"Then they see me flip like a 750-pound tire," Mann said. "I do lots of fun things like where they're flipping the 350 tire, and I go over there and flip the 750-pound tire right next to them."
Certainly an eye-opener.
The 5-foot-6 woman with long brown hair may look like any other student on Vanderbilt's campus, but she definitely likes to be different. That's why she's majoring in chemical engineering and spending her free time competing as a strongman both male-dominated fields.
And Mann would love to have more women follow her.
"I love the sport. It has become my thing, and I want to try to get more people into it. More women need to try it because, honestly, it's empowering," Mann said.
Mann won the 2004 national strongwoman title less than two years after her first competition in a sport best known for filling odd time slots on cable television.
She has pulled a 14,000-pound A-4 fighter jet 47 feet, carried 200 pounds in each hand in an event called the farmer's walk for 200 feet in 30.37 seconds, and once dead-lifted a cheerleader in Arizona.
All this without bulking up a frame, which hovers around 165 pounds of mostly muscle, with any supplements or chemical assistance, she says.
"It's a hobby for me. I would never try to morph my body that much. That's not why I do it. There are some people who do it for a living and take it incredibly serious and want to morph their bodies to the extreme," Mann said.
She didn't stumble onto the sport until her senior year in high school in Massachusetts. Already on the basketball, track and cross country teams, she wasn't interested in lifting weights until she saw her boyfriend's petite aunt compete.
"I was like, 'I could do that,'" Mann recalled. "That's something that nobody that I know really has ever tried."
Mann finished third in her first meet, the Massachusetts State Championship, in August 2002. Less than a year later, she won the same meet. Her mother, Liane, a psychotherapist in Boxford, Mass., wasn't sure what to make of her daughter's new passion.
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She'd probably put me in coma wit a punch of hers
naagaha gaalada waa cajiib walle they'l try anythin'
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