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about
Our story
HrdKAW Strength was established in 2019 by Australian athletes and siblings Melissa, Joshua and Maddi Wu. HrdKAW Started as a garage gym with 1 platform and a hand full of PT clients, but rapidly grew to 3 platforms and a weightlifting club. Very quickly numbers continued to grow and the garage gym took over the back yard and parts of the house. From this humble location, HrdKAW grew to be the biggest club in NSW.
Our well known Youth Scholarship Program was born in the garage gym which saw many national medallists developed. Along with a large squad of Youth athletes, we also had large Masters and Senior squads competing at State and National Level.
In 2022, we moved out of our humble garage gym into a commercial premises that now houses our ever growing weightlifting squad and our new Athlete Development Program. HrdKAW Strength remains the largest club in NSW and the second largest in the country.
We now have 5 senior coaches who coach our weightlifting squad in training and at competitions and have developed an in house Coach Mentorship Program which is bringing through several new junior coaches. Josh and Maddi Wu have gone on to complete their level 3 coaching qualifications and Maddi Wu is now a NSW High Performance Coach. Maddi has been named as a coach on 3 Australian teams in 2023 along with 4 of our Youth Athletes. We have also had 11 Masters qualify for international competitions.
Our Name
Hrdkaw
In 2014 our lives were changed forever when our precious sister Kirsten took her own life. Our tight knit family was shattered and none of us would ever be the same again. Kirsten was in her 3rd year of Dentistry, she had competed for Australia as a Junior weightlifter and she was a self-taught baker of amazing creations. There was nothing Kirsten couldn’t do and she was good at everything. She had a zest for life that was infectious and her smile always lit up the room and our lives. Kirsten was a social butterfly and she made friends wherever she went.
All these years later, we are still struggling to come to terms with the loss of Kirsten, but what we have learnt is the importance of family and doing what makes you happy. At the time we were doing uni degrees and working in industries we hated, so we decided to take our passion for sport and coaching and come together collaboratively to start our own gym. We took the leap, started our business, and haven’t looked back since.
Kirsten’s initials are K.A.W and she came up with the name HrdKAW. She always told us she would get ‘HrdKAW’ number plates and someday have a bakery called HrdKAW Cakes. Although she will never get to realise her dream, we decided to keep it alive and keep her close to us by naming our business in her honour. We couldn’t think of a more fitting and meaningful name for our gym. It represents strength, family and following your passion, whether that’s as an athlete, a coach, or both. We think that HrdKAW Strength was meant to be and hope Kirsten loves it as much as we do.
