Powerlifting as a vegan - Eeva Ylimäki

Powerlifting as a vegan

This time, our guest post is brought to you by Eeva Ylimäki, the powerhouse of the FuturePeaks team and a vegan powerlifter. Let's read what Eeva has to say and how a powerlifter copes as a vegan.

Preface

On December 14th, I was training and after a 45-minute warm-up, I loaded the squat bar with 150 kilos. The same weight was my competition squat for the summer 2024 games. That's the lift that helped me get a total of 365 kilos and a place in my first Finnish Championship. I had been aiming for that place for two years.

The fall had been rough. Even 80 kilos had felt heavy on my back and legs, which was especially frustrating because the squat is my strongest lift these days. When it gets rough, it goes right under my skin. A senior at the gym asked, “Are you going to max today?” I replied that I was just doing sets. A look at the bar told me that he didn’t quite believe it.

This time, however, I had decided that the squatting would end there. Before the hard lifting moment, I needed to get the adrenaline going and calm down my doubts. Magnesium in my hands and back, the smell of ammonia in my nose and off I went. 150 kilos can feel bad on my back. Still, you have to trust that your body knows what it's doing.

After each set, I noticed other people stopping to watch. Finally, I did five reps with 150kg. That's five more than my best five since August and only 12.5kg below my current competition result (162.5kg). My legs were so weak that I collapsed to the floor after the set.

What is powerlifting and how did I end up becoming a vegan powerlifter?

What is powerlifting? Powerlifting is a weight class that measures raw maximum strength by combining the squat, bench, and deadlift. Appearance or style doesn't matter in a competitive situation, only how much iron is on the bar and whether it is lifted within the rules.

I started strength training in early 2020 and told my then-coach that I was a vegetarian. He was wonderfully understanding, but the truth is that building a sensible vegetarian diet would have been challenging for anyone uninitiated at the time, and it was for me too. I just thought I was replacing meat with something, and I didn't understand how to look at the contents of my plate nutritionally. Six months later, I went completely vegan for ethical reasons, and the contents of my plate didn't actually change any more sensible.

When I started, my squat was 80 kg, bench 45 kg and deadlift 110 kg. I took part in my first Finnish Powerlifting Association competition (under an anti-doping agreement) in the fall of 2022, and my result was 307.5 kg. That same year, I had started training with Juhani Pitkänen. Juhani taught me a lot about a vegan diet: what to add to your plate and what supplements to use. After that, my results in the gym and in competitions took off like a rocket.

How to powerlift as a vegan?

So how do you powerlift as a vegan? Over the years, I have received a lot of skeptical comments about whether you can train hard and improve on a vegan diet. I decided to let the results speak for themselves. I started sharing my workouts, diet and progress on social media. I will tell you how I recover well and manage to train hard week after week. When the diet is in order, records usually come every week. I have gained a lot of muscle mass, and I currently compete in the heavyweight division. My goal for this year is to climb into the top 20 of my division's all-time rankings (445 kg at the time of writing). This could mean, for example, squatting 185 kg, benching 90 kg and deadlifting 170 kg in a competition situation. Today, I am no longer the only vegan powerlifter, and the increasing popularity of a vegan diet has also begun to be seen in this sport.

To describe the level of performance required for powerlifting: I work out at the gym four times a week, and also do some core conditioning runs. A single workout often lasts 2–2.5 hours and includes heavy lifting from start to finish, such as squats, Romanian deadlifts, hip raises, and back isolation exercises. After a workout, I’m usually completely exhausted, and all I can think about is food and rest.

Competitions typically last about three hours, plus warm-ups and preparations. In practice, you’ll be at the competition venue for at least 4–5 hours, and a three-hour competition alone is a long time to keep your performance at peak. Your body is pushed to its limits several times, and each lift requires full concentration. It’s a completely different thing to deadlift at the end of a competition than to do the same lift “fresh” from training.

I have often stated that if I can maintain high performance at 90 kilos, improve year after year, and get everything I need from a vegan diet, anyone who actively exercises or trains can do it, not to mention those who don't exercise at all. It's not rocket science, it's about the whole thing being structured sensibly and the diet supporting the goals.

After the squat set I mentioned in the introduction, a trainer said: “You’re so strong.” I smiled. There was a time when I was considered crazy for combining veganism and powerlifting. Now people ask me for tips and wonder how I do it all. And I thought: everyone wants the strength of a gorilla, but few want to eat like a gorilla.

So what supplements do I use as a heavyweight powerlifter? My daily routine revolves around a pretty simple framework: a vitamin D supplement , a multivitamin designed for a vegan diet, and iron are part of my daily routine. I also use Nutri+ proteins and creatine a couple of times a day to support hard training and recovery. They have been an easy way to ensure that I get enough building blocks when the training volume and load are high.

Thanks to Janne from FuturePeaks for the supplements and the collaboration. The supplements from her online store are delicious and support my training and recovery.

This year we will compete in small competitions in the spring, and then we will accelerate towards the Helsinki regional championships and Finnish championships in the autumn.