Offaly's Tara claims third place in PCA Irish Open

It's a celebratory-rewind in this week's OTRT as we put our hands together for a former interviewee,  Tara Mooney. Earlier this month saw the culmination of Tara's recent bodybuilding journey as she claimed third place in her very first competitive outing, the Irish Open Athletic Figure category at the PCA (Physical Culture Association) 2023 Finals, a truly remarkable achievement. And courtesy of her podium finish, Tara also earned herself an invite to the British finals in October.

Back towards the end of 2021, it was already more than clear to us that there was something quite special about Tara, so we were delighted when she agreed to sit down and share her inspirational story with us. 

So what better way - until we get a chance to sit down with her again, that is - to offer our congratulations than by sharing that story once again. Well done, Tara! 

FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2021 & JANUARY 2022

TARA MOONEY - UNBREAKABLE

It says a lot about how humble someone is when you can spend the best part of an hour talking to them about their life and career in fitness, and it’s only after you’ve finished that they just happen to mention in passing about that time when they broke their back once. It reveals more than just a genuine humility too. It hints at strength of mind that’s close to ironclad. Your body simply won’t bounce back from something like a broken back – and eventually lead you into the world of competitive powerlifting - unless your mind is totally under your control, and is a constantly stoked furnace fuelling your thoughts every day.

But that’s  Tara Mooneyfor you, humble, and pretty much unbreakable.

There are several different titles you can apply to the Edenderry native in trying to describe her.

Tara is a fitness instructor, a personal trainer, a fierce competitor and a proven warrior when it comes to powerlifting, and one of Rinka’s lead instructors in Ireland. But the truth is that none of those –either alone or combined – quite do her justice.

There’s more to her than just  what  she does. The secret to appreciating the presence of a spirit like hers in this world is to watch  how  such a spirit does things. Listen to how positive they always are when they talk. Be aware of how often they laugh. Take in how easily they can laugh at themselves, too. And pay attention to how passionate they become when they talk about the joy that helping others brings them.

If you ever have the chance to sit in conversation with Tara for even a little while, you’ll experience all of the above, and in abundance.

The same Tara who didn’t think that bouncing back from a broken back was any big deal, probably won’t think there’s anything too special about all those other things either. But that’s what some of the world’s best souls are always like. It’s because they’re humble that they’re unbreakable. And it’s because they’re unbreakable that they’re inspirational.              When I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tara for a chat about her life as a competitive powerlifter, and so much more, I began by asking her to explain the difference between powerlifting and weightlifting...

“They’re completely different. With weightlifting, you have your Olympic weightlifting – what you see there – but with powerlifting, you have three different lifts in the competition. You have your squat, your bench, and your deadlift. The whole idea is that the squat is power for your legs, the bench is your push-power, and your deadlift is your pull-power. It’s challenging and testing all of those areas. So to be good at it, you need to be good at all three. With weightlifting, it’s usually one lift that people do. It might be a clean-and-jerk, maybe a snatch or something like that. It’s just about getting the weight over their head or off the ground. But powerlifting is a strength test. In powerlifting you have to do all three. Now, you can do single-lifts, which is just push, which is bench. Or just deadlift, no squat. But generally, it's all three lifts. You get three chances at each one and your highest one - the one you get the most weight in - is taken, and they're all added for your total. You get to pick your first lift. So it can be complicated as well. Say if I go in with a 100 kilo squat, well if I don't get that, I can't go back down with my weight. Your second attempt has to be 100 kilos as well. If you go to a third attempt, and you don't get it again, you're out of the competition, and you don't even get to the bench. Now, if you get your 100 kilos, you can go up by 2.5 kilos. So you can progress that way. But you need to be really careful about your first lift." 

One of the most remarkable parts of Tara’s story is how, just nine months after beginning to train - while still working in an office, and being a single mum to her children Daniel and Georgia - she ended up being flown to Berlin to battle a famous German fitness model Cornelia Ritzke, a contest which has now been viewed almost 1.5 million times on YouTube. But before we spoke about Berlin itself, I asked Tara to take me back in time to nine months before that, when all of this began…

“I’d had kids, put on a bit of weight when I got pregnant, and like 90% of women I said I’m going to go to the gym and lose the baby weight. Now, I started from complete scratch, I mean I couldn’t do a single push-up. I was doing classes and getting programs from fitness instructors and I really enjoyed it. It was my hour away from the kids as well, so I used that as my me-time. I was doing a little bit of weights, on the treadmill running, didn’t really know what I was doing, it was very basic stuff. A guy that I was starting to see was into powerlifting, and he was down one end of the gym lifting crazy weights and shouting, all this mad stuff going on! [Laughs]. I was down with my little dumbbells doing my biceps curls! So they said to me to come up and do a bit of lifting, and I was actually so intimidated, but I said you know what, I’ll give it a go. The first lift I did was a deadlift, and I was hitting alright numbers, I think I started with 80 kilos, and I was about 50 kilos at the time, so that was a decent enough number for that weight, considering I’d never done anything before.”

Speaking of strength of mind and attitude, most people probably think of big, huge brutes of men when they think of powerlifting, mainly because so many still think of strength as only being muscle, and the kind that’s immediately visible to the eye. Now Tara – who is also a model on top of everything else – is most definitely not a big huge brute of a man. But her story, I think, perfectly illustrates the kind of strength that isn’t always apparent in someone, and that’s strength of mind, discipline. I asked her to talk to me about the importance of mindset and attitude in what she does…

“Yeah, listen, you need to put the work in, definitely. It’s hard to juggle everything and keep everything balanced, but it is [about] routine at the end of the day. You can never rely on motivation. It comes and goes. But if you’re disciplined and follow a structure…, like, nobody  wants  to go into work, but we all do. It’s the same with the gym. If you really want to get something – it doesn’t even have to be with the gym – you pop it into your day, it happens at this time, and that’s it. And your mind-set has to be about how bad do you want something.”

In sport, you have to have the right mind-set to achieve the kind of success that you want. But also in life, if you have the right mind-set…

“Absolutely! You can learn to adapt to things. When we’re younger we want to have fun and stuff like that. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t really care about career or anything like that. But when you have kids, you need to focus in on things, not just really for yourself but to provide for your kids. So you need to learn how to adapt your focus. It wasn’t until I hit my thirties that all of this – everything fitness related – happened to me. I had done horse-riding, but that was it. My twenties were completely devoted to my kids. I had them when I was twenty-four, so I rarely left the house. I just worked part-time, I just raised my kids. I went for runs and stuff like that. But it wasn’t until my thirties, when I had that break-up, that I said you know what…I’m just going to live my life. I want to do things. So anything that I hadn’t done, I was just going to say yes to. So it’s never too late, it’s never too late. Definitely not.”

To be in the shape that Tara is in, and to do all of the things she does, that obviously doesn’t just happen. So what’s a typical training day or training week like for her?

“It depends on how I’m working. I take time off sometimes because I always say that if you don’t do that, your body will make you do it. You’ll pick up an injury. So when I feel like I’m getting tired, I’ll take time off. I’m getting back into things now, so what I’d generally do is in the morning – if I wake up early enough [laughs] – I’ll go and do a walk or a little bit of cardio. I find it’s a good way to start your day off. I’ll drop the kids to school, then if I don’t have PT clients, or work with RINKA – because I work in kids fitness as well – then I’m into the gym to train myself. I like to get my training done as early as I can in the morning. If I’m working, I’ll get it done straight after. That’s when I’ll do my weight training. If I don’t have weight training, I’ll do my cardio that day. Then I’m back home looking after the kids, then maybe my RINKA classes. And then in the evening it’s family time. I don’t dedicate an awful lot of time to it [training], maybe an hour to two hours a day, max. That’s all you need. It’s about consistency, about just doing it five days a week, every week, instead of being in there three hours one or two days a week. You’re just not gonna get results from that.

Although Tara herself isn't the kind of person to even think of herself as being a role-model in a bigger-picture sense, for anybody on the outside looking in at her life and her achievements, there's just no doubt that a role-model is exactly what she is. Through her work with RINKA, as well as being a Personal Trainer and Fitness Instructor, and most importantly of all, of course, being a mum, Tara is more than well aware of the importance and the power of a positive example. But does it ever cross her mind how much of a role-model, whether she likes it or not, that she actually is for so many people? 

"I don't really. I would like to think that I'm more relatable to people. I wouldn't like somebody to look at me and say, 'Wow, well I could never do that.' I want the opposite of that. I want somebody to think, 'If she can do it, I can do it!' That's what I want. I want to be relatable in that way. And that's what it is. I mean, I WAS somebody who was never able to do a push-up. Or a pull-up! I always wanted to be able to do a pull-up! I always wanted to be able to do that. So that's how I'd like to be seen, as someone who went out and proved she could, ya know. I'd never want to put myself on a pedestal. I'd be so embarrassed  if I thought that! And I think on my Instagram as well, I think you can see that I don't really put myself out there and... 'sell'...this image that I'm whatever, glamorous, or amazing, or anything like that. I want to be very relatable. Because I am. I'm a normal person. I always encourage people to ask me questions. I've been from A to..., well, I don't think I'm at Z yet! [Laughs]. I think I have more still to achieve [laughs]. But I've been every step of the way. I mean, when I started, I couldn't run, so I was walking. I know how hard it is to get there, and how it has to be step-by-step. So people can come and ask me anything. It's the same with my PT clients. Goals are very achievable things once you have the knowledge, and once you're accepting of the fact that it won't be a perfect and straight road as well." 

Does Tara remember the moment when she knew or decided that she wanted to get into fitness as a career?

"I was actually working on reception here [in the Bridge House Hotel, where she now works in the Leisure Club], and I was powerlifting at that time, into fitness, and I was always training down in the gym. Damien, the gym manager at the time, would always be coming over to me at reception and joking, 'You're wasted here, wasted here!' [laughs]. I had no gym qualifications at the time, but everybody knew how into fitness I was, so eventually we were able to arrange for me to make that switch over. And when I went over there, that's when I went and got my qualifications so that I could teach as well. That was it. And I've never left! I'm like the furniture down there [laughs]."

So for somebody thinking about trying to get fit but they're worried about it, nervous about it, or they just don't know where to start, what would Tara advise them to do? 

"If you're a complete beginner, definitely get a coach or an instructor. That's what they're there for. And they'll definitely be 100% on your team. Because it is, it's scary at the start. A lot of women say to me that they're intimidated going into the weights-room in a gym, but I'm like, girl, they don't know what they're doing either! [Laughs]. But if you have somebody with you who shows you the ropes, so you can have the confidence to know you have the correct form and everything, that's important. So to start off anyway, and that's not saying that you'll need one all the time. And take it step-by-step. A lot of people, when they're dieting, they'll start where they're eating whatever they want, but then they go to 1,600 calories, and for me that's insane. You want to be losing weight on as much food as possible. I would always say start high and work your way down slowly, because you will plateau. And if you start plateauing at 1,600 calories, where do you go from there? If you go to 1,400, it's just not gonna happen, you'll fall off track. Then you'll just beat yourself up about it. Slow and steady wins the race." 

And what about advice for someone who might be really struggling with their motivation, either to get back to training or to stay training? What words of wisdom would Tara offer in those circumstances? 

"I would say that 80% is better than 0%. A lot of people go in and go hell for leather, 100%. But if you have one day of sitting on your ass and not eating chicken and rice, that's ok. But people have this mentality where it has to be all or nothing. There needs to be a bit of consistency. If you put 80% in, that's so much better than nothing. 20% is nothing. It's like an overweight person eating one healthy meal and expecting to lose weight. If you're keeping on track and you have one bad meal, you're not going to put on weight. Just be fair on yourself. It doesn't have to be 100% [all the time]. Don't rely on motivation. Be disciplined. Have your structure. It will be difficult in the beginning, but eventually you will completely  rely on it, and you'll actually enjoy that structure. 

~ You can find, follow, and contact Tara on Instagram at  @tinypowermum