Strong-Arming the Age Process : Chatsworth Power-Lifter Garry, 63, Again Will Try to Muscle Into World Record Book

At the age of 63, stockbroker Martin Garry of Chatsworth leads a pretty normal life.

He’s up at 5 a.m. to monitor the start of another Dow Jones day.

He’s on the phone with clients, advising them of trends and potential opportunities in the market.

He spends a little time each day to hawk a book he has authored on the stock market.

He goes home in the afternoon, bends over a barbell with a quarter ton of weights and yanks it off the floor a few times.

OK. That’s not normal.

And it’s also an exaggeration. After all, a quarter ton is 500 pounds.

Garry, 5-foot-5, 165 pounds, has jerked only 487 pounds off the floor.

He intends, however, to come a bit closer to that quarter-ton mark Saturday when, under the sanctioning of the U. S. Powerlifting Federation at Muscle Beach in Venice, he shoots for a world record in his age group, an age group that includes few power lifters.

“Most guys my age play checkers,” Garry said. “The real ambitious ones play tennis. Or golf. I played golf once. I didn’t like it.”

Garry began power-lifting and bodybuilding as a teen-ager and halted his training for 10 years after retiring from the Air Force in 1968. Much like playing golf, he didn’t like it.

In the early ‘70s, he began having dizzy spells and, despite his wife’s pleading to see a doctor, Garry re-embarked on his weight-training regimen. The dizzy spells stopped, he said, and he’s been grunting loud and healthy three days a week since.

“I’m considerably stronger than I was at the age of 20 or 25 or 30,” he said. “I lift more weight now than I did 30 years ago. As long as I keep working at it, I just keep getting stronger. I might not lift forever. My wife says I’m going to die doing this. I turn purple and all that during the heaviest lifts. And I believe her sometimes.

“But I’ll say this: If I die doing this, I’ll sure be in good shape when I go.”

Garry, who trains in his home and at a local health club, has reached astonishing levels as a power lifter. In addition to his personal best of 487 pounds in the dead lift, he bench-pressed 290 pounds last year and plans to push that mark, which is a national age-group and weight division record, to 300 pounds this year.

In the dead lift, the world record for his age and weight group is 390 pounds.

“I warm up with more than that,” Garry said.

He has never attempted the world record before in a sanctioned competition because that must be done in a single-lift meet. Garry has competed solely in three-lift (bench-press, squat and dead lift) meets. Saturday’s meet is dead lift only. The record, barring a freak injury, is sure to fall to Garry.

“What I want to do is break the world record in the first lift, and then break it three more times with my next three lifts,” he said.

A quick glance at Garry’s frame tells of the decades he has spent working at his craft. Beneath a head of white hair, his shoulders are thick and his legs even more massive. Bulging veins are everywhere.

This is no golfer.

And all of this, Garry wants everyone to know, has been accomplished without plunging a single needle into a single vein or muscle.

“This sport is overflowing with steroids,” he said. “The vast majority use them. Everyone knows it. It’s just crazy. Using steroids is like running a car at 100 miles an hour all the time, 24 hours a day. It’s the fastest car around. Until it blows up.

“I’m the anti-drug guy. I preach it. I’ve never touched steroids and still can beat anyone in my age group and a lot of guys 20 and 30 years younger than me. If you feel you have to get real strong real fast to win some kind of trophy, steroids does that. But if you want to do it clean, to live for a while, then do it my way. Train hard. And have some patience.”

Saturday’s world record dead lift attempt in Venice will be presided over by Don Haley of Los Alamitos, the U.S. Powerlifting Federation’s top official in the Masters division. Haley has watched Garry perform for more than 20 years, he said.

“Martin is one of a few,” Haley said. “He is unusually devoted to this sport and has proven beyond any doubt that people can improve, physically, with age. He just gets better all the time. There are not a whole bunch of competitors his age. Very, very few. But now we are starting to see a growth in the sport even at that level, other guys his age starting to train and lift.

“Martin has had something to do with that.”

There are injuries related to the sport, injuries to cartilage and ligaments and muscles as they struggle to bring ridiculous weights under control. But Garry said that overall, he has fewer aches and pains than most men his age.

“There is the risk of injury, but if you stay inside that line as much as you can and avoid those injuries, the ligaments and muscles get stronger and stronger,” he said. “And then you find the day-to-day aches and pains suffered by most older people just disappear. I honestly feel better at the age of 63 than I did at 36.”

Martin said he wonders how long he can continue to lift such great weights. But he also said he doesn’t wonder about it too much. There are, he points out, older guys still lifting. Example: Henri Souderies, 84, of Napa, Calif., recently won a national meet for his age and weight division--only one other competitor entered--with astounding lifts of 185 pounds in the bench-press and 250 pounds in the squat.

“I know that at some point the age process must begin to reverse my strength,” Garry said. “I do know that. At what point will that happen? I don’t know. And I don’t care.

“I do know that it doesn’t appear that it will be any time soon.”