dumbbells for my Christmas gift one year, their first job was to act as weight for the "Crucifix Hold" which I remember doing something over a minute and was rather impressed with myself. I remember in 1998, when most girls my age were experimenting with make up and clothes, I was jumping around my living room pretending to be a Gladiator. I had decided that my name was the be "THE RADIATOR", and it even came with a very cool signature move. I was however, never destined to wear that beautiful lycra leotard and flick my hair in all directions as when I finally got through the auditions to BECOME a Gladiator - they cancelled the show!!

In 1999 I was diagnosed by a doctor with Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome. At that time there wasn't a lot of information about it so being told that you had a "syndrome" was a little scary. I read somewhere that exercising could be beneficial in controlling the symptoms - so I joined a gym. Throughout my life I was never really the sporting type - I practiced my mothers signature for hours to sign self written letters to get myself excused from the dreaded cross country run, as my body was, and still is no marathon athlete!! But somehow the gym was not as terrible as school Physical Education classes.

My school P.E mistress was an nice elderly lady named Miss Bottomley. She was very "old school" in her teaching, she meant well, but was not a very inspirational character, so the fire for exercise wasn't lit until I experienced an actual weight training session in the gym - when I was seeing constant improvement. This was far from what I had experienced from school and found myself starting to quite like it. The concept of increasing numbers (in weights lifted) as opposed to decreasing numbers (as in standing on boring weighing scales) made sense to me! My body began to feel and look much better than it had in the past, so it was official - I was a gym member!!

Through the great memories I had as a child of watching Strong Man on TV and my new found hobby at the gym, In 2004 I decided to enter Britain's Strongest Woman where I came 4th. I had combined two really fun things to do: Working out and Strong Woman Training (I ended up winning Britain's Strongest Woman 4 times and whole load of other competitions), PLUS I was keeping myself in shape. In 2006 I got injured and took some time off training. Without realising it, my PCOS that I had been controlling through exercise and nutrition had come back. I had also at that point moved to Iceland to be with my amazing boyfriend (now the world's best husband) and was about to embark on only 4 hours a day of sunlight which of course made my symptoms even worse.

We made the decision to move to Denmark for work, and decided to start a family together. We visited the doctors, where I went through a series of tests. On the return of the results the doctor informed us that we would be unable to have children without me taking medication or IVF. I did not want to do either so my husband and I took home the results and consulted with Dr Fred Hatfield (known to many as Dr Squat). Using the information he had given us, what we had learned through studying with the ISSA, and our own instincts and experiences, we devised and embarked on a training and nutrition program that would focus on massive hormonal manipulation. I remember coming home from my sister's wedding in November 2007 exclaiming that I NEEDED bananas and potatoes immediately! It had taken only 3 months and we had our first baby on the way! The side effect of the concept my husband and I had developed was that I also built a substantial amount of lean body mass, lost a lot of fat very quickly and felt the best I had in years! This concept is what we have now developed into PowerBurn. A personal training method that is changing the lives of many wonderful people!

I leave this epic novel having just last week placed 2nd in the World's Strongest Lady competition in the Ukraine. I agreed to the competition solely to give me a goal along the way to regaining my shape and condition after giving birth to my second baby 3 months ago. I would never normally advise this sort of behaviour to normal women - but there ain't nothing normal about me !! :)

Ást og hlýja

Gemma Magnusson
Constantly Achieving Awesomeness!