By: Danni Steele
From first glance, Alexa Schillinger looks like a normal good looking teenager at Bemidji State University. The brunette with brown eyes can be typically seen in jeans and a fitted shirt. She is 5’2” and weighs about 123 pounds. Schillinger may not seem very strong at first, but take a closer look, and her defined muscles in her arms and legs become apparent. She is pure muscle. Schillinger is the three-time world power lifting champion.
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| Alexa ended with a deadlift of 336 pounds in South Africa in 2008. |
Alexa Schillinger is from the town of Phillips, Wisc., pop. 1,675. She started her power lifting with her first competition in 6th grade. She was playing hockey on the boy’s team when her dad said she had to start lifting weights if she wanted to be strong and keep up with the boys. Schillinger’s dad, Jeff, is the coach of the high school power lifting team. He noticed her natural strength and got her into competitions. Once she was a freshman she was able to compete for state and took first place.
Power lifting took up a lot of Schillinger’s time and required a lot of dedication according to her. “It was a 24 hour affair,” explained Schillinger. She trained four days a week, two hours a day. “That was just the minimum,” said Schillinger. Power lifting also involves cutting weight just like wrestling. Preparations for competition include protein shakes for breakfast, chugging lots of water, and going to bed early. “I always had to go to bed early even in the summer,” explained Schillinger.
Not only did she power lift in high school, but also she was very active in other things. Schillinger was in student council, choir and national honor society. She played softball, volleyball and hockey. She said she was able to participate in everything with balance. She also did not participate in hockey her senior year. “I would have gone crazy,” she explained. Schillinger said she could not have accomplished any of this with out her family. “I have always had lots of support from my family,” she said.
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| Alexa posing with the U.S flag after winning the gold metal in Brazil in 2009. |
Schillinger won state all four years of high school. She was the second in Wisconsin history to do so. In order to qualify for nationals all three lifts have to add up to a certain total to advance. To qualify for the world’s team, you have to have the best total lifts in your weight class. The three lifts needed to qualify are squat, bench and dead lift. Dead lift was Schillinger’s specialty. She holds the “unofficial record” of 405 pounds. It is the unofficial record because it was not done at the world’s meet.
Schillinger is the three-time world champion. She has traveled all over the world to do so. Her first world’s competition was in Le Guard France. Her second was in South Africa and her third was in Brazil. Schillinger said her favorite experience was in South Africa. “The team was so close we were just like family,” said Schillinger, “everyone represented the united states in a respectable way.” The girl’s team, consisting of eight girls also won that year. The boy’s team consisting of ten, also traveled with the girls. Schillinger’s dad was asked to be a world’s coach and he was able to travel with her.
Extensive fundraising was how Schillinger was able to attend worlds. “I had to fundraise my entire way there,” she said. “Power lifting is a very popular sport, but there is no money in it.” Schillinger was unable to be sponsored because she would have lost her amateurship and would not have been able to play other high school or college sports. “I literally just wrote letters to companies and families we were close with. We were really proud that I was not only representing the U.S, but our tiny town as well,” said Schillinger. “Everyone was very supporting.”
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| Alexa's squat in 2008 was 330 pounds at a body weight of 115 pounds. |
Schillinger could have gone to an Olympic training center, and attended college in that town but decided not to. Olympic lifting and power lifting are different lifts and she did not want to relearn everything. Schillinger said she just wanted a “normal college experience.” She chose to retire from power lifting. “I was burnt out, it was my entire life in high school.” She chose to participate in softball at Bemidji State University. “I wasn’t ready to give up athletics all together, it would have been a huge culture shock,” said Schillinger. For her, softball is a “happy medium between a normal person life and a happy athlete.”
Schillinger’s roommate Bronwin Boid, another freshman and athlete at Bemidji State University explained her first thoughts about living with Schillinger. “I thought she was going to be a super healthy person and do nothing but lift weights,” said Boid. “I was proved wrong. Alexa is down to Earth and very humble.”
It is now almost the end of Schillinger’s first year of college. She is no longer on the softball team and has decided to do choir instead. “Softball ended up not being for me, I didn’t have the passion as I did for power lifting to dedicate my time,” she said. “I am very happy with doing choir.”
Schillinger lives by a quote her father always says; “The only thing you can control is you.” She said it is applied to power lifting because you weren’t interacting with your competition. “All you could do is keep your mind on what you had to do and go from there,” said Schillinger. She went on the explain, “it was a very good thing to keep in mind not just for power lifting, but in life.”
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