THE LIFT THAT'S WORTH ITS WEIGHT.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

Standing a lean 6 feet tall, 54-year-old Nadine Powell doesn't fit the mold of a weight lifter.

But the Eugene woman is a National Masters champion who set a personal record Saturday at a USA Weightlifting meet at the Casanova Athletic Center at the University of Oregon.

Powell is among a legion of women entering the sport for the side benefits: the physical conditioning, the mental challenge and the camaraderie in seeing friends reach goals.

"It's a lot of fun to do this together," she says. "After work, it's like you're a little kid again and you want to go out and play after dinner. We train together. We know each other's numbers. We're real excited when someone makes a weight that is awesome for them, a personal record for them."

To the uninitiated, weight lifting may look like a simple demonstration of muscle. But power is only part of the equation. With thoughtful practice and smooth technique, lifters put a lot more weight overhead than they ever could with just their raw strength.

"It's magic. That's the hook," Powell says. "When I'm watching weight lifting, I want to see it again. Once you have a little knowledge of what's involved in accomplishing it, you understand."

While women have been competing in sanctioned world championships since 1987, only in the past few years have women in Lane County begun to discover lifting and take it up as their primary sport, says Jon Joseph, co-owner of IronWorks Gym in Creswell.

"At our gym, there are more women involved than men, which is a huge shift," Joseph says.

Women seem to garner self-confidence as they excel in a sport traditionally dominated by men - and find that they can beat men, he says.

While lifters can see and feel their bodies tighten up as they continue in the sport, the change runs deeper than muscle, he adds.

"There is something that happens to a person. It changes your character," Joseph says. "Technique, strength, the mind. All those things blend to make this sport. To me, it's not how much weight you lift, it's how you come through it. Each person is different."

Powell came into the 14th annual UO Weightlifting Classic on Saturday with about four years of lifting behind her and a shot at the World Masters Weightlifting Championship ahead of her.

She'd always been athletic: a runner with national junior college titles, a swimmer, a triathlete.

Even so, weight lifting gives her a physical boost like nothing else.

"It does nice things for your body. You start feeling better quickly after you start lifting," says Powell, who has worked as a nurse since 1978 in cancer and addiction treatment.

Before Saturday, her personal meet record was 40 kilos (88 pounds) in the snatch, a lift in which the bar is placed overhead in a single movement. In the clean and jerk, a lift that pauses with the bar across the shoulders and ends with a quick lift overhead, Powell's personal meet record had been 55 kilos (121 pounds).

With fellow lifters shouting encouragement and creating a cloud of chalk dust from their hands as they clapped, Powell stepped to the platform Saturday for her third and final clean and jerk of the meet.

On the bar was 60 kilos (132 pounds), a weight she had accomplished in practice but never in a meet.

More than 100 spectators learned from the announcer that there was more than weight riding on this lift.

With Powell's unofficial ranking among masters in her age and weight group, a successful lift would give her a tentative claim to No. 1. That will change if another of her competitors does better in a sanctioned meet before the World Masters Weightlifting Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, in late July.

Tentative or not, it is the boost Powell came to get.

The bar vaulted from the platform to her shoulders, so fast it surprised even Powell - a testament to some fine-tuning she had discussed moments earlier with Joseph, her coach.

The lift completed, Powell said she did it with no particular attention to the crowd, to the significance of the lift, to anything much at all - except to that mind-set that lifts a weight.

"You can only have one thought in your head," she says. "I was really determined."

CAPTION(S):

Nadine Powell of Eugene, a national record holder, shows her determination Saturday at a weight lifting competition at the UO's Casanova Center. Powell, resting after her effort: `You can only have one thought' when lifting. Thomas Boyd / The Register-Guard Nadine Powell prepares for her turn at the weight lifting competition on Saturday at the UO.