They’ve got the power: the women who are not scared of being strong

So is “strong the new skinny?” It’s a glib opening to a conversation with four of Ireland’s top women powerlifters.

No one in this dark gym-hangar on the edge of Bray is ready to pick up that soundbite and run with it. Why should they? None of the women standing in this sweaty cavern is trying to be strong for anyone but themselves – and to pick up the odd world, European or national medal, of course.

None of these women is maxing out her muscle to please anyone else. Forget thigh gaps and being “toned”, these sisters really are doing it for themselves. And if you don’t like it, you should probably keep very quiet.

Maedhbh Hanley is a Cork woman who took up the sport a couple of years ago. “It’s not the sport you see at the Olympics,” she explains. There is no clean and jerk in powerlifting. Unlike Olympic weightlifting, it is based around the three disciplines of squats, bench presses and deadlifting. A competitor has three attempts at lifting maximal weight on the three lifts, so the total score relies on a combination of weight lifted across all three.

Competition takes place all over the world, from France to Russia to the US, and Ireland always has a good-sized team at international events. The bench press event of powerlifting is an integral part of the Paralympics, but the sport has yet to be included in the Olympics.

None of it looks easy. And the squat in powerlifting is a different beast to the Olympic version. It’s technical. Just trust me.

Hanley is addicted to this bit of powerlifting. “I just love squats,” she says. “They are the perfect metaphor for life. You have the weight of the world on your shoulders but you just ‘drive up’ – that’s one of our phrases. It makes you mentally strong, not just physically strong.”

Rural Ireland

For Hanley,

Lisa Duffy

and

Laura McSweeney

, being physically strong was part and parcel of growing up in rural Ireland.

“I grew up in a rural area,” says Tipperary-born Duffy. “I saw nothing strange about being strong. My mother, aunts, grandmother all lifted heavy things.”

Hanley jumps in to pay tribute to Duffy. She’s super strong, says Hanley. “Lisa is so light and she’s deadlifting what I’m lifting, so she’s outlifting us all.”

“That’s the country life,” volunteers Duffy.

Hanley’s family owned a plant hire company in Cork, and with a rake of brothers who treated her as an equal in the yard, together with a “strong mother”, she has been lifting all her life.

Laura McSweeney is from Bandon and is in second year Arts at UCC. She lifts for her university and is putting all that strength to good use in other disciplines.

She's just back from the European Junior Club Track and Field athletics championships in Portugal, where she came first in the shot put and third in the hammer.

French native Arlette Bomahou, who now competes for Ireland at powerlifting, is also training for the throwing disciplines of athletics. So a bit of powerful cross-fertilisation between sports there.

Easier technique

More women are being drawn in by powerlifting, it seems.

“If I compare it with Olympic weightlifting, the technique is easier to master, so more people can do it,” says Bomahou.

And no one should be put off by worries about over-muscling up. “We don’t look like bodybuilders. We all have a very healthy look. We don’t look like a cliche,” she says.

Looking like a body builder would take years anyway, clarifies Hanley.

And as for men being attracted to strong women, Hanley is not concerned. “If a guy likes me or doesn’t like me, I just get him to feel my quads.” Hanley’s quads are awesome. Trust me.

Powerlifting snuffs out the need for women to fret over their body image. All four women are agreed on that point.

“I used to walk into the gym and feel like a Limousin heifer. Now I just walk in and concentrate on my technique. It’s definitely changed my perceptions of people’s physicality, that’s for sure,” says Hanley. “It’s not a fat arse now, it’s an engine.”

“It’s like a rugby team; there’s a position for everyone on a rugby team – and it’s the same with us,” she adds.

All the women pay tribute to Melda Farrell, "the highest ranking female powerlifter in Ireland". For any "mature" women reading this while reaching for the last of the Milk Tray, Farrell is 65. She is still lifting and still the best.

“It’s a very inclusive sport, with all ages and all backgrounds,” says Hanley. “It’s certainly all sizes. I’ve always been ‘I’m big, I’m fat’. So now I’ve found a purpose for my shape.”

Hearing about the Trojan achievements of champion lifter Melda Farrell, should give many women a “purpose”, too. Age, it seems, is no excuse not to try.

Drugs

As for the thorny question of drugs , the women say that the name of their association – the Drug-Free Powerlifting Association – with its routine in- and out-of-competition drug-testing is good enough for them. Some 10 per cent of competitors are tested at every competition. None of them are interested in pharmaceutical aids.

The women relish the sweaty hard work of training to be powerlifters. “It just feels right to me,” says Duffy. “It’s my sport, and I didn’t really like sport when I was growing up.”

McSweeney, however, can’t get enough of sport. “I’m not a bookworm and I don’t like TV,” says the woman who spends most of her free time training.

So a sport ready to take all- comers, then?

Powerlifting has brought these women everything, they say: world, European and national titles in various weight categories; an award for Bomahou from Caen in France, the town her west African parents made their home; fitness; physique; and, most of all, friends.

"About half of my Facebook friends are powerlifters. We're all friends in the powerlifting world," says Duffy.

But it’s not all hugs, kisses and bonhomie. “We are athletes. We have to work as hard as any other athlete in any other sport,” says Bomahou.

Nothing intimidating

Don’t be put off by the whiff of competition, though, says Duffy. “It is just a sport. There’s nothing intimidating about it; it’s for everybody. The bigger girls may be afraid to join a gym because people will judge them, but ignore that,” she says.

Age or body shape should not stop any woman thinking about powerlifting.

All women should lift weights, says Duffy: “For your health, for feeling good, for bone density, from a total health point of view. And mentally it’s huge.”

And while they have all made great friends though powerlifting, it is the purity and single- mindedness of the sport that has won them over.

As US musician Henry Rollins wrote in his essay The Iron: "The Iron never lies to you . . . Friends may come and go. But 200 pounds is always 200 pounds."