Robert Carry profiles Jill Mills, the American powerlifter and strength competitor who has been hailed as the world’s strongest woman
“Around the age of 13 I would attempt to lift my dad’s concrete-filled weights in the living room after my family had gone to bed,” says Jill Mills, the powerlifter and strength event competitor hailed as the strongest woman in the world.
Despite a near total lack of equipment or knowledge of bodybuilding, Jill began diligently working on her strength and fitness without any real goal in mind beyond training for the enjoyment of it.
She continues: “I started jogging and doing sit-ups everyday after school. I would lock myself in my room and do calisthenics for an hour each evening, several times a week throughout high school. I found the high I received from working out more gratifying than anything else in my life. I was born with an intense competitive spirit, and even then I was competing with myself.”
Things went up a gear for Jill when she moved out of her isolated rural Texan home to a town with a fully fitted gym. “We lived too far away from the city to join a gym so I worked with what I had,” she recalls. “When I relocated in the middle of my junior year to live with my aunt, I finally gained access to a real training facility and went every chance I could get between multiple part-time jobs and school.”
At 17, Jill left school for a career in the military and she threw herself into the US army’s demanding training regime. “I set goals for myself far beyond the military’s standards,” she remembers. “By the time I was 19 I was able to do 84 push-ups and 128 sit-ups in less than two minutes.”
When Jill ended her term in the military she decided to enter a bodybuilding competition, but the then 20-year-old had to put her plans on hold when she found out she was pregnant. However, just nine months after giving birth to her daughter, Jill put her name down for a bodybuilding event – and won.
She continued to have success in bodybuilding competitions but when she met her current husband, he convinced her to move away from the showy, aesthetic events in favour of competing in strength competitions: “When I met Milo [Jill’s husband] he talked me into trying his sport, powerlifting.”
The move proved a good one for Jill, who started sweeping aside the competition in the powerlifting tournaments she entered, and by 1996 she was the Texas powerlifting champion in a host of events. “Nothing had ever come easy for me so I found the instant reward and success addictive,” she says.
Her success continued and she began competing and winning on a national level. In 2001 the first ever ‘Strongest Woman in the World’ competition was held, and Jill needed little convincing to enter.
Sadly, injury put paid to her hopes of being crowned winner when she ruptured a tendon in her knee in training and she never lined out for the tournament. However, the blow only served to make Jill more determined to win the event the following year, when it was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – where Jill outclassed the opposition, winning practically every discipline in the competition.
Jill continued to win every strength event she entered until she was forced to put her career temporarily on hold. “I fractured two vertebrae,” she recalls. Bizarrely, Jill has been unable to pin down when exactly the injury occurred. “The doctors all seem amazed that I can’t isolate the moment the fractures happened,” she says. “When I’m lifting heavy it always hurts so I block the pain out and focus on getting the rep or set. If I had to guess though I would think it was in training, probably when loading a heavy stone onto a tall platform and hyper-extending my back.”
But despite the severity of the injury, Jill opted to use the time off from competition to broaden her skills base, and she trained as a masseuse and personal trainer. Before long the injury had healed and she was ready to re-enter competition: “The doc would have to put me in a body cast and sedated me to keep me from working out!”
Jill feels a positive attitude towards injuries is a must in her line of work as the next one is never far away. “With strongwoman training, we put ourselves in some awkward positions and it can lead to bad injuries,” she points out.
Although Jill has been confronted by notions that muscular women are manly and unattractive, she finds the idea difficult to comprehend: “I have met many people over the years with the opinion that women must be soft and dependent in a physical and emotional sense. I have never understood that. What man, except maybe one with a severe insecurity problem, would want a woman who is helpless and dependent emotionally and physically on him?
“I would imagine it to be annoying to be with someone who couldn’t even carry a 30lb bag of dog food into their house. And what woman would feel good about herself being that way? It makes no sense to me. It seems only natural to find a man or a woman who is physically fit and healthy to the more appealing person. Women can be strong, fit and muscular and still be feminine. Young girls should be encouraged to get involved in sports and fitness. This will help them become fit, healthy, independent, strong, young ladies of tomorrow.”
Although yet to tap into a mainstream audience, Jill has still received attention for her accomplishments. “I get tons of e-mails from people from all of the world,” she says. “The e-mails that touch me the most are the young girls who say I am their hero and they want to be world’s strongest woman someday. It makes me feel like I am doing my part in changing their attitudes towards their abilities and their bodies in a positive way.”
Amazingly, 32-year-old Jill – hailed as a pioneer in women’s’ strength events – has won every single strength event she has entered, but recognition from the mainstream media has been somewhat slow in coming. However, with attitudes towards women in sport becoming increasingly liberalised, it’s only a matter of time before this outstanding athlete is given the plaudits she has earned.
