Steven Ridges, known professionally as Coach Steven, has spent over 16 years transforming lives through strength training and powerlifting. A certified Barbell Rehab Specialist with a biology degree from Clark Atlanta University, Ridges found his calling after a personal injury led him to rehabilitation and eventually to competitive powerlifting. As one of the few Black coaches in the sport, he’s passionate about making powerlifting accessible to diverse communities while dismantling misconceptions about strength training.
In this exclusive interview, Coach Steven shares insights on his journey, the mental benefits of powerlifting, and why strength training is crucial for longevity—especially in the Black community.
Tell us about your background in fitness and health
I have been a coach now for over 16 years. I originally started in just personal training. I got my NASM personal training certification as my first training certification while I was studying at Clark Atlanta University. I graduated from Clark Atlanta University with a biology degree, and I just didn’t really know what I wanted to do with the degree. I fell in love with training at the time.
I played basketball and football as well, and I wound up getting hurt, not even through lifting, just playing sports, and I tore my meniscus in my left knee. I originally went to see a specialist, and the specialist was like, “Well, we could go a surgical route, but at the same time it’s not a complete tear.” So I’m like, “All right, so y’all don’t need to cut me open.” The specialist was just basically like, “No, we don’t necessarily need to do surgery. But what you need to do is go through like a rehab process.”
I started my journey with Google. “What can I do to not hurt my knees” and “How do I do a rehab of meniscus.” I actually found an ad through NASM about personal training. So I went through that coursework while I was finishing my undergrad, and ever since then I never looked back.
I’m glad that I went that route. There’s a lot of different personal training certifications out there for people, and it can get daunting. I’ll definitely always speak highly of NASM, especially if you’re a coach or a trainer that really just wants to get a lot of information but might not have the time to necessarily go for a degree route. They’re very thorough as far as going through the science-based principles of training.
After that I got my personal training certification and I just started training people. I just started really focusing on just educating people on strength training. That is how I really sort of had my niche. I’ve also done group fitness. I was an Orange Theory Fitness coach. I know about heart rate training, cardiovascular training. I’ve been a group fitness coach at Orange Theory Fitness, F45 as well.
I helped open the Barry’s Boot Camp in Atlanta. I was actually one of the founding instructors for Barry’s Boot Camp Atlanta, and through that process, I just sort of found the things that I really liked, and then from there I took it more into more of a strength training and a prehab rehab approach as well.
What inspired you to get into powerlifting, and once you’re in it, what kept you motivated to be in it?
Powerlifting is definitely something I hold near and dear. I always let people know that if you just go to the gym 9 times out of 10, you have powerlifted too. If you’ve done a squat, a bench, or a deadlift, you’ve picked up something, then you technically have powerlifted.
What got me into it was after I recovered from my meniscus, I started just getting away from sports. Stopped playing basketball as much. But I was like, “Hey, man, I really love the gym.” I really started just putting on like, “Hey, I just want to see how can I really increase my numbers.” I’ll say for me that was how I started. I just wanted to get stronger, and it just lied within, “Hey, I’m always going to do a squat, I’m always going to do a bench press, and I’m always going to do a deadlift.”
So for me, as I started to train, I just sort of made my training center around those 3 lifts. I used to play basketball 6 days a week, so I eventually started to cut that down to like 2 times out of the week, and majority of my other days was centered around lifting.
From there I saw my squat start to go up tremendously. It’s a very humbling thing. At the time, like from anyone just going into a gym, just seeing somebody squat 405 pounds for reps can be like, “Okay, who is that? What do they got going on?” So I would catch myself sort of having days like that. And I had an older gentleman walk up to me.
He was like, “Man, you’re pretty strong dude.” I was like, “Thanks.” He’s like, “Well, have you ever heard of this sport called powerlifting?” At the time, I’ve never heard of powerlifting. This was back in like 2014, and it’s crazy how the sport has grown.
From there it was like, “Bro, what is this?” So he was like, “Man, I used to do all these lifts, and basically a judge will judge you on your squat, your bench and your deadlift.” And I was like, “Okay, well, what do I need to do?” He was like, “Well, it’s like 3 attempts for each lift. So basically, you have your attempt where it’s like your opener. That’s something that you can like do on any given day, and then from there you just keep going up until maybe you potentially PR.”
It’s like I get to just go put on some weight and we just go. I was like, “Bro, where do I need to go?” He was like, “Well, I know a couple of people if you want to get into it.” And I was like, “Okay, I’d love to find a coach.”
There were not a lot of coaches that looked like me.
When you say not a lot of coaches that look like you, what exactly do you mean?
I’m gonna just be real. There are not a lot of black coaches, man. I’m not the type of person to close off to knowledge, but it’s always something that’s very helpful if I see somebody who also looks like me doing this, and at the time, it was very, very, very few. It’s still few. There’s more representation, but it’s still few.
So my first coach, her name was Becky Holcomb, and she got me strong. She got me strong for where I needed to be, and I wound up competing in my first powerlift meet at the end of 2015. My top numbers of that meet at that time was a 530 pound squat, a 364 pound bench, and a 640 pound deadlift.
At the time, I got 1st place within my weight class. There’s weight classes, too, so powerlifting is also something where it’s really a sport. It’s not like you’re just going against like, “Hey, I’ve never lifted, what should I expect?” It’s very welcoming. I’ll definitely say it’s very welcoming for anybody of any type of level, because they have state level meets, they have regional level meets. And for me I was doing a state level meet.
So it’s like a very “Hey, welcome.” If you’ve never known the rules, they tell you all the rules beforehand. If you don’t know the process of how things are, they’re very, very, very, very lenient on that.
How has powerlifting affected your life beyond physical strength?
From a positivity perspective, it’s made life be better because powerlifting is not an instant gratification sport.
Powerlifting is one of those recreational sports. It’s becoming more of a sport—we just had a very big meet on ESPN. It’s like right on the cusp of becoming like, “Hey, this is a real sport, and there are a lot of athletes that can see benefit from this.”
But for someone on the outside looking in, mentally, it is a very rewarding sport, because powerlifting is a sport where you have to be okay with knowing that you might not be able to do something, and that is very hard for people, especially when it comes to just life. But even just tying in fitness, people want a point A to a point B.
Powerlifting can be that for certain people, but 9 times out of 10 you have to find a way to where you can find the small wins. I like to preach that to any client that I work with, especially when it comes to a fitness journey when somebody is trying to lose, let’s just say 50 pounds.
I will say, “Hey, listen! I’m also a realist. I’m going to cater to where this version of you is, but I’m going to have to speak to you in a manner where the version of you trying to get to needs to hear.” So I will always start with that. Powerlifting made me be that way. It made me have a better understanding of a process of like, “You might have a bad day” and a lot of people have bad days, and people can just be like, “Hey, I just don’t want to go do that.”
If you continue to have days like that powerlifting will be a sport where you’re upset because your goal is, “Hey, I want to get stronger. Hey, I want to hit this PR.” For some people in powerlifting, they don’t even necessarily have to do like a 1-rep max. I actually have a client. She is 73 years old, and when I say she works out with me 3 times a week, we have our squat, we have her bench, and we have her deadlift. Mind you, does she need to do what I’m doing? No, but it’s a principle and a format of what powerlifting is.
And when I say she’s losing weight, she’s lost 12 pounds. I’ve only been working with her for 6 months. For someone of that age, as we get older, we need to care about bone density. We need to care about strength overall.
Man, we have, even with just us, as a people—we need to just be moving. And what powerlifting can do is it can also elicit a growth of just, not physical, but also mental. And I like to sort of showcase that with people. You were at the powerlifting meet for the first time—athletes in the back, there’s more of emotional attachment from all of that training that happened.
“Hey, you know what you just did. You know you just did 300 pounds, and you never thought that you could do this. But guess what, we knew you could, because the training built you for this. The training got you prepared for this.”
So that’s what I’ll say powerlifting really did for me, and I love it. It can really make you stronger as a person. And I’m not just talking about just physical strength. It can bring the best out of you.
What misconceptions about powerlifting exist in the Black community?
Some of the common misconceptions, and this can go for men and women, is “Powerlifting is going to make me huge. It’s gonna make me too big. It’s gonna make me be sluggish. It’s gonna make me always hurt all the time, because I’m lifting heavy all the time.”
People just think they hear “power” and then “lifting.” And then like, “Hey, I gotta go. I don’t want to go pick up a truck. What do I need to do that for?” And that’s the big common misconception. Powerlifting is just you lifting, and the key term of what powerlifting is—if I broke down that term, the power lifts are just squat, bench, and deadlift.
Powerlifting in whole is just a competition of those 3 lifts. So even if I took away the term powerlifting and let’s just say we’re going to the gym, we’re going to go do a squat, a bench, and a deadlift—if I told that to people more often they would probably have a different mindset and be like, “Okay, let’s go do that.”
But what I commonly will hear is, “Oh, are you always hurting? I don’t want to hurt my back.” It’s not that. There are phases in powerlifting, too, and some of the strongest athletes—it’s crazy. We can have athletes who are deadlifting 3 and 4 times their body weight. But hey, they’re doing movements that might require 15 pound dumbbells, so anyone can do it. Anyone can do it.
So I think a big common misconception that I like to really shed light on is powerlifting is welcoming, and it can be done by anybody. You do not necessarily have to just feel the heaviest of weight when you powerlift. A lot of people just think, “I got to go heavy.” You don’t have to do that. There is phases of training where you might see that if you choose to.
That’s what a lot of my clients that I work with now—I have a team of powerlifters, but I also have athletes. Everyone that I work with is an athlete because you’re moving your body. But, hey, I got someone who has 3 kids, and she got to go get dinner ready for her husband. No, I’m not going to give her the same training as an athlete who is single and they want to go compete at nationals. So there is separation, but both of them can do the same thing.
How can powerlifting benefit African American health and longevity?
I think that powerlifting could be a benefit, especially for our people. Just let’s speak here. Studies have shown as we start to get older, and especially within African American people, black people—osteoporosis is the breakdown of bone density. Bone density is something that is very important for the body. Strength training has shown a direct correlation to making the bones denser.
But one thing that I tend to see is when people go through strength training, the idea of strength training sometimes can be clouded because there are so many aspects of training. I think the key thing that I really want people to understand is we got to be careful on what we call strength training and then overall fitness.
Because fitness can be, “Hey, I’m going to go do this group class.” And yes, I might touch 10, 25, or even 30 pound dumbbells. But I’m moving in a circuit fashion. I might be doing some HIIT style workout. Yes, I’m moving my body up and down. Yes, that’s a style of training. Yes, you can still see some benefits to that. You can see some metabolic benefits to that as well.
With powerlifting, we can see that, plus more direct adaptation to building the actual skeletal muscle. Because of what powerlifting is. If I was to have a beginner just come to me, a workout is going to look like we’re going to start with mobility first.
A lot of people just don’t stretch. There’s differences. A lot of people just don’t stretch, a lot of people don’t like to do movements that move them a certain way. And it’s okay. But we have to do that because that is a part of your training. Flexibility training is strength training because it is a strength.
From there, hey, we might do, let’s just say 3 sets, 5 reps. I’ll make it very, very simple. 3 sets, 5 reps. Those 5 reps got to be hard, not like the hardest. Do you need to like PR? No. But I like to teach people, “Hey, if you can know how to manage your body with exertion like, if I have a set of 5, I should be able to use a weight where I do my set of 5, and think that maybe I could do 2 or 3 more.”
If we can think like this, that is how you progress your body to go through a stress that it can recover from. That is where powerlifting has a niche.
Other forms of fitness, you’ll get your heart rate up, comes right back down, raise your heart rate back up, come right down. Powerlifting, you sort of have like a little bit of a steady flow going on, and that also depending on where you’re training at can just be just as more of a benefit than direct cardio itself, because of what the stress is happening within the body. The demand is going to be a different demand which I like for people to really just understand.
Don’t let a common misconception stop people from doing something. What I really want to bring to people is, “Hey, that common misconception is what it is, it’s a misconception.” And if we can understand, like, “Hey, what is the goal of people?” A lot of people’s goal is, they want to lose weight. They want to be healthier. They want to get stronger. They want to build lean muscle. Powerlifting does all 4 of those things when done the right way.
Coach Steven can be found on Instagram at @thelastkiloking and on LinkedIn as Steven Ridges. He coaches at Fit Wit Inman, DNA Strength, and Fueled Factory in the Atlanta metro area.
