Nutrition

Strength, Resilience, Determination: three adjectives that epitomise world-record breaking power lifter, Bobbie Butters.

Charlotte Corrigan interviewed inspirational athlete, Bobbie Butters, to discover what drives her to continue to break records and to find out more about what we should be doing to achieve balance in sport.

You’ve recently had some amazing achievements, what have you been up to?

So I’ve recently come back from South Africa where I competed in the World Powerlifting Championships and I solidified my third bronze on the world stage. I extended my world record squat at 57 kilogram body weight and I got a silver medal in the bench press of 110 kilograms. With all of it combined, I got a 473 kilogram total to solidify the bronze medal.

You’re an inspiration to women, what advice would you give to women wanting to make it in male-dominated fields?

I think one of the main things is having the mind-set that you can do whatever you want to do. If you want to do something, you should definitely go and do it. Powerlifting is now not really a male dominated sport and whenever you go to a competition, the females are pretty much equally represented. When I go as a coach or athlete, there are just as many females as there are males and I think ultimately, nothing like that should ever stop anybody. If you want to do something, you should go and do it and not worry about the environment that you’re about to go into. I remember when I actually started this, I was one of two females in a competition but I didn’t care. I wanted to be there because I wanted to go, I wanted to lift weights, I wanted to compete. The longer I have done it, the more females that I have seen in the sport. There are younger females coming through and it is just an absolutely amazing sport that is progressing all of the time. In my field, so I teach in sport, and my team is male and female across the board with a really diverse team and it’s amazing to get both male and female perspectives on things. It’s also amazing to work with males and females in their leading fields. If you want to do something, then go and do it. That’s my biggest piece of advice.

Why is diet important to athletes?

Diet is important for athletes because you need to fuel performance, you need to fuel being able to perform and recover. These are some really key things because ultimately, it’s going to help you to complete your sport. Eating a balanced diet of a variety of things in order to achieve that is first and foremost what I’d really say is important.

How should girls balance nutrition and sport?

I think making sure you’re keeping up with guidelines like the government guidelines. Just making sure that you’re eating good, wholesome foods and eating enough food in order to be fuelled for the sport that you’re about to do. That’s a really big one for me, balance and eating enough of really good wholesome foods.

We can’t wait to meet Bobbie Butters in person next week. We hope just a little of her positive mindset and resilient character will influence us all on Saturday. We are privileged to have such a talented individual on our team.