From addiction to world-record lifting: A Cedar City woman's sobriety journey

CEDAR CITY – When Camille Palmer got a Mother's Day card from her daughters with a hand-drawn picture of her holding a margarita, she knew that was her sign to make a change. Fourteen years later, the 48-year-old mother of two is sober and breaking world records in heavyweight lifting.

"My daughters were 6 and 9 at the time, and they wrote me a Mother's Day card, and on that card was a picture of a martini, and it said, 'cheers,'" Palmer recalled. "Of course, they wrote really sweet and cute things on the inside, but as soon as I saw that, I knew they knew. You think you're hiding everything. You think your bottles of liquor are hiding in the freezer or behind cereal boxes. They're hidden so nobody knows, but they knew. That's when I started on my path to sobriety."

Palmer grew up in the small town of Summit just northeast of Cedar City, and she said she enjoyed all things sports-related. She played softball, participated in track and loved to dance as a member of the Parowan High School drill team. It was during her freshman year in high school, however, when her life changed.

"When I was a freshman, a senior boy passed a note to me, and we passed notes for a couple of weeks," she recalled. "One night after a football game, he assaulted me.

"This started me on my path of alcohol and drugs because I didn't know what to do with that. I was 14 years old. I didn't talk to anyone about it. Nobody knew anything. It was really easy to get pills. That's where my addiction started."

Palmer said that she spent the next 20 years doing her best to hide her addiction. Her path toward sobriety, she said, started where she felt most comfortable — in the gym.

"The gym was crucial for me because it started giving me confidence," Palmer said. "It was hard for me to get up at 4 a.m., and it's hard to do a pull-up or a bench press. I went into the gym very focused on things that were hard."

As Palmer got stronger, the competitor in her began to return, and in 2016, she began entering competitions. She first competed in the Utah Summer Games in Cedar City and discovered she was really good at powerlifting. The following year, she wanted to try something new, so she signed up for arm-wrestling and learned she was "really good at it."

Local arm-wrestling groups took notice; she was invited to practice, which led to more competitions and more wins. It also led her to another world that she wanted to try her hand (and biceps) at.

"Somebody from my arm-wrestling group tagged me in a post about the Olympia Strict Curl Championship in Las Vegas," Palmer said. "I watched some videos on strict curling and got a coach."

Strict curl is a lifting technique that isolates the biceps by having the lifter keep their upper back, buttocks, and head against a wall while using a curling bar to lift the weight. Not only did Palmer win her age group, but she broke a master's world record by lifting 108 pounds. Palmer said that the first world record made her want more.

She went on to break the overall women's world record in November 2024, curling 125.7 pounds. She competed on the biggest stages in heavy lifting, including the Arnold Sports Festival, The Olympia, and the Shaw Classic.

"A very small percentage compete at one or two, but I've been to all three multiple times," she said.

After her first overall world record, it was her against herself — something that she was used to. Palmer said she kept digging deep to find the inner strength to raise her own bar. That bar led her to two more world records, including one this past March at the Arnold Classic in Ohio, where she strict curled 132.5 pounds. This lift made her the first woman on U.S. soil to ever strict-curl 130 pounds, and earned her the title of best overall female lifter of the meet.

Motivated by helping others

Palmer said that with all her achievements, she is motivated by helping others. In fact, she volunteers in many capacities in Cedar City, including the local food pantry and with youth in custody. For many years, she volunteered at an assisted living facility and now works there part-time. She also coaches the Cedar High School drill team and teaches classes at a local gym.

"Coaching is comfort and accountability for me," she said. "I have somewhere to be, and somebody's counting on me. I wouldn't thrive or be alive if I wasn't trying to help somebody. I'm here to help. I'm here to support."

Palmer said she loves improving herself, but she hopes to encourage other women to enter the world of strength sports.

"I just want females to want to be in strength sports," she said. "We're small in numbers. If we can get one or two new females a year, that's pretty amazing. We're just trying to build up the community and make sure females have a place to want to come and hang out and do strong things."

She also said she hopes her journey will show others they can make it through hard times, too.

"What I've gone through has made me the person that I am today," she said.

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