The Strongest Girl in the World Is Really, Really Strong

The strongest girl in the world may very well be a 10-year-old from Fair Lawn, NJ named Naomi Kutin, who can lift more than twice her 99-pound body weight. According to a profiled in The Jewish Daily Forward, Kutin can squat just about 215 pounds and, during the first weekend in July, set two new regional records with a 199.5 squat and a 209.4 dealift. She’s received a lot of encouragement from her Orthodox Jewish parents, and training from her powerlifting-father, Ed Kutin, who took up weightlifting when — nbd or anything — he was studying at M.I.T. Basically what I’m trying to say is that the Kutins sound suspiciously like the Incredibles, but we’ll just keep that our secret, wink wink.

Ed Kutin decided to introduce his daughter to powerlifting after watching her wale on the boys in her karate class. He and his wife Neshama, sensitive to the health effects of weightlifting on a developing child’s body, were cautious about training Naomi, but they found that their daughter already possessed a preternatural strength (Ed Kutin dismisses cautionary tales about stunted growth as “old wives tales”). The Kutins are Modern Orthodox Jews, which means they’ve had to tiptoe around some finer doctrinal points, namely, that the Torah prohibits carrying heavy objects on the Sabbath from a private home to a public area. Most competitions are held on the weekends, but, since Naomi doesn’t have to schlep her own weight set across town on competition day, the Kutins easily surmount this obstacle. They’ve also set up a pretty comprehensive gym in their basement to ensure that Naomi has all the resources to maintain her iron grip on the world’s strongest girl title, something that her teachers and classmates demonstrate the appropriate amount of awe and respect for, i.e. a lot.