Here is why I like powerlifting: I’ve noticed that every lifter makes a gesture, or a few gestures, before they lift. It’s very individual. One guy at my gym always sits for a moment at the end of the bench, breathes in, taps the end of the bench and arches back. Another will stare at the deadlift bar, shifting from foot to foot, before taking a sharp breath, bending down and almost angrily grabbing the bar. In two years I’ve developed, totally unconsciously, my own routines. When you bench press, a spotter usually lifts the bar off and asks when you’re ready to take it. When I have the bar I look at it for a moment, take two short breaths, then a third, then I lift. I love this moment, the part at the very beginning, because in these gestures I make a decision. I decide, totally, that I will lift this, and then I exit. Lifters talk a lot about getting fired up; if you ever go to a competition you’ll see a lot of beefy guys in confusing outfits, slapping each other on the back, urging the guy at the bar to fire up. I see lifters get really and truly angry when they’re about to lift, red-faced and veiny and shouty. Anger doesn’t work for me. When I lift, especially something heavy, something that really pushes the boundaries of what I’m capable of, I stop thinking. It’s like I empty out, and all I’m doing is acting on that decision I made when I looked at the bar and took two short breaths.
Powerlifting does not make me feel sexy, or lean, or toned, or long, or energized, or revitalized, or any of the things exercise is supposed to do for women. Truth be told, it’s a ridiculous looking sport. Your shins get bruised, your hands get calloused, and towards the end of each cycle you’re so sore that you feel like you have a constant, low-grade flu, and then there’s the bench shirts, squat suits and knee wraps that make you look like a stiff, chalk-covered frog. Still. Powerlifting makes me feel focused, calm, and strong, genuinely strong. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the phrase ’strong women,’ and what is usually meant when people - okay, advertisers, ladymags, etcetera - mean when they invoke female strength. They usually don’t mean literal, outwardly projected muscular strength, and there’s an uneasiness about muscular female bodies. The ’strong woman’ is meant to be emotionally resilient, feminine, put-together and outwardly unruffled. After re-reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s amazing essay, ‘Welcome to Cancerland,‘ I also think the ’strong woman’ is supposed to have some kind of capacity for surrender, to be pliantly accepting of circumstance and capable of adapting.
A strong woman, however, is not expected to possess muscular strength, and forms of recreational exercise marketed to women reinforce this expectation. I get irrationally pissed when I hear a grown-ass woman say that push-ups, the proper kind from your feet, are beyond her. Women’s bodies aren’t so radically different from men that things like a stupid push-up are beyond us. Instead, for women strength has been replaced with tone, and those very female pursuits of yoga and pilates claim that they can create long, lean, graceful bodies, rather than powerful ones. I tried yoga for a while in an attempt to manage a period of anxiety, and my experiences left me bitter. Yoga promises the kind of meditative calm I only found when I returned to serious weight training. For me, yoga was intensely claustrophobic, uncomfortable and authoritarian. It was as silent and contemplative as a church, only you were upside down and nauseated and suppressing a massive fart, and you paid extravagantly for the privilege. I have arthritis, particularly in my knees, and despite the promises of the teachers all the static poses and lateral pressure made my pain much worse. I would go home stiff, swollen and irritated every time. I mention this because I truly believe in the power engaging physically in something, anything to make you and your body coincide for a little while, and it’s important to figure out what’s right for you. Some people get a lot out of yoga, but it portrays itself as this Oprah-ish, universally loveable pursuit, and it just isn’t.
I feel a little uncomfortable describing powerlifting in such emotional terms, but it’s such an important part of my life right now, and I think many other women could benefit from participating in some kind of serious strength training. It is a very, very male sport, and I’m not going to lie, sometimes that can be difficult. When I go to the gym I’m acutely aware that it’s a guys space where guys go to do guy things, and I’ve never had to deal with the kind of men who do powerlifting before in my life. That said, the men at my gym are very supportive, especially at competitions. Competitions in powerlifting are very strange, because it’s such an individual sport. While lifters are ranked against each other, there’s a real sense that what matters is that a lifter keeps improving, and lifting more than they did in previous competitions, and it is enormously satisfying to see your competition totals go up.
As a lifter, I’m pretty average. I tend to just follow the cycle written for me by the club coach, come to training twice a week, show up to competitions when they’re on, dress up like a cartoon strong man and do my lifts. But this fairly minimal effort has changed me, and for the better. Powerlifting is my meditation, and sometimes my solace, a place where every week I keep getting stronger and achieving more, just by looking at a bar, taking two short breaths and making a decision.
