NIPF Push/Pull Championships a big success

One of Northern Ireland’s fastest growing sports came to Garvagh on Saturday 14th September, when the Jim Watt Sport Centre played host to over fifty of the strongest men and women from throughout the province, who were competing in the Northern Ireland Powerlifting Federation’s annual Push/Pull championships.

Brian Coombes winner of the Senior Male 120 Class.

The audience at the Jim Watt Centre were presented with an impressive display of strength from athletes ranging from fourteen to seventy-two years of age and from eight stone to twenty-nine stone.

In recent years the sport has been attracting a growing number of female athletes and ladies now make up a quarter of the NIPF membership

The next big event will take place in Newtownabbey on September 28th, with the top competition in the British Powerlifting calendar, the 4Nations Championships. Local athletes have been training and competing for a year to have the honour of representing Northern Ireland and have high hopes of lifting the 2013 crown.

The sport of powerlifting has been growing so rapidly that the NIPF have helped to setup Northern Ireland’s first centre of powerlifting excellence, the Viking Barbell Cub, which is based in the Valley Leisure Centre in Newtownabbey.

To find out about all this and more visit the NIPF website at www.nipfpowerlifting.co.uk or visit the facebook page www.facebook.com/nipowerlifting.