Over the weekend, Miami, Florida, based powerlifter Stefanie Cohen made mainstream waves with her feature story on a major Miami news outlet.
For those plugged into the powerlifting community, or for those who are already a Cohen fan, then you may have already seen the video below. But for those who aren’t, sit back and relax because we’ll catch you up to speed.
On Sunday, WSVN Channel 7 in Miami aired a story shining light on the sport of powerlifting and directed their attention towards Cohen, one of the sport’s top female competitors. Cohen told us that one of the reporters reached out to her via Instagram.
And while this story focuses a lot on her accomplishments as an athlete and person, Cohen hopes it does much more than bring attention to her own successes.
“I hope it encourages more people to try powerlifting, especially young women. I hope that it break the stereotype about the way a powerlifter looks like, and all the negativeness that comes with it. Also, I hope it generatrs enough interest so that we [powerlifters] get more coverage in the news just like every other sport.”
It’s always odd that powerlifting and other strength sports don’t receive as much attention as other sports across mainstream news outlets. When we asked Cohen if she thinks powerlifting should receive more mainstream news, she said,
“Yes, definitely. Mike, the reporter asked me if it upsets me to be competing at the highest level in my sport and not have the acknowledgement or respect from other high-level athletes in other disciplines. That’s something I hadn’t thought about until then, and yes it kind of bothers me.
We pour our hearts into our training and competing, and are doing things other people thought weren’t humanly possible, but get no exposure outside of existing powerlifting/gym platforms.
Powerlifters competing at highest level should be highlighted as well, just like every other sport. Unfortunately, it seems to me that wont happen until bigger brands get involved and more money gets invested into the sport.”
Hopefully, as the sport continues to grow and major outlets (again, hopefully) recognize how much athletes put into their trade, then we’ll see more stories like this one above. Until then, we can only keep pushing the boundaries and hoping the world outside of strength sports continues to follow suit.
Feature image from Hybrid Performance Method YouTube Channel.
