Patricia Hubner heaved the 55-pound barbell off of the padded gym floor and onto her shoulders, exhaling sharply as she started a 20-rep set of front squats.
She was competing this week in the CrossFit Games Quarterfinals — an annual worldwide competition of the popular high-intensity fitness program — at the CrossFit Hilo Iron Gym, where owner Charmelei “Charmie” Bence stood close by, tallying her reps on a clipboard and offering words of encouragement.
“Halfway there!” “Five more!” “You’ve got a minute rest after this. Keep going!” Bence yelled out, trying to keep Hubner’s spirits up as she began to strain under the bar’s weight.
The fact that she’s made it to the quarterfinals is impressive enough on its own before considering her age: Hubner is 69, and only started doing five sessions a week at the gym in Hilo six months ago.
Before that, the retired kupuna and Mountain View resident kept busy taking care of her ailing father and spending time with her two adult sons who live on 91直播 Island. But after her father passed away at 94 last August, she suddenly found herself with ample free time and made a resolution to get in shape.
“Three days later, I showed up here because I had time now,” she said about the gym. “What CrossFit does for me are things I know I would not do on my own. I know building muscle is really important, and you know you can try to do it at the gym all by yourself, but I have no idea what I’m doing, and here I’m building muscle, and I feel like I just have to follow the directions, I don’t have to think about it because if I overthink it, I won’t do it. I do things I would never do, like barbell stuff — never in a million years would I just walk into a gym and say: ‘I want to do Olympic lifting.’”
Part of the motivation to embark on her fitness journey came from watching her father suffer, and vowing to not let it happen to her.
“I don’t want to end up like my dad. They lived a long time, but I think the last ten years of their life was really hard on them,” she said about both parents. “They were older, couldn’t do the things they enjoyed doing, and then the more sedentary they got, the more dementia and other things (progressed), the more frail they got.”
The other unfortunate event that drove Hubner to start training was enduring multiple health issues in close succession, including a heart attack, kidney stones and surgery to remove a grapefruit-sized ovarian cyst, which eventually resulted her undergoing a hysterectomy.
“I didn’t smoke, I wasn’t particularly overweight,” she said. “So, it was just like all of these health issues that I thought I could avoid. I didn’t think it would ever affect me but it did. And so it was kind of like, you can say a wake-up call I guess.”
Since those setbacks, her progress has been staggering: When she first started at the gym half a year ago, she was using an empty 35-pound barbell during workouts. In the beginning, she went for a personal record — or simply “PR” to gym regulars — at the back squat and managed to rep 50 pounds.
This month, she set a new back squat PR of 145 pounds — a testament to how much muscle she’s built in such a short period of time.
These astounding gains have inspired many athletes at the gym, where Hubner is only the second-oldest member after 71-year-old Betty. Seeing women like them build strength has even convinced its owner that “fitness is possible at any age,” as Hubner puts it.
“Even me, I’m like, no I don’t think I can get any stronger,” Bence said. “Then I look at these ladies and I’m like, oh, they are still getting stronger. So, I don’t know. I feel like it’s a myth or something where they say you lose all of your muscle mass as you age. I think you use it or lose it.”
Hubner’s success also has dispelled some of the stereotypes surrounding the often-misunderstood fitness program.
“I think people think CrossFit is for really fit 20-year-olds,” Bence said. “Most of our people are 50, and they’re the ones pushing harder than the 30-year-olds. It’s really nice to be able to push younger people, get them to push a little harder, because we have someone who really pushes and they’re the same age as our parents or grandparents.”
Hubner also credits Hilo Iron’s nutrition coach, Holly Harding, for showing her how exercise goes hand in hand with diet when it comes to losing weight and building strength.
“A lot of times, people come into CrossFit initially, like they want to lose weight, that’s just their main focus” Harding said. “So, teaching people that it’s a combined effort; if you want to get fat off and build muscle, you have to change your diet. You can’t be eating Doritos for breakfast. You’ve gotta focus on protein and the right carbs and things like that — the nutrition fuels the energy to be able to support your workouts.”
Motivating her fellow senior women about what they’re capable of, Hubner said, is the only reason she’s been so public about her fitness journey.
“I really am just a regular person,” she said. “Because it’s not me. I think I represent a lot of women who are in my age group who kind of talk themselves out of thinking that they can lift weights or they can do things that they see younger people do. And they think, ‘I could never do that.’ But if you see somebody who kind of looks like you who is doing it, then it’s like, ‘Oh, maybe I can do it.’”
More than anything else, it’s the friends she’s made over the months of training at the gym that keeps her returning week after week.
“I keep coming because of the support,” she said. “It’s really kind of an ohana. We look out for each other, we love each other, we celebrate things together. That’s the other thing — it’s that sense of community and well-being. It’s that social interaction, too.”
Email Stefan Verbano at stefan.verbano@hawaiitribune-herald.com
