New Year, new approach to a healthier you. Ellie Steel, reigning Powerlifting World Champion and European Bench Press Champion (57g), has resolved to help other mums and older women to be their strongest selves.
Ellie Steel is well-named, having needed steely determination to win these two international titles in 2025, after giving birth to her son, Blake, by caesarean section in June 2023. Despite the surgery putting her ‘out of action for a bit’ (in Ellie’s own words), she secured a British title in January 2024 – just three months after resuming training.
Ellie says: ‘In 2024 I was back at World Champion level and qualified for The World Games – our equivalent of the Olympics.’
However, she admits that it has been tough competing at an elite-level sport while coping with sleep deprivation.
‘Last year was my best year for titles – but it has been hard. I have a baby who doesn’t sleep!’
Her success has required strength of mind as much as strength of body. A gamechanger has been installing a gym in the garden, making it easier to train. Her gym is in Gosport, and it can take Ellie an hour to travel there as the powerlifting mum lives in the northern corner of the New Forest with partner Chris Street, owner of New Forest Family Butchers. Now she only needs to go the gym in Gosport once a week.
As well as helping Chris to run the family butchers, Ellie also runs her own strength-coaching business with a special focus on mums and older women. Ellie says that she has seen a huge surge of interest in weight training among women over the past few years. She explains: ‘Science supports the claim that strength training is particularly good for hormone balance, metabolism, joint health, and lessens the risk of osteoporosis. It is also amazing for your self-confidence – it’s quite empowering. Women have moved away from wanting to look like supermodels and ultra-slim. It has become more about fuelling your body and being a healthy weight.’
Recent studies show that muscle mass is now considered one of the strongest indicators of longevity – more so than body mass index (BMI). The latest advice is, if your New Year’s resolution is to be healthier, don’t reach for your running shoes, build your muscle strength instead!
Ellie continues: ‘Women’s membership in British Powerlifting has increased so much in the years I’ve been a member. Twelve years ago, there weren’t that many women. For years and years, I was the only woman in the gym. Sometimes now there are a lot more women than men down the gym! Powerlifting is not male-dominated anymore with equal numbers of men and women representing Team GB.’
Hampshire born and bred, Ellie attended King Edward’s school in Southampton. Her interest in sport started young, probably due to having an athletic family. Her dad was a keen cricketer and rugby player, and her mum was a ballerina. Her journey to powerlifting glory all started when she discovered diving.
She says: ‘I got into diving because of a visit to a water park when I was about seven or eight years old. I’ve always been small for my age and as I was not big enough to go on the water rides, I found the diving pool which had no height restriction. By the end of the afternoon, my mum asked if I wanted to have diving lessons. There are not many high-performance diving centres in the UK, but we have one here in Southampton, and as we didn’t live that far from Southampton, I gave it a go.’
Ellie was talent-spotted and selected for the World Class Diving programme. She enjoyed competitive diving until the age of 15 when, following a bad accident, she stepped away from the sport. She was still keen on sport and while studying sport science at the University of Birmingham, she decided to try other sports and ‘fell’ into powerlifting.
‘I didn’t want to return to the diving pool, but I had a foundation of strength and self-discipline, and powerlifting is similar to diving in that they both need lots of core power and explosive athleticism.’
She continues: ‘After entering a national strong woman competition, I was lucky enough to meet the right person at the right time: ex-World Champion powerlifter Dean Bowring. He introduced me to Arun Singh, who was based in Birmingham and the GB Powerlifting coach at the time. At the age of 21, I started with the best.’
Within one year of training, she was representing the GB Powerlifting team at international level. Within four or five years she was starting to podium, going on to win numerous British and international titles.
After graduating with a first-class honours degree, Ellie stayed on in Birmingham and joined the police force. However, eight years ago, she moved back to Hampshire, to Romsey, to be closer to family and work in the family business, Richard Steel & Partners, funeral directors.
It was at this time that she met Chris. Chris is also sporty, having played rugby at Romsey and Trojans Rugby Clubs, as well as being into strength sports – which is how the couple met.
The return to Hampshire also meant Ellie was reunited with coach Dean Bowring (who works out of that Gosport gym). With Dean’s support she started another six years of top-level competition before she and Chris had Blake.
Ellie says: ‘An ex-colleague told me, when you have a baby it will all change; you’re unlikely to get back to that level. I thought: “OK, fair enough, maybe that will be the case”. Actually, it has been the opposite. It made me more determined.
‘If you want something you just have to work hard enough for it, and show up on the days when you don’t want to. It is too easy to give up on things!’
After having Blake, she also decided not to return to Steel & Partners, but to develop her training business, and pick up more strength and powerlifting clients so that she could be in charge of her own diary. Ellie had been a personal trainer since her university days, including alongside her main jobs, although she only established Steel Powerlifting (steelpowerlifting.co.uk) as her primary occupation when she was pregnant.
‘I have found a niche. I train clients who hadn’t even stepped into a gym before they were 50 and are now competing at national level. Some of these women are stronger than they have ever been before.’
Ellie explains that women’s bodies are suited to powerlifting. ‘Women are good squatters and deadweight lifters as we carry more fat around our glutes and hips.
‘I love powerlifting. It’s a sport you can do for many years. You can compete until you are 70 or 80 years old! With diving you are retired out by 20. I’m stronger in my mid-thirties than when I was in my twenties.
‘This year I still want to compete at top level. It will be tricky to follow 2025 as it was so successful. But I want to retain my titles. And I’m only 9kg away from the current world record in bench press!’.
