Dolly Francis is a champion bodybuilder with six-pack abs, 14 percent body fat, and a 110-pound bench press. She also has two grown up daughters and three grandsons. She is, after all, 62 years old. “I never feel like I’m too old to be bodybuilding,
“I feel youthful. It gives me energy.” Last October, she has named champion of South Suburban College’s bodybuilding competition for women over 50. Sporting a black bikini, tanned and sprayed with cooking oil for shine, she flexed for 15 minutes before 200 people, including a panel of judges.
“I was so excited when I won. I didn’t settle down ’til a couple days later because I couldn’t sleep,” she recalled. But Francis was not always this way. A few years ago, she was among the 78 percent of Black women the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes as overweight.
Although her husband, Michael, is an avid weightlifter who, at 69 years old can bench press 225 pounds, her own family is plagued with health issues. “The rest of my family has high blood pressure, diabetes, is too fat, has knee problems,” she said.
After retiring in September 2003, Francis decided to get healthy. Her husband drew up a weight lifting plan and she joined a gym located near her south suburban Burnham home. For four hours everyday, she did arm curls with 60 pound bars, leg presses against 315 pound weights, chest presses with 50 pound weights, and an assortment of other exercises.
But results were slow in coming. “I kept coming home crying to my husband. He said, “It’s not going to happen overnight. You didn’t get that [gut] overnight, so it’s going to take time to come off,” she said.
Francis stuck with it, and by the time she entered the bodybuilding competition four years later she had dropped 35 pounds, seven dress sizes and gained muscle definition. “My shoulders are broader, my back is broader, and my calves are formed. I mean, I just think I look good,” she laughed.
Receiving compliments has become a regular part of her life, especially when she runs errands around town in her spandex exercise pants. “Once I went to the [supermarket], and a man said, ‘Miss, I know you’ve probably noticed me following you.
But I just want to let you know that you really look good,’” she laughed. “He was 20 years old.” But her success has not come without ridicule from family membersûand even fellow gym goers.
“One of my family members said ‘While you’re out there working out at the health club, you should be at the nursing home feeding some of these people that can’t feed themselves,’” Francis recalled.
“If I listened to what people have said, I would have stopped by now.” But Michael could not be prouder. “All these years she’s watched me doing it, and now she’s in it too,” he said. “When she won the competition I got a very good feeling, and I’m proud of her.”
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