Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – If you walked into the Fort Lauderdale Embassy Suites this weekend, you probably would have wondered what exactly you just stumbled upon.
That’s because many of the strongest men and women in the world were walking around, all in one large group, as the hotel was taken over by powerlifters competing at the World Powerlifting Organization Super Finals, or the WPO. For lack of a better comparison, think of it as the World Series or Olympics of equipped powerlifting.
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Most people aren’t really aware what powerlifting is, much less equipped powerlifting.
In a nutshell, powerlifters are strength athletes who compete to move the heaviest weights they can in order to compile the biggest total they can. They do so with three attempts at squats, three attempts at bench press and three attempts at deadlifts. You must complete at least one successful lift in each squat, bench and deadlift to achieve a total; if you miss all three attempts of a lift, you bomb out of the meet.
In equipped powerlifting, lifters in this competition compete wearing what’s called multi-ply gear. Multi-ply gear is kind of what it sounds like (think toilet paper and multiple plies): several layers of supportive briefs, suits and bench shirts that allow the lifter to overload their body in such a way that they can lift more weight than they ever could without, or raw. It’s a much more technical form of the sport, and some would argue, much more difficult. It’s much more difficult to become an expert at deftly using the gear and it’s very easy to perform poorly if just one thing is out of place.
It’s a sport that traditionally has had far more male athletes than female, and those females in past years have dominated record boards for years, but that’s changing. And it’s changing in a whirlwind of female accomplishment that most have trouble comprehending as women lift hundreds of pounds, multiple times their body weight over and over.
Take this weekend for example when the newly crowned WPO Female Champ Deana D’Andrea not only took the title from two-time champ Tara Webber, she broke an all-time world record total, and did it coming off a bomb at her last competition, and as a lesser-known athlete. Well, she’s not lesser-known anymore.
D’Andrea totaled 1,791 pounds by way of a 727.5-pound squat, 479.5-pound bench press and 584.2-pound deadlift at a body weight of 180 pounds. She totaled nearly 10 times her body weight and unseated the undisputed queen of equipped powerlifting’s total by 21 pounds.
Laura Phelps Stackhouse, who happens to be D’Andrea’s coach, formerly held the 181-pound class total of 1,770 pounds, which stood for 12 years.
On D’Andrea’s accomplishment, Stackhouse said she was very proud.
“Deana is incredibly strong, but what sets her apart is her work ethic and her mindset,” said Stackhouse. “She is an athlete in every sense of the word. Her performance Saturday showed that. She had a rough initial start, which could easily have thrown off the whole day, but she did not let it. She has complete confidence in herself, her abilities, and in knowing that she has done absolutely everything she needs to inside and outside of the gym to be successful.”
So we sat down with D’Andrea to talk about her big win and new record.
TE: What was your goal walking on to the WPO stage?
DD: Oh man, seriously, to not bomb on bench. I bombed on bench at Nationals, and so I just wanted to be able to complete the meet. You know, you put so much time and effort into the journey to meet day and to not able to complete a meet, it’s not fun. It’s like it just got taken from you, don’t even get to finish.
TE: Well, that’s crazy to hear you say that, you’re just like, “Just don’t bomb,” and then you come and you win the whole thing. Were you surprised?
DD: Absolutely. I had been running numbers, you know, using a mobile app to pick up Glossbrenner scores and I’m like, ‘Wow, some of these numbers are going to get me in the top three, possibly, if I don’t bomb.’ It was always the question (of) if. So I knew my numbers could get me up close, but I also was figuring because I was just taking this off of last year’s top three people realizing, ‘OK, my numbers could put me up there, but these girls are also going to come back stronger and better than they did last year.’ And I had no idea I would win.”
TE: When you realized after the last deadlift, ‘OK, I won,’ what was that like?
DD: I think it’s starting to hit me today because I’m getting all these people reaching out. And I’m not typically really active on social media, so I think that is also making it hit me. I mean, it’s cool because it brings, you know, our community of powerlifters, it’s big, it doesn’t feel that big when you’re just lifting with your small group in your hometown, you know. And then, I guess that’s part of the beauty of social media that brings that community together. It’s really cool.
TE: You didn’t know this was going to happen, and now everyone is talking to you, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, me?’
DD: It’s just a really cool sport I love being a part of it, I like to lift heavy, and it’s neat to be surrounded by people who enjoy lifting heavy and enjoy watching it. So, I think, I think it just pulls together everyone in all these notifications coming in or just, you know congratulatory and ‘Those weights are amazing.’ I feel like when you are used to seeing yourself with those numbers, it’s not. Because it’s like guys for my gym lifted big so I’m used to seeing those big numbers.
TE: But I don’t think people are used to seeing them from a woman so I think that you just showed a lot of people, especially in the social media age. I know that you broke Laura’s record so similar things have been done before, but now where it’s a lot more visible, I think people are like, ‘Oh wait, a woman can do that.’
DD: Yes, women can do anything.
TE: How long has Laura been your coach?
DD: I reached out to her after my first multi-ply meet in February. She is the queen and she is the sweetest person ever. I’m in Arizona, and she’s out in Ohio, so she trains me from a distance. I’ll send her videos and she’ll give me feedback and it takes me a while to, like, I understand what she’s saying but it’s really hard to make that happen. So she masters training from a distance, but then also I’ve gone and trained, she’s been kind enough to have me come train at her gym twice now. And it’s, you know, you have to like put the butterflies away because she is the greatest, and to be standing there next to her being trained by her, it’s very surreal. I have to put the butterflies away and actually focus on what’s going on, but she just has a way of explaining things to where you understand it. I don’t think everyone is able to do that that coaches. That’s a gift.
TE: So she ended up coaching you to break her own record.
DD: But we honestly, we as in Laura and I, we didn’t realize that record was broken until the next day. I was there to watch the men and Laura came walking out of the warm up area because she had a couple athletes on the men’s day. And she’s like, ‘So at breakfast this morning, I’m thinking about the numbers and I had to pull my phone out and add everything up. And I realized, she took the all time record for the 181 class which was my record!’ So no, it wasn’t the goal that day, we didn’t even realize that happened until the following afternoon. And you’re like, ‘Oh wow, okay, yeah.’ I didn’t know what to say because it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, you coached me to break your record’, and it wasn’t even something we were working on, it just happened that way.
TE: How does that make you feel you’ve got butterflies to work with the queen and then you just take her record?
DD: You know, as Laura put it in her post and I don’t want to mess up the wording but as she said her records are borrowed. So for now I’m going to borrow it.
TE: Is there anything you’d change about how your performance went? Obviously, it ended up turning out great, but we all tend to be analytical.
DD: I want to say I wish I didn’t miss my first squat, but I also, I think it’s good that that happened because right after that I kind of went and sat in the back of the warm up room and kind of pulled myself back down to, like, ‘Hey, you put the work in, you need to get your act together here and just treat this like a training day and get under that bar and do it’, you know? So in a way I guess it’s good that it happened.
TE: What do you think is the biggest advice that you could give someone coming up?
DD: I think you can very easily talk yourself into a lift or out of the lift. I mean, we train our muscles and our CNS to get used to moving heavy weight. But if your mind isn’t ready for it, you’re not going to do the lift. I’m sure there’s a better way to put that. You have to train your mental game, as well. It can’t just be the physical part of it.
TE: What do you have to say to women who are maybe watching on the sidelines thinking they’re not ready or they can’t do what you do?
DD: Get off the sidelines, and just do it because I mean I can only speak for myself, but I know I was standing there. I got introduced into powerlifting in high school, I didn’t start competing until 2016. So I dabbled into a bit of running which is just ridiculous, I’m not built for running long distance but hey I tried it. But then, I would, you know, my boyfriend at the time and I would go to the to the gym and see women throwing multiple plates on the bar. So I was a sideline watcher for a while and you know, you gotta just jump in and start. You can put mind to it and do anything. There’s no tryouts for lifting, you just get in there and do it.
TE: What if you have a bad day training? What if you bomb?
DD: It’s not the end of the world. You learn more from your misses than you do from your successes because you don’t really make changes to your successes but when you make a mistake, you need to go in and assess and make changes and get better.
D’Andrea Fast Facts
Age: 34
Home state: Arizona
Weight class: 181
Started competing: 2016
Favorite lift: Squat
What’s next: Looking forward to the Women’s Pro/Am in 2022
Goal: 600-pound deadlift, ATWR squat in 181-pound class
