(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part Two in a two-part series about Ocala athlete Andre Palmer. You can read Part One here.) 

OCALA, FL (352today.com) – Although he received an academic scholarship to the University of Florida, former bullying victim and rising athlete Andre Palmer’s path to playing collegiate sports at the highest level wasn’t a smooth one. There wasn’t a whole lot of recruiting out of Lake Weir by major college programs for football.

Palmer did have a stepbrother who played for the Gators and did communicate with several members of the coaching staff, but that didn’t guarantee him a roster spot.

“I was determined I was going to go try out and walk on if I wasn’t going to have an offer. The day comes around where I get the opportunity to try out. At the time, we had [Will] Muschamp, Coach Muschamp for his last year. We had about 150 guys that came out to try out,” said Palmer. “A big squad, and Muschamp comes out, and he has that raspy voice, he’s like, ‘there’s about 150 of you out here, we have only two spots, good luck.’ And then he walks away. So, 30 to 40 people get up and leave. I’m like looking around and in my head, ‘why are you guys leaving before you even have an opportunity to at least give it your all and try?'”

Pushing back against the odds

That provided Palmer with all of the motivation he needed to secure one of the two available spots on the Gators roster.

“I looked at my buddy, who I had been training with all summer, to come get to this point, and I looked at him, and I said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m getting one of those locker spots,'” said Palmer. “And he says, ‘I guess I’m getting the other one.'”

Palmer was one of six finalists, checking off all of the boxes of how he performed under pressure, being tired and worked over, making it to the sprinting portion of the workout: The final determinant saw him doing 110-yard sprints, with the bottom two finishers dropping out, leaving only four candidates.

“All I can remember, is hearing my heartbeat and looking up at coach as he’s about to blow the whistle, I couldn’t hear anything, it was the equivalent of tunnel vision in my ears,” said Palmer. “I literally only heard my heartbeat. All I could see was his cheeks filled with air. That told me that I needed to go, and I have probably never run faster in my life. I roll into the padded endzone pad that they had inside the indoor turf area, and I looked back and the other three guys are still running across the line. I finally recover and look up and one of the admin guys comes over and shakes my hand, and says ‘congratulations, you have yourself a locker spot.'”

When fate comes calling 

At age 13, Palmer was already training other students at his school. They would come over to his house and lift in his garage with him. It was as if he was fated to be a strength and conditioning coach.

“I knew that’s what I was destined to do with my life,” said Palmer, 30. “At the very early age of 13 and already doing it. Just by the nature of my heart, it fully became an actual business, where I made work out of it, at the age of 16 in Gainesville, where I worked at a gym called Gainesville Health and Fitness. That was my first official job as a professional trainer, and it’s always been something I loved to do and wanted to do.”

Erudition and execution 

When he was at the University of Florida, he obtained a degree in applied physiology and kinesiology.

That provided an exceptional boost to Palmer’s confidence in approaching the individuals he trains. If he understood how his body works under load, it allowed him to manipulate it better, recover it better, train it harder, and do the things that he can do at the natural base level to keep him just behind the bar on the guys who use performance-enhancing substances because of how he first started power lifting and joined and competed. He wasn’t aware that they had a specified division, or subsequent division, that allowed athletes to compete versus drug-tested competitors. Palmer is also now the strength and conditioning coach for the Ocala TekMasters swim team.

“I truly think that my background in school has helped me propel the confidence in myself to be able to know how to approach my training so I can stay at and continue to compete at the international level,” said Palmer.

Achieving one’s dreams 

One of Palmer’s goals has always been to represent the United States in international competition. He’s been in the United States Powerlifting Association for the past five years, and an affiliate of the International Powerlifting League (IPL), qualifying for the international competition by placing third at nationals in California. However, a propitious set of circumstance this past July at nationals in Las Vegas, found him advancing to the world stage and what will be his first overseas trip. It was a phone message, one that he found hard to believe that would fill him with joy and emotion, much like when he made the University of Florida football team.

“I’m about to settle for bed and I get a random text that says, ‘Hey Andre, we have a spot open on Team USA, we’d love to have you and officially invite you to be a part of our team.’ I kid you not, I looked at the text message for about five minutes. I texted the guy back. ‘is this spam?’ He said, ‘No sir. You’ve worked very hard, you’ve earned the spot, and we’ve had one open up.'”

Traveling across the pond 

This month, Palmer will be flying into Wolverhampton, England to compete in the International Powerlifting League Championships Nov. 20-21, 2025. The flight’s going to be the longest flight that he’s ever been on, as this will be his first time out of the country.

“I do know that even traveling out to California, it took my body a couple of days to get adjusted to that difference in time,” said Palmer.  “I’m very excited for it. Not only am I doing this for me, I’m representing the country. I get to represent the City of Ocala and the State of Florida. I pretty much embody the role that I’ve decided to accept my whole life at the early age of 13. I knew I wanted to carry the weight of the world and be a vessel for everyone to look up to. Now, I get to physically enact that in a way, it humbly makes me so happy and grateful to be able to do that for everyone and endure this heavy load of weight to put on for the world, to show the world. Here’s the physical embodiment of me putting the world on my back and my shoulders as I always wanted to.”