It was a gym filled with grunts, gasps and groans as athletes pushed themselves to the limit in squat, bench press, and deadlift.
Nine weightlifters took part in a powerlifting competition last Saturday at Propel Fitness.
Under the watchful eyes of referees from World Powerlifting New Zealand, weightlifters were put under their paces, to the encouraging cheers of supporters.
The event included several new personal bests for the athletes, as well as New Zealand records for Rennie Soffe, Javara Clark, and Joelie Scott.
Clark and Scott will represent New Zealand at the World Powerlifting Championships in Sydney this October.
Scott said one of the aspects of powerlifting that she liked was the community spirit.
“Everyone wants you to do the best you can, and it's kind of a point of difference from other sports, where you're competing against each other, which you still are, but you're also mostly competing against yourself."
"When I was in high school, I went to a girls-only boarding school and I kind of just gave up on sports a little bit, just trying to fit in.
"But I still trained at a gym."
That was where she was spotted by two powerlifting women who encouraged her to give the sport a try.
Scott generally trains four days a week.
"I normally break it up into the separate lifts, and then on the last day do all three of them."
She breaks up her training into blocks, first focusing on volume, "so lots and lots and lots of reps".
Then another block will be working on "explosiveness, power, kind of fixing any technical problems I might have".
Finally when getting close to the competition day the focus is on a small amount of repetitions but increasing the weights.
She said the support from other weightlifters, family and friends was "very empowering".
