British papers covering Powell perhaps, heartless exercise (5,5)
I believe the answer is:
bench press
'exercise' is the definition.
(bench press is a kind of exercise)
'british papers covering powell perhaps heartless' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'british' could be 'b' (abbreviation e.g. in BBC) and 'b' is present in the answer.
'papers' could be 'press' (the newspaper industry) and 'press' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for bench press that I've seen before include "lift" , "Weighty exercise" , "Show of strength" .)