Two of the strongest people in the world live in Myrtle Beach. And they're married
Anthony Hobaica really thought he had done something special earlier this year at the XPC powerlifting finals at the Arnold Sports Festival.
He won the overall title with the 13th-best overall performance in raw powerlifting history, according to the accepted powerlifting metric, the Wilks Coefficient.
With a 770-pound squat, 500-pound bench press and 650-pound dead lift, he registered a three-category total of 1,920 pounds while competing in the 181-pound division.
But within a week, it wasn’t even the best weightlifting performance in his Myrtle Beach residence.
His wife, Eva Laura Belle Dunbar Hobaica, set a world record for her weight class at the “No Retreat, No Surrender” meet in March in Cherokee, N.C., giving her the greatest Wilks raw powerlifting performance in history.
Her Wilks score of 638 surpassed the previous high set by a 220-pound Russian man in the raw category, which allows only knee wraps for assistance. It was achieved with a total of 1,370 pounds in the 147.6-pound weight class with a 537-pound squat that set a new world record for her weight class, 315-pound bench press – which is a pound off the world record – and 518-pound dead lift.
“I went the week before so I was completely upstaged and I have no problem with it,” Anthony said. “My wife has upstaged pretty much every person, male or female, on the planet.”
Eva kept a screenshot on her phone for about a year of the top 10 female powerlifting performances in history, and told Anthony she would take the No. 1 spot.
“I just wanted to be the strongest woman on the planet, and I knew I could, and that happened,” Eva said. “That’s what I was going for.”
She plans to increase her Wilks score –a mathematical formula that considers gender, weight and total lift – in upcoming meets to regain the top historical mark. Eva’s total was eclipsed at the Kern U.S. Open in May, and Chakera Holcomb now holds the new mark at 665.
“I’m always looking for more. My next goal is significantly higher,” Eva said. “I always keep striving for that. If I have a mentality any less than that, if I spent all my time being in the glory of the things that I’ve accomplished, I feel I wouldn’t have the right mentality to do what I do. So there’s something to be said for being humble.”
Mutual appreciation
Eva, 36, and Anthony, 31, have been living in Myrtle Beach and training at Gold’s Gym for nearly a year. They moved from Utica, N.Y., last August.
“The cherry on top of the cake really has been not only have I found what I love to do, but I get to do it with who I love, and that’s really rare, and I think that’s what makes us kind of a dynamic duo,” Eva said. “Our lifting has increased tremendously by being together.
“. . . Having him a part of that process has made me a better person, not just a better lifter.”
Anthony is from Utica and Eva is from Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada, on the Maine border.
Both left jobs to pursue training and competitions. “We try to inspire people to go after their dreams,” Anthony said. “That’s what we’re trying to do in the fitness world.”
Eva said she gave up a desk job paying $70,000 per year and went back to school to become a trainer and nutritionist.
“Life was just no fun. I’ve been lifting since I was 17,” Eva said. “I really said, ‘You know what, I want to help people do what I love to do.’” She particularly enjoys working with clients who are elderly, have disabilities, need rehabilitation or want to lose weight.
Anthony has a Master’s degree in education and taught for a year before deciding the classroom wasn’t for him. “I realized I wanted to be back in fitness and doing my kind of thing,” he said.
They met essentially in passing at a powerlifting competition in Albany, N.Y., where they were both attempting world records and both performed poorly. “We both bombed out. It was the worst meet we both ever had,” Eva said. “And he contacted me through social media and kept in contact for a couple years.”
She visited Hobaica late in 2016 – driving 16 hours in a snow storm to do so – they started dating and married within three months last Feb. 28. “From that moment on we couldn’t be apart,” Eva said. “We got married kind of on the fly.”
Eva gave up a successful personal training and meal prep business in New Brunswick to move to New York, and continues to coach some clients online.
The couple planned to move to Florida last year, but they were both also familiar with Myrtle Beach. Eva’s grandparents were snowbirds for many years here, and Anthony had come for spring break high school baseball tournaments. They visited one of Anthony’s friends in the area and decided to move here instead.
“We felt really at home when we came here,” Anthony said. “It was a good gym culture here at Gold’s and we wanted to increase what we were doing in fitness.”
They work part time serving tables and tending bar, but they can train at will in part because they are sponsored by Kabuki Strength and Anderson Powerlifting, so they are paid to train and compete. They work with Kabuki’s top training coach, Brandon Senn, who works predominantly with pro athletes including NFL and Major League Baseball players. “We’re very fortunate that way that we have that opportunity,” Eva said.
“You can only have that for so long,” Anthony added. “We’re one injury away from being away from that.”
Rising to the top
Eva got a later start in competitive lifting than Anthony. She began as a bodybuilder, and is like a transformer, the rare combination of a powerlifter and bodybuilder. She still alternates between the two competitions during the year.
“My wife truly is relentless,” Anthony said. “She literally enjoys the process more than what I call the lights. I really enjoy the contests. I enjoy the glam of it way more than she does. She’d rather be in the gym with her teammates and loves the training, the reps and sets, the grind of it – how to get better, not just what the product shows on game day.”
Eva realized her potential when a male lifting partner at her gym in New Brunswick suggested she try to lift half of what he was lifting. “At the end of it I was lifting as much as he was,” she said.
She was initially more interested in bodybuilding and hired a coach who was a nutrition specialist, and she finished last in her first bodybuilding competition. But she soon became successful, winning the 2016 New Brunswick provincials and finishing third in the Canadian nationals, and last year she earned her IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilding) Pro League card in the Physique category after winning the North American amateur championship.
Her coach saw the weight she was lifting for bodybuilding and suggested she enter a powerlifting competition.
In her first one, Eva set several Canadian national records. She won the Canadian nationals in her second meet and came close to breaking a world record.
She won her third meet as well, the World Powerlifting Congress (WPC) Worlds in West Palm Beach, Fla., then went back to bodybuilding competitions.
“I have a goal that I focus on in my powerlifting time, and once I hit that goal I switch over back into bodybuilding to give my body a break from that,” Eva said. “But the break from bodybuilding is good too because you can only diet and maintain a certain level of leanness that’s unhealthy for so long, so I basically give my body a break from each one.
“It has been tricky to do both, to be good at both.”
Her next bodybuilding show is the AX Pro Cup Wings of Strength competition in Phoenix in September.
Eva learned the genesis of her strength recently when she brought her 5-foot-2, 54-year-old mother, Nancy Dunbar, for her first workout. Her mother started out on the bench press with 5-pound weights on each side of the 45-pound bar, and they continued to add 5 pounds until Nancy bench-pressed 135 pounds – a pair of 45-pound weights – eight times.
“Then it was apparent where I got it from,” Eva said. “I love being strong. I didn’t want to be a bikini athlete. I love muscle.”
Anthony has an impressive resume of his own. He held the all-time top ranking at his weight about three years ago and has since fallen to No. 2.
At last year’s Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, he performed an exhibition lift in the “animal cage” and lifted 10 times his body weight in less than 60 seconds – a 700 squat, 460 bench and 650 dead lift for a 1,810-pound total.
“There’s no way you can miss in the cage,” Anthony said. “There’s like thousands of people hyping you up, yelling at you, cameras everywhere.”
“It was a freakish feat of strength,” Eva said.
Anthony recently won his weight class and finished third among 62 competitors in the lightweight (under 200 pounds) division in the U.S. Open, which has a purse of $200,000.
“What I love about lifting is the discipline and commitment and all of those things that encompass the fitness world, it really trickles into all areas of your life, not just in the gym,” Anthony said. “I really truly have a love for fitness and I think that’s why it’s such a staple. We live and breathe this stuff, it’s not just a turn-it-on-at-the-gym type of thing.”
The couple uses fitness as a platform as well, and would like to eventually open their own performance gym.
“It’s a way that we can get our message across, inspire and motivate,” Anthony said. “It’s how we go about it, the dedication it takes and the time. There’s no such thing as a real quick fix, it’s really a full, wholesome approach. We teach dedication, work ethic, and willingness, and those are life skills.”
Anthony and Eva are moving at the behest of a sponsor to Las Vegas in the coming weeks, but believe their careers have been elevated during their time at Gold’s Gym, which has been owned for more than three decades by Tedd and Nancy Capp. Tedd is a former Mr. South Carolina bodybuilder.
“We lift weights all over the world, and Gold’s Myrtle Beach is honestly our favorite gym to do our work and will always be home,” Anthony said.