Judge #5: The Hebrew Hammer

Exciting drama at Camp Stumptuous! After some vigorous arguments among the four of us, we had to call in a tiebreaker to help us pick the winners! Yes ladies, your entries were just that good!

So please welcome Judge #5, Tami aka “The Hebrew Hammer”. (BTW, if you don’t get the reference, check out the movie site here.) I first met Tami when we were negotiating the use of the squat cage at our gym. As I was adjusting the bar, a muscular, cheerful woman approached me. “How much are you going to squat?” she asked. I think she figured she’d need to go do something else while I cranked out 100 “toning” reps of featherweighted 1/4 butt bounces. I told her the weight. “Not bad,” she said, and we agreed that we could do business.

Turns out that Tami has made a pretty amazing transformation of her own! (She’ll have to enter the 2009 contest, I guess.) She’s about to go to nationals for judo, and has started a women-only judo class, which I am currently loving. By day she teaches special needs kids as well as Hebrew. She says she went from being over 200 pounds, drinking, smoking, bad relationships, and fast food to losing 40 pounds, being the provincial champ, eating good food, and training 6 days a week. Along with some spectacular injuries such as a broken nose, torn foot ligaments, thumb dislocation, etc. she also tells me that she has severe anemia and needs transfusions in order to keep going, crazy asthma as well as arthritis, and colitis… but she insists “none of that shit gets in the way though!!” She was recently featured as our gym’s success story, and her club has named a judo throw after her — “Tami’s Otoshi”. On top of all that, she is incredibly funny, generous with her time (she volunteers to teach), and a hell of a tough lady.