In April this year, I was introduced to the sport of powerlifting. My friend Tim (hi Tim!) asked me if I wanted to see some of the powerlifting competition in the local gym. I thought it would be a bit of fun and an opportunity for some photos so we all went, his family and mine. There was no entrance feee and once in the gym it looked like any local competition : rows of chairs with the families and friends of the competition, a snack bar and in front an area where a guy was lifting an impossibly heavy weight! The place smelled of testosterone and sweat…. like most sporting events.

If I count correctly, there a three 25kg weights and one 10kg on each end of the bar, that is 170kg plus the weight of the bar. I couldn’t lift the thing a centimetre…  The part of the competition we saw was the squat. The lifter starts more or less standing up, lifts the bar of the rack, must then squat and stand up again. There are two other movements in a powerlifting competition that I did not witness : the bench and the deadlift. There is a team of three helpers to ensure the safety of the lifter throughout the whole process. At the end of the lift, the judges show a white or a red light to validate or invalidate the lift.

There is a difference between powerlifting and weightlifting as I have recently discovered. The most obvious one is that weightlifting includes the snatch and the clean and jerk, two different ways of lifting. Powerlifting is also done at slow velocity. I looked at some world records (regardless of weight category) and I found a lift of 500kg for the squat. For the clean and jerk in olympic weightlifting, the record seems to be around 250kg. Powerlifting is certainly a different sport!

The sheer physical effort is impressive and shows in the expressions on the faces of the lifters.

As often there is a fashion code amongst the people in and around the sport. Here, the rule seems to be long beards and tattoos.

We may only have spent less than an hour in watching the lifts but I really enjoyed it. There is an atmosphere to the proceedings that is unfamiliar to me and that I tried to capture with these few photos. For the photo geeks, I used my fuji x-pro2 with the 23mm/f1.4 and 56mm/f1.2 lenses. All photos processed in Lightroom using Acros G film simulation and split toning.

I can give a few links to the web pages I read to prepare this post :

• The elitists website.
• Powerliftingtowin.com
• Goodlift.org
• t-nation.com

I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on this sport and I’m sorry if there are any errors in my comprehension of what I observed. Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the section below!