The Growth of Powerlifting

Powerlifting has exploded in popularity over the last decade. Federations like USA Powerlifting have seen membership numbers climb steadily, and the face of the sport has changed dramatically — more women, more teenagers, and more first-time competitors are stepping on the platform than ever before. A lot of this can be traced back to social media, where lifting content on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube has introduced strength sports to a massive new audience. In this post, I’ll dig into the Open Powerlifting dataset to see what the numbers actually say about how the sport has grown.

Number of Powerlifting Meets by Year

The number of meets held in America each year has grown substantially. Some of that is likely a data issue — Open Powerlifting doesn't have records for every historical meet — but it's hard to look at the trend and not conclude that powerlifting is genuinely more popular than it used to be. The picture looks a bit different for Australia, Canada, and England, where meet counts have stayed relatively flat, though again, incomplete historical records may be playing a role there. Still, the American data tells a pretty clear story: more meets are happening every year, and that trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Number of Lifters per Meet

Here's where things get interesting. Even as the number of meets in America has grown, the average number of lifters per meet has actually declined. More meets, but smaller ones. Canada and England show the opposite pattern — meet counts are flat, but the average meet has gotten noticeably larger over time. I don't have a definitive explanation for this, but one possibility is that interest in competing has outpaced the ability of federations to sanction new meets, leading to more crowded events in some countries and a proliferation of smaller local meets in others.