Meet Mama J: The powerlifter redefining 70

Janine Blake is five-foot-one, weighs around 56 kilograms and admits she is one of the shyest people in the gym.

She can also squat 106kg and deadlift 141kg.

At Iron Palace Gympie, where the 69-year-old trains in a big shed just four minutes from home, there is another side to the softly spoken Queenslander. They call her Mama J.

“Basically, what I say goes,” Janine laughs. “If Mama J says, ‘Don’t do that’, you don’t do that.

“I’m actually the shyest person in the gym, but if I give someone a glare, they usually stop.”

It is an unlikely position for a woman who only discovered powerlifting around the age of 60 and initially hoped she might summon enough courage to compete just once.

Nine years later, Janine is ranked world No.1 in her age and weight class in drug-tested competition, holds world records and is preparing for another national competition.

And in October she turns 70 and she has absolutely no intention of slowing down.

From the treadmill to the weights room

Janine’s journey began with a face-plant on a cold Melbourne morning.

A keen road runner, she had been clocking up around 10 kilometres a day when she fell, requiring stitches in her chin. Her doctor suggested she might be safer in a gym.

For the first year, Janine barely ventured beyond the treadmill.

Then the gym owner intervened.

“He said, ‘Janine, I’m sick of you being on the treadmill. Why don’t you come into the weights room?’

“So I followed this big fella in. I’m only about five foot one or two and quite small, and I just trotted in after him thinking, ‘I can probably do this.’

“And really, I never walked back out. I never went back to the treadmill.”

There wasn’t much of a powerlifting scene in Gympie at the time, so Janine went online, found a coach in Brisbane and called him.

She had never squatted. Her first proper sessions involved squatting and bench pressing an empty bar and deadlifting about 40kg.

Her ambition was modest.

“I only want to do this for six months,” she told her coach. “I’m actually a very shy person. I just want to try one comp.

“If I can get out onto that platform, I’ve achieved something.”

She competed 12 weeks later. Then again three months after that.

“I’d already bought all the gear, the suit and everything, so I thought, ‘I’ve spent the money, I might as well keep going.’”

She would eventually complete about 22 competitions with that coach.

‘Age is really just a word’

Today, Janine’s competition best squat is 106kg. She has managed 110kg in training and has deadlifted 141kg.

Her shoulders have limited her bench press, something she admits frustrates her, but she remains among the leading lifters in her class.

The deadlift is where Mama J really comes alive.

“By the time deadlifts come around I’m usually pretty tanked up on caffeine, and that’s where I really enjoy myself. That’s the big buzz.”

Ask what powerlifting has taught her about ageing and Janine doesn’t hesitate.

“People say ‘age is just a number’. For me, age is really just a word – a label.”

She often hears people tell her they could never do what she does.

Her answer is wonderfully simple.

“Well, I couldn’t do what I do now 10 years ago either. It’s hard work and consistency.”

Janine says she is in better physical and mental condition now than she was 20 or 30 years ago.

“When I walk in [the gym] I feel like I’m 20 again.”

Her strength has also changed the way she carries herself outside it.

At the supermarket, well-meaning older men occasionally offer to lift a slab of soft drink for her.

“No, I’ve got it covered,” she tells them. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

The place that kept her going

But behind the records is a more difficult chapter in Janine’s story.

After seven years with her coach, both her parents developed dementia and Janine became their full-time carer.

Her father was also battling cancer.

For two years her life revolved around hospital appointments, aged care and constant trips to her parents’ home, about 10 kilometres away.

Some days she went there three or four times.

“They didn’t know if they’d eaten, whether the stove was off, or what day it was.”

Both parents died within the past year.

Through it all, Janine kept walking into her local gym.

It became far more than somewhere to lift weights.

“I could talk to people there, make a bit of light of it without being disrespectful, and then say, ‘Right, I’m off – I’m going to lift now.’

“It was a huge relief and kept me sane.”

She no longer had the time to travel regularly to Brisbane for coaching, so Janine largely began coaching herself, with help from Iron Palace owner Brad as competitions approached.

Her numbers slipped a little and her priorities had changed, but she kept lifting.

Now for 70

Janine turns 70 in October, but rather than treating the milestone as a finish line, she sees another starting point.

She already has a competition booked on the Sunshine Coast in December, her first as a 70-year-old.

The goal?

To become the world’s No.1 drug-tested lifter in her new age bracket.

For anyone in their 60s, 70s or 80s looking at Janine and thinking they could never do something similar, she isn’t suggesting they immediately load 100kg onto a barbell.

Find a friend if that helps. Find the right gym. Get properly qualified professional guidance. Start at your own pace.

“You don’t have to walk in and be strong on day one,” she says.

“You can wear your sloppy jeans. You don’t have to look good. You just need to be comfortable.”

Most importantly, start.

“You don’t know what you can do until you try.”

Janine knows the records she has fought so hard to set won’t belong to her forever. There are already more older women entering the sport, including a growing group competing into their 70s.

Mama J couldn’t be happier about it.

“I know in the next couple of years my records will be smashed,” she says. “And I’ll be proud of that.”