My Journey Into Powerlifting

My name is Nicole Dash and I am a competitive powerlifter in the 55 kilo weight category. I have only been powerlifting for two years but I can safely say it very quickly became a huge part of my life.

I remember training at Virgin gym, It was legs days (my favourite), and I asked a gentleman if he'd kindly mind spotting me on my 90 kilo squat. He admired my strength and the weight I was using and recommended a powerlifting coach he knew of, I contacted the suggested coach and this was the beginning of my powerlifting journey.

After 5 months of training with my coach, he suggested entering a competition with the British Drug Free Powerlifting Association (BDFPA), I was incredibly nervous at the thought of competing, but after looking at the recent results of girls in my weight class (55 kilos) and I knew that I had a good chance so I went ahead and entered.

At my very first competition I broke the British record with a 110 kilo squat, the previous record was 107 kilos. Since this competition I have competed only 4 times and have continued to break my own record, the record currently sits at 117.5 kilos (this is also a European record) and hopefully by the end of this year I'll squat 120 kilos.

I qualified for British Championships in April this year and won my weight category and so became 55 kilo overall British Champion and in June this year I was asked to be part of Team England at the Four Nations competition, this was a great achievement to me and to date the highlight of my lifting career!

I have recently changed coach and my weights are going from strength to strength, I am competing later this year with Great British Powerlifting Federation (GBPF) in the 52 kilo weight class and hope to get the squat and deadlift record in this organisation, so watch this space!

Nicole is wearing the Inov8 Fastlift weightlifting shoes and functional fitness socks for her World Record attempts