Weightlifting and Powerlifting: Explaining Two Commonly Misunderstood Fitness Terms

Weightlifting and powerlifting are terms people often use when they refer to exercising with weights, but this is not really what they mean. More appropriate terms are resistance training or lifting weights, because weightlifting and powerlifting both have specific meanings that do not apply to regular exercise or even training to improve athletic performance. Both terms actually refer to competitive sports that involve lifting weights.

Weightlifting is the term that causes the most confusion, probably because people assume that lifting weights is the same as weightlifting. Lifting weights does mean to perform exercises with weights, such as dumbbells, barbells, or weight machines, but weightlifting refers to a competitive sport involving the performance of two exercises: the clean and jerk (one exercise) and the snatch.

Many people are aware of this sport, but they often incorrectly refer to it as Olympic lifting, instead of calling it weightlifting. Olympic lifting only refers to weightlifting when performed during the Olympics. In other words, you wouldn't say that you were going outside to do some Olympic running or going to the pool for some Olympic swimming, but that is exactly what people do when they refer to weightlifting as Olympic lifting.

Additionally, someone should only be called a weightlifter when they participate in the sport of weightlifting. For instance, I have been lifting weights pretty much year-round for about 20 years and I include some weightlifting exercise variants in my routines, but I would never call myself a weightlifter. There are a lot of people who lift weights, but only a small percentage of them are actually weightlifters.

Powerlifting is similar to weightlifting in the sense that it refers to a particular sport that involves lifting weights, but this term is not misused nearly as much as the term weightlifting. This is likely because fewer people are familiar with the term and more people are unaware of the sport of powerlifting. Powerlifting is a competition where the contestants perform 3 different exercises: bench press, squat, and deadlift.

As with weightlifting, the goal is to perform 1 rep of each exercise with as much weight as possible. Competitors are given multiple attempts at each exercise and the highest weight successfully completed for each exercise is added together to produce the total score. There are also multiple weight classes, as in boxing, weightlifting, and many other sports, so athletes of different weights and sizes can all compete with a chance of winning.

Finally, just as with the term weightlifter, the term powerlifter refers to someone who competes in the sport of powerlifting. It may not seem like a big deal to know the difference between a weightlifter and a powerlifter, but understanding these and other health and fitness terms is important for people interested in these areas of training. Each sport or type of physical development requires specific training and being able to accurately explain what you want to accomplish is critical for planning your path to success.