Good things come to those who (lift) weight!
Winning gold, coming face-to-face with The Terminator himself and pumping iron at the North Pole: the life of Wesley McGuinness has been far from ordinary
He’s a Commonwealth gold medallist, a Royal Navy submariner and now our inaugural Navy Leaders Champion to boot.
But for a man who’s spent an appreciable portion of his life at sea, Wesley McGuinness comes across as a remarkably grounded individual.
The 35-year-old father of two serves as a catering services Petty Officer on HMS Talent, a decommissioned nuclear sub docked in Plymouth. And when he’s not managing his team of chefs keeping hungry submariners fed and watered, family life keeps him busy too.
Wife Harriet and daughters Neive, 9, and Orlah, 8, take up any spare time not consumed by training or competing. Wesley said: “It’s also a great time for me to be at home and spend some time with them, because they [his daughters] are massively into their gymnastics at the moment. So I’m very fortunate to be alongside and witness all their shows and competitions.”
A Navy man all his working life, the Sunderland-born strongman joined up in April 2008. But it wasn’t until a few years later that he stumbled across the talent that would one day turn him into a champion.
He explained: “I took an interest in powerlifting at the early stages of my naval career in 2012… Basically, I was in the gym: I’ve always kept myself fit and active.
“But I saw a poster at HMS Drake’s gym for the Royal Navy Powerlifting Championships. And I thought, well, I’ll try my one rep max on the squat bench in deadlift. I entered it, and long story short, I ended up winning it, through just brute strength.
“I won my first little trophy, and on the train back from Portsmouth that evening, I thought, ‘Well, I’m not so bad at this.’ So I started looking into periodization and nutrition and programming and how to actually get strong instead of just cuffing it, and I took it from there. And with patience and allying our naval core values, I’ve got better and better.”
That’s a typically modest assessment of his talents: even before his recent Sun City triumph Wesley had scooped Commonwealth Championship silver and bronze medals in 2017 and 2022, as well as a host of other trophies.
But the third time at the Commonwealths proved a charm for Wesley in South Africa in October 2024: he triumphed in the 105kg category of the bench press discipline.
The way powerlifting contests are set up turns the process into a kind of cat-and-mouse tactical battle as well as a test of brute strength: each competitor gets three attempts at a lift, and having selected a starting weight, you can only stay the same or go heavier, not lighter.
The winner is determined by not just whoever is deemed by the judges to have successfully lifted the heaviest weight: a formula is then applied taking into account each competitor’s exact body weight too: it’s the lifter with the best ratio who triumphs.
Wesley remembered: “I opened up with 182.5kg, and then I went 187.5kg, and then my plan was to go to 200kg, but we worked out we didn’t need to, so we didn’t want to risk anything: we went to 192.5kg for the third attempt. We just did just enough just to take the win.”
And how did it feel when he successfully made the winning lift and knew he’d secured gold? A sense of overwhelming elation and satisfaction, of accomplishment? Not so much…
It was such a relief,” Wesley said. “Honestly, it was just a great feeling. I knew I’d put in a lot of work, and I knew that winning was within reach if everything came together on the day.
“In powerlifting, the effort you put in typically shows in your results, as long as nothing goes wrong at the competition. It’s different from something like boxing, where a single misstep or one wrong move can change everything, no matter how hard you’ve trained.
“But in powerlifting, if you’ve really trained hard enough, the results will show when it counts.
“For example, if someone opens with a 300kg deadlift, I can’t just decide to go for 350kg — it would be out of reach for me. But if you’ve done the work, you should be able to see the payoff.”
And if you’re wondering to whom the “we” in the above comments refers, that would be Wesly’s trainer, close friend and confidant, Chief Petty Officer Paul “Jakey” Foran.
Wesley explained: “He’s been by my side for the last 16 years. When I was learning to become a submariner, he was one of the senior instructors guiding me.
“We’ve always had a strong connection, largely because my father passed away when I was 19 and working on my submarine qualification. He was there for me during that difficult time, offering constant support. Fast-forward 16 years, and our bond has only deepened and strengthened.