If you consider that no woman in her weight class at the German Championships in September 2021 in Rottendorf near Würzburg lifted more pounds on the barbell, then this line is all the more remarkable. Because until Helena Decker, who grew up in Gemünd and currently lives and studies in Cologne, was finally able to compete with the best in Germany, she had to accept some setbacks due to the corona pandemic.
Canceled three times
“Three times,” reports the young woman, “some of the championships have been canceled at very short notice.” Which meant a lot of training for the athlete, who had prepared herself for the competition, without the hoped-for coronation. But Helena Decker was not discouraged, went on and went her athletic path. By the way, it started when she first went to the gym when she was 14. There she noticed very quickly: “Training with equipment to shape the body was never my thing. Weight training with the dumbbells appealed to me much more. ”Then one evening a man asked her why she wasn’t concentrating entirely on“ powerlifting ”. Helena Decker laughs: “Powerlifting is the English term for powerlifting that I didn’t even know I was doing until then.”
Lift against the flood
Since the sport is fairly unknown in Germany, Helena Decker looked for a club in Cologne, the “Kraftsport Colonia”. There she met her trainer Hendrik Becker in January 2019, who has made her German champion in recent years. Her action, which she and her friend Julian Sieveke put together in the face of the flood disaster in their homeland, was also strong. Similar to a charity run, with the help of the operators of “her” KADER 1 studio in Cologne, she initiated the “Lifting against the flood” campaign.
“Every kilo raised by the participants,” explains Helena Decker, “was paid by sponsors with a certain sum.” The strength athletes who were there at the end turned out to be very hardworking. Together they balanced the incredible weight of 36.5 tons that day. What made Helena Decker and her friend even more happy was the impressive sum of 15,000 euros in donations that could be raised with this campaign. Half of the amount went to the donation account for flood victims in the city of Schleiden, the other half went to “Aktion Deutschland Hilft” – a strong campaign by a woman who was strong in several respects!
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