Burnett School of Medicine at TCU Student Represents Team USA in Power Weightlifting Championships in Estonia

FORT WORTH – Discipline and grit are qualities that competitive athletes need to master at a young age to eventually compete on the world’s biggest sports stages.

It turns out those same qualities got Justin Choy, MS-3 at Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University, into medical school and helped him punch his ticket to the 2024 FISU World University Championships Powerlifting in Tartu, Estonia, in late July.

“Sometimes I look at all the things I got to do and I’m like I can’t even fathom how I’m going to start to do it,” Choy said.

Choy was a member of Team USA at this year’s FISU World University Championships where teams from 22 countries competed for gold, silver and bronze medals.  The FISU World University Championships are not considered an Olympic sport but are considered the highest level of competitive collegiate power weightlifting.

“When kids start playing football they envision themselves in the Super Bowl,” Choy said. “When I was powerlifting as a 14-year-old I envisioned myself at the World Championships.”

He grew up in Wisconsin and began power weightlifting in 2014 while in high school. By the time he graduated he was one of the top-ranked power weightlifters in the U.S. within his weight class of (-74kg/163.14 lbs.). He went to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, continuing his dream of one day competing in the FISU World Championships but the competition got tougher.

“In college, the guys got a lot stronger and I didn’t,” Choy said.

By the end of his undergraduate education, he managed to move up in weight class to (-83kg/182.98 lbs.). Even after becoming a medical student at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, he continued his training and weekly grind.

Choy trains five days a week for three to four hours a day alongside his coach. He does high-repetition squats three times a week, bench presses four times a week and deadlifts twice a week. These workouts include accessory work to make sure he’s building more muscle every step of the way.

“Even within that work it’s not like just hit this number there are velocity targets I have to hit,” Choy said. “There’s subjective rating systems I use to figure out how much of a load I need to be lifting. Take care of any aches and pains and then you go home and do it again the next day.”

Choy managed all this while balancing his first three years of medical school spending a lot of class time inside Fort Worth area hospitals through the medical school’s rigorous Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LIC) curriculum.

“The Burnett School of Medicine at TCU does a very good job of making sure we have a mix of time spent together but also enough white space to kind of pursue our own learning,” Choy said. “I was able to leverage and have enough time to train.”

With medical school and training going well, he seemed to be on his way to having a strong showing at the Power Lifting America University Nationals to qualify for Team USA in March 2024.

But in December 2023 adversity struck in the form of perforated appendicitis.

“It was my intention to go to those and cap off my collegiate powerlifting career then the appendicitis happened and it kind of threw me for a loop,” Choy said.

At the time he was studying appendicitis in his course work when he started to feel daily pains in his abdomen.

“I remember thinking there’s just no way it’s all in your head,” Choy said.  “The pain just got worse and worse and eventually I was bent over every day groaning and feverish. Then my appendix exploded which is one of these true surgical emergencies.”

He was hospitalized for a week. Determined to see his dream come true he began rehabbing in his hospital room after his surgery. He resumed training from ground zero lifting an empty barbell and doing push-ups. He worked with his coach to create a weightlifting protocol that wouldn’t aggravate his surgery scars and healing process.

“I took it one day at a time,” Choy said.

He had 12 weeks to get in shape to participate in nationals to qualify for Team USA. He needed to win a gold, silver or bronze medal at the event to qualify. In March 2024, he won a silver medal making him a member of Team USA. At the FISU World University Championships in Estonia he helped Team USA come in 4th overall.

He finished 15th in his weight class (-83kg/182.98 lbs.) by lifting (617kg/1,360.25 lbs.) of total weight.

“It’s such a moment of pride and pause that I competed at the highest level in the sport,” Choy said.

Now he plans on putting even more of his focus, discipline and grit into completing medical school.

“I can see myself being an orthopedic surgeon,” Choy said. “Being an athlete it’s given me this nice hands-on personal appreciation of the muscular-skeletal system and all the diseases it kind of falls with.”