Dixie James of San Rafael started her day with a light warmup: TRX suspension training at 6 a.m., then an hourlong yoga class and an hour on the elliptical machine – followed by a weightlifting session including bench-pressing 100 pounds.
It’s all in a day’s work for the 72-year-old, who took up bodybuilding in her 60s, winning an international competition after only three years. Now she intends to kill it at the Northern California Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Championship in Vallejo on March 26.
“I haven’t eaten today. I had green tea,” James said as she did a one-arm pull with 40 pounds on the cross-cable rowing machine at her gym, Fitness SF in Corte Madera.
“When I get home I’ll have a salad and a hard-boiled egg,” she said, aiming to lose four pounds to eliminate any trace of body fat left on her already-slim body.
Bodybuilders must diet strenuously to eliminate any fat that might obscure their muscles. When she isn’t training for a contest, James’ diet is less rigorous, with an emphasis on chicken, fish, broccoli and other vegetables.
Whether or not she’s gearing up to compete, James’ exercise routine is fierce. She does heavy weights three days a week, body pump class three days a week, TRX, yoga and indoor cycling classes. On Sundays she goes horseback riding and Fridays she swims in the bay.
“My 73rd birthday is April 5 and my 50th wedding anniversary is April 2. Those are the two big motivators for me to do (the competition),” James said.
Dixie and her husband Bill are still going strong, working out together and sharing a number of other activities.
“He is a rower,” she said. “He became a rower because he didn’t see me come in on my first Alcatraz swim and he took up rowing so he could rescue me if he had to.”
She has swum in 43 open-water swims, including the Alcatraz International, has participated in 26 marathons, from Big Sur to South Africa, and has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Fuji, as well as Mount Shasta, twice.
“She’s pretty amazing,” her husband said. “Everyone you see in the gym is probably 10 years older than they look.”
Continuing her weightlifting routine, James, a former elementary school teacher, slid onto a nearly vertical slant board. Lying on the board with her head nearest the ground, she raised two 20-pound weights overheard, doing slanted chest presses.
“I wasn’t active all my life,” James said. “My daughter Holly was dating a bodybuilder and I thought, ‘I wonder if I could do that.’”
Jon Shapiro, a world-class weightlifter who, like Holly, has Down syndrome, taught his now-mother-in-law how to use the machines. Shapiro and Holly James, 43, wed in 2004.
James also has a son, Adam, 41. They climbed Kilimanjaro together years ago and have competed together in open-water swim events at Alcatraz, Point Richmond and Lake Tahoe.
“He is another teacher in my life,” she said.
Back at the gym, James glided off the bench and grabbed a Bosu ball, a piece of gym equipment that resembles a beach ball cut in half. Flipping it over with the flat side up, James jumped on the ball and balanced, holding two 12.5-pound weights.
“We can change our bodies, and weights really do the job,” James said. Standing on the ball, she lifted the weights overhead in rep after rep, never losing her balance.
“It’s fun for me,” James said of her workouts. “It helps to do it with a trainer. That way, if I slouch, she will give me a poke and tell me to straighten up.”
Linda Prosche, James’ yoga teacher at Fitness SF, said James “inspires a lot of us, myself included. She has supported me in my baby steps in weightlifting. A lot of people walk their talk, but few walk and live their talk. Dixie is one of them.”
Marie Holman, a personal trainer, spin instructor and competitive coach, has known James since 2007.
“With Dixie, it doesn’t matter what it is. If she puts her mind to something, it gets done. If she says, ‘I’m going to write a book,’ she writes a book,” Holman said, referring to James’ book about her daughter, “Holly: Going Beyond Mother and Daughter’s Potential.”
Holman said, “She is disciplined with her nutrition and her workouts. Obstacles aren’t obstacles in her mind.”
Courtesy of: Marinij