Second Lt. Michelle Strickland was in the gym at Columbus Air Force Base in May when she noticed a flier on wall advertising the base’s Alpha Warrior competition.
Strickland said she zeroed in on the flier’s picture of the rig — a structure containing bars, hoops and other equipment to test upper body strength and physical agility — and thought it looked like fun, so she asked the gym’s fitness instructor if she could watch the competition.
“She asked, ‘Do you want to try it?'” Strickland remembered. “I said, ‘I don’t know how to do any of this, I don’t think I can do any of it, but I’ll gladly try it.’ She explained all the exercises. I went through it, and I got a really good time.”
Not only did Strickland get a good time on the course, she won first place in the base’s female division, which automatically made her a contender for the regional competition in Alabama in June. Within a few months — on Sept. 14 — she became the top female champion in the Alpha Warrior’s inter-service battle between the Army, Navy and Air Force.
“To be able to get first in a competition like this, where I am representing the Air Force and I am representing this new way of training and of being a functional, fit fighter, was pretty cool,” Strickland said.
Strickland, a California native in pilot training at CAFB, has been running off “excess energy” at the gym the past four years, ever since she became a vegan. She said she had become frustrated at her inability to get into the kind of shape she wanted. So after some research, she switched to an entirely plant-based diet.
“Your body runs in the way that it’s supposed to, the way that it’s designed to,” she said. “So you start becoming a machine. It feels amazing. Mental clarity, physical clarity. I was able to shed all the excess body weight that I wanted to.”
She also found she loves cooking vegan recipes — so much so that she wrote a cookbook of more than 40 recipes, which she gives out to friends and family. Her partner Monika Ambrukaityte, who has been dating Strickland more than two years and who moved to Columbus with her earlier this year, called her “an amazing” cook.
“Michelle got me to go vegan,” Ambrukaityte said. “… For her it was more teaching me about it and how she could make delicious meals. … I ended up feeling really good.”
Top warrior
In San Antonio, Strickland was one of three females who represented the Air Force in the final inter-service battle.
The rig included 16 large structures with smaller obstacles in between. The challenges included things like sand bag tosses, squats, push-ups and an accelerator run, in which the competitors had to sprint while attached to a bungee cord exerting 150 pounds of force against them.
“It was just this giant maze of things,” Strickland said.
Strickland’s time was just more than 25 minutes. The slowest competitor’s time through the course was about 55 minutes, she said.
“I see what she does in the gym on a day-to-day basis, but I’ve never seen her do anything like that,” said Ambrukaityte.
For Strickland, part of the appeal of the competition was knowing that kind of fitness would help her with fighter pilot training, which is extremely physically demanding. Some Air Force fighter squadrons are already implementing some of the challenges in their required fitness routine for pilots, she said.
Of course, Strickland added, it’s also fun.
“It was definitely the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. “But it was also really fun. I felt like a kid.”
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