Powerlifting

I started in my house with a 7kg bar because my partner thought I might like it. I laughed the first time I felt my abs engage. And so I kept going. Just five exercises: squats, rows, floor press, overhead press and deadlift. My partner hoisted the bar to my back for squats and was the rack for both presses. The weight started at 7kg and topped out at 60kg. And so I lifted. My body adjusting and tightening. My core strengthening and my back straightening. I grew roughly a centimetre in the first year. A big deal for someone short. I was not ready or ok with stepping foot in a gym. I am a fat person, seen as a fat woman, and I knew I was not welcome there. It’s a true irony of life that fat people are shamed for not exercising but are also shamed for exercising. Sometimes it's as simple as not being able to buy appropriate gear in your size that lets you know you're not welcome. It took me ten years to find leggings that fit my body. So, instead of dealing with going to a gym we just added repetitions to the sets. Five, six, seven, eight, nine. 

Going down into a squat is knowing you can return to standing but is wondering why you're doing what you’re doing: this is so heavy, who thought this was a good idea? I have the bar high on my back and I am barefoot, wearing socks. Before I go into a set I place my hands on the bar, I lean in to touch the bar to my chest, I drop under it, stand and take the weight, step back and position my feet. I do one little heel lift (unnecessary but part of my ritual). Then I squat in a controlled manner. I have done this thousands upon thousands of times and over time the ritual is like a timer setting my brain into position. By the time I’ve lifted the bar I’m often thinking: “light as a feather” or “just down and up again” or some other small affirmation: only once, only one set, only two more sets. There’s always a part I’m paying attention to more than the others. Am I tight? Are my feet in the right position? Are my knees caving in? Am I hinging correctly? Am I making sure not to just lazily drop into the squat? Are my knees out? Am I feeling pain in any part of my body?

There are only so many reps you can add to a set before you start wanting more weight. I had to figure out how to get to a gym. What gym would work for me? None of the usual suspects but in my research a candidate appeared. The first time I stepped into Powerhouse I immediately felt like I would be welcomed. There was one mirror. The owner joked about the gym sauna. Turns out it was wearing a rubbish bag to work out. It smelled of metal and also the stink of stale, sweat infused competition gear. There are pieces of weightlifting clothing you don’t really wash and they were crammed into cubby holes lining a wall. The metal racks, the concrete floor, and the way Warren (Wa), the owner, was always building something made me feel like I was in a mechanic’s workshop not a gym. My father had always had a workshop that reminded me of this place. There were a few women, some queer women and many men ranging from string beans to fatties to owners of true squat booties. I always have a tendency to feel non-belonging but it didn’t take long for me and my partner to be pulled into the family of The House. 

In winter I would wear layers to workout. In summer I would run with sweat stopping to stand in front of the two large fans and evaporate to a better temperature. On Sundays we did Church. No music. Serious lifting only. Sometimes there would be whale noises from a certain person (not me). Sometimes there were dogs. If you were lucky they wouldn't walk through your legs when you were setting up, or worse, lie down behind you before you stepped out. I started helping on the desk for competitions. At first I was the paper back up. Eventually I was running the ancient spreadsheet full of macros that would sometimes freeze part way through the competition and stall everything. It was so unpredictable and sometimes it would crash and lose all the data just at the end of the day. I became familiar with its tricks and needs and whims. One of the gym members was a software engineer and started building an app to handle the competition. Years later we were still using the spreadsheet. The calculations are complex. Sitting at that desk I breathed chalk and got whiffs of ammonia lifters use to focus their attention. I saw the little pre-platform rituals of novices and world champions. It often felt like a parade of beautiful butts. I would lose my voice from yelling in support of all the lifters. I joked with refs and trainers alike. I once went with Wa to the special olympics to run their powerlifting competition and was overwhelmed by the cuddles that happened post lift. Why do the rest of us not cuddle our coaches and spotters after we’ve done some great work on the platform? Bring me my cuddles!

I got a Christmas present every year. Wa would give me fruit or chocolate he was saving for regulars. He’d give me head nods and ask for help with Trade Me auctions. He taught me stretches and told me to turn my toes out a little more. He gave me a belt and took my deadlift from 120kg to 167.5kg in one day with his firm attention and years of expertise. That day was a three handshake day. Regulars talked about those types of days. A three handshake day was pretty rare. To be savoured. When I did something of note, he clipped the newspaper article and put it on the noticeboard beside pictures of Rodney Hide, who had worked out at Powerhouse as part of a big transformation. I had a place in my heart for Wa that felt dad shaped. He was generally pretty quiet but he would always encourage me to take the aux cable, to play my tunes on his large and ancient stereo. If it was just me and him we'd chat. When I told off one of the men for using the homophobic F word on The House Facebook page Wa backed me up and bristled with pride at another show of strength.

Because I’d been adding reps to my sets it only took me a month or so to hit 100kg for squats when I first joined Powerhouse. It was a huge milestone and I remember Wa giving me a grunt and a nod of appreciation. Then he started in on the men, telling them I was catching up. A confusing joke that was both proud of me and using my assumed gender to shame the men around me because a woman was as strong or stronger than they were. Being in that space often mean confusion for me, a stick and a carrot at the same time. At other times Wa would have guests in the space, pros and trainers from other districts and over time they would all comment that I should be competing: you can lift how much, how many reps? It took Wa and Maria (a two times world champion) two years to wear me down to the idea of competing. Wa, of course, coached me. I am a known anxious person. I feel anxiety a lot. There was a time when I found it difficult to leave the house for a few years. I felt EXTREME anxiety about competing. I was so anxious on the day I could barely speak to my in-laws who were nice enough to let us stay as the competition was in their town.

The competition itself went pretty well. I failed every third lift because I was pushing myself. I achieved respectable numbers and was first by lift total and second by Wilks Coefficient. I rode the high on that day for months and months and months. I think the level of anxiety I experienced was balanced out by the euphoria in the end. I didn't think I could do it but I did it. I did it. My well honed performance skills came out to play the moment I stepped onto the stage. My only sadness was on my final deadlift where I was attempting a 170kg pull. It was well within my capabilities but I made a rookie error and neglected the baby powder on my thighs. I'd always worked out in tights and didn't think there would be much problem with the transition to shorts. I was wrong! Without the baby powder the bar stuck to my thighs and as the bar went up my shorts went up revealing my upper thigh. Instinctively, I tried to untuck the shorts from the bar with a jiggle. The jiggle introduced a technical fault that looked like a hitch. Maria, the ref directly in front of me and aforementioned two times world champion, came over with a look of such disappointment and sadness. My recorded deadlift was 10kg less than I could do. Not really a biggie in the scheme of things and I still lifted that 170kg. But oof, how funny to find out I had a kind of shame lurking in the background. How strange to see I was worried about people seeing my upper thigh as I was competing in a competition about feats of strength!

Wa died in 2019. He was up a ladder and then he wasn't up the ladder. Probably a heart attack. One of the gym members found him. He was 66 but it felt too young, too soon, there was too much we had left to do with him. There were several sad events for his tangi. Probably the strangest for me was the wake we held at the gym where his old Mongrel Mob friends and his gym family celebrated his life together. Telling stories and drinking. The vibe was love and respect. Belatedly I realised the gym was in Mongrel Mob colours. Wa had apparently been a founding member of the Hawke's Bay chapter. I don't really know whether this is true but I heard a lot of stories that day. Doing a little research into timelines makes it seem likely. We were all sad and joined together in missing him. I have a blurry screenshot on my phone of a picture of the entire gym membership, in Powerhouse, gathered in his honour.

It became quickly apparent that Powerhouse wouldn't survive without its pou. As a community we struggled together for a while to see if we could make it work, to help his family. And then suddenly Powerhouse didn't exist. Just over four months after he left us I signed up to Les Mills. The absolute polar opposite of Powerhouse, the place I would never have considered joining at the beginning of my powerlifting adventure. As of this year I will have worked out for half my "career" in Powerhouse and half in Les Mills. And I can say that really the only benefit to Les Mills is I truly enjoy is how lovely it smells. Sorry Wa. But Les Mills on Taranaki St (the same street as Powerhouse) actually has a sauna so it smells like cedar and eucalyptus and whatever else they use to make the sauna smell great. It's functional but it doesn't have the family feel of Powerhouse, even though that came with everything difficult and good about family. I kept lifting tho. And I often think of Wa when I'm trying something new or building back up to a weight I've done before after a set-back.

Over the 12 years I've been doing this I've mostly stuck to a very similar programme. 5 x 5. It's not for everyone and there are criticisms of it which are valid, especially when used as a starting programme for lifters. I personally really rate Casey Johnston who has an excellent beginner programme. I've added in accessories and used advanced 5x5 spreadsheets. I've dropped exercises I didn't like (rows) and added them back in when I wanted to or felt I needed them. I've picked up body building exercises and do them when I'm bored. Nothing like the pain of hypertrophy exercises to convince you back into what you know. I quit for three months during the delta wave of the pandemic and walked hills. I've dropped back the weights uncountable times to adapt my form, to rebuild. I think it took me almost a decade to really get deadlifts, to fully engage my core. I'm a natural squatter but deadlifts scared me. After losing a lot of weight quickly due to a chronic illness (read: mostly muscle mass) I've had to build all of my muscles back up. I'm still not there with bench. I got obsessed with deadlifts and can't let go. I take a "just go" approach to the gym. I don't do everything. I try to whatever level I'm hitting that day. But I just go. I sometimes skip. Not very often. I don't film myself. Some think that's a cardinal sin but I'm cautious, I get form checks occasionally from my beloved, I just don't want to do it. I continue onwards, listening to my body every step of the way.

That's really the key thing that lifting has done for me. It's taken me from a head floating through the world to someone who is a fully connected body. I face planted once in Naarm in an unfamiliar location when I had a bad head cold. Disoriented, I smashed my knee in the process. When it hadn't sorted itself out I sought out a physio who told me if I wasn't a powerlifter it would have healed fine. But because I was so attentive to my body my brain freaked out and turned off the connection to my quads. I spent six months re-learning squats. It was a painfully slow process of letting my brain know we were healed and it was okay for my quads to engage to support and control my knee cap in the normal range of motion. Sometimes, they still turn off if I get a fright. Bodies. They're junkyards but at least I'm living in mine now. After a good session I get to enjoy the good feeling of being flush with blood and energy. I even enjoy the sweat and the DOMS. Long gone are the days when I was embarrassed to sweat or breathe or take up space.

I didn't know when I started lifting how it would change so much for me. It seemed such a small thing. Tiny. Unimportant. But it turns out having strength is foundational. It's great for walking, jumping, sprinting, not being run over by the daily demands of life. It's also good for orgasms. It does make vomiting somehow more awful and powerful. My body is roughly similar to when I started. I definitely have more muscle, a lot more muscle, but I'm still a fatty. Perhaps a slightly more compact one, I dunno. It's impossible to understand how your body looks to others I think. I still have a big belly. She'll be with me for the long haul. I'm not into lifting to get smaller. I'm into lifting to be powerful and adaptive and strong for life. To have good bones. To handle stress. To see what I can do.