Nebo resident Smith bench presses 900 pounds at age 51

Joey Smith got into powerlifting more than three decades ago, and the longtime Nebo resident has accomplished a lot over the years.

But what the 1992 McDowell High School graduate was able to do on Nov. 22 at Carolina Carnage, a professional powerlifting meet sanctioned by 365 Strong World Powerlifting Federation at The Box Factory Performance & Event Center in Marion, was particularly special. During the meet, the 51-year-old Smith became one of only six individuals in history to bench press over 900 pounds at his age or older.

“We had a couple hundred people total here at the Miller Complex at The Box Factory with the staff, lifters, and audience included, so to be in front of my family and my team and my community, it meant everything,” said Smith, who lifted 903.9 pounds on Nov. 22 while being named Best Overall Lifter and finishing first in both the Men’s Open Division and the Men’s Master Division. “When it was done, I was in tears and just felt this lifetime accomplishment that I didn’t know if it was ever gonna come to fruition or not. Nothing’s guaranteed, and I have tried this amount before at other meets and not gotten it.

“I’ve had nine surgeries and torn things and broken things through the years, and you’ve got to keep battling back, so it’s not like it’s been some easy path. It’s been extraordinarily excruciating. But to see the payoff at the end of the day after all of these years (is gratifying).”

Currently the top-ranked bench presser in the world for his age and weight class (308 pounds), Smith played sports growing up, including football at East McDowell Junior High and McDowell High. However, he admits that he “wasn’t a superstar athlete.”

“We had a lot of great football and basketball teams and a lot of great athletes in that era, so it was hard to stand out,” said Smith. “The girls were winning state championships at McDowell High and the boys were getting to the final eight. We had Brian Franklin, Darren Moore, big-time superstars that I graduated with in high school. So all I played was football and a lot of rec league basketball, and that was my athletic career summed up right there.”

Smith started lifting weights at a now-defunct Marion-based gym, Focus on Fitness, as a teenager, and he also attended numerous powerlifting meets as a spectator. And after watching the way that those older than him did things for several years, Smith began competing in powerlifting meets at age 20.

“I’ve been involved in the sport for a very long time, and I’ve been sponsored by the biggest company in powerlifting, EliteFTS, for 19 years this year,” said Smith. “EliteFTS for our sport would be like being sponsored by Gatorade or Nike or something like that in basketball or football, that’s the magnitude of who they are. It’s a multi-million dollar company that builds weight lifting equipment – anything that has to do with weight lifting, Olympic lifting, bodybuilding – this is the one-stop shop company that does it all. This company is who everybody wants to be with … and I am the longest-tenured sponsored lifter with EliteFTS.”

But Smith, who excels in the bench press but has also lifted personal bests of 930 pounds in the squat and 650 pounds in the deadlift, doesn’t just focus on attaining his own goals. He also tries to help others do the same through his private powerlifting gym and training team, NeboBarbell.

“I’ve been a coach for our team for 26 years,” said Smith. “I have coached hundreds and hundreds of lifters across McDowell County, North Carolina, and the United States, and we have people constantly coming in to learn how to lift, to learn how to squat, to learn how to bench. … We have a very tenured crew, our average age in our gym is probably about 35 years old, and we don’t have mirrors, we don’t have our phones out, it’s a very serious atmosphere. We’re very serious in what we’re doing, and we have a lot of companies that sponsor us and have eyes on us.

“This isn’t for everybody, so we want to make sure if you come to us and this is something you want to do, we need to understand how serious you are. … What we have here in McDowell County, there is no other location in North Carolina like our powerlifting gym and our team. There are people that powerlift in North Carolina no doubt, there are people that call themselves teams, which they could be, but we are both a gym and a team in one.”

Smith stated that approximately 60% of NeboBarbell’s members “are not even from McDowell County, and it’s always been that way.” He added that NeboBarbell has been the top-ranked powerlifting team gym on the East Coast every year for nearly two decades, and he also pointed out that “I do not charge people for my coaching” and “I have never charged a dollar in my life because that’s the way I was brought up.”

Notably, NeboBarbell has also produced five North Carolina Powerlifting Hall of Fame inductees in the past five years, including four females and Smith himself. One of the female Hall of Famers is Smith’s wife, Melissa, a full-time nurse who won the Arnold Classic last year in Columbus, Ohio, by outlifting over a hundred competitors despite being the oldest in the field at 51.

Smith stated that “it’s extremely special” to be in the Hall of Fame alongside his wife. He was inducted in 2022, while she went in two years later.

“Just imagine being able to do what you love the most in life with the person that you love the most in life every day,” said Smith. “What we do is not a hobby. Collecting stamps is a hobby. This is a lifestyle. Everything that we do is predicated around our training and our gym.”

According to Smith, how he approaches recovery is the biggest thing that has changed in terms of how he trains now versus when he was younger, as well as how he trains others.

“I have to train a lot smarter, I can’t just be stupid,” said Smith. “I have to be very precise in what I’m doing and I have to know when to back off. We are very serious about our recovery modules, such as doing ice plunges, saunas, and infrared massages. I mean, there’s a whole litany of things that most of us older lifters, especially myself, take just as seriously. And then you’ve got to consider your diet, sleeping, rest, all the boring things that people don’t think are important that are the most important things.

“We teach our lifters how to recover, how to eat right, and none of this costs anybody a dollar. Just your time and being serious about it. When people come to our gym for the first time, they’ve never seen anything like what is happening in our gym. … We’re in there putting in work, and we’re busting our (butts) and we’re trying to get better each and every day. But as you get older, you have to be way smarter about what you’re doing, you’ve got to be very precise about what you’re coming to do, and when your body tells you to back off, you need to back off.”

Smith noted that he also trains “a lot of young athletes,” some of whom compete for his powerlifting team. Others simply use the opportunity to get stronger for whatever sports they choose to participate in.

Up next for Team NeboBarbell is a meet in Brevard on March 28. Smith won’t lift at that one, but he will be on hand as a coach.

Smith will also serve as meet director for Hickory Havoc, a powerlifting event that will be held on April 25 at the Hickory Metro Convention Center.

“These are professionally sanctioned meets under federation rules with nationally certified judges,” said Smith. “... There’s probably about two or three federations here in North Carolina that run meets, and we actually work for one of them, 365 Strong, which has probably got the biggest stronghold on this state and South Carolina. I think they’ve got about 70,000 members nationwide right now. It’s a very big powerlifting group.

“We run this meet every year in Hickory at the Metro Convention Center, and it’s a great location. We have people from all over the United States that come and compete. … We’ve been doing this for a few years, so we’re involved in a lot of things. I mean, we’ve got Hall of Famers, we compete locally, we compete nationally, we do world events, and we also run meets, so we are a very busy gym.”