There’s a tattoo poking out from under Molly Kelly’s gym shorts that says a lot about her—a colorful princess captioned by the phrase, “Strong for a girl.” It’s an aside she hears often, especially in the gym.

“I can do a 300-pound squat, a 315-pound deadlift, a 135-pound bench,” says Kelly (CAS’15), who competes in the male-dominated sport of powerlifting. “Right now, as it stands, I have the Connecticut record for the squat for my age class; I’d like to break the American record for my squat. So no, I’m not strong for a girl—I’m just strong.”

Powerlifting, which is weight lifting to the extreme, is all about three lifts: the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. Form is paramount—“You can hurt yourself bad if you don’t know the form before you put any weight on any bar,” Kelly says—as is training, which she does four or five days a week. Her diet is filled with lots of protein, like egg whites, popcorn, and brown rice.

Kelly, who struggled with an eating disorder in high school, says she became interested in powerlifting almost by mistake freshman year. She signed up to be a coxswain on the women’s rowing team, and as she worked out and lifted with the team, she realized that eating disorders don’t work with strength sports.

“Instead, I began thinking, how much could I lift, and I kept pushing myself to lift heavier and harder,” she says. “It’s a powerful thing to be able to go to the gym every day and rebuild yourself.”