DETROIT -- If only Charles Atlas could see them.

A visit to the local weightroom or gym will still reveal mostly men pumping iron. But a growing number of those lifting weights are women. They may weigh 97 pounds but certainly aren't weaklings.


Some, like Auby Paulick of suburban Birmingham, Mich., and University of New Mexico student Vicki Steenrod, are devotees who enter weightlifting contests and bodybuilding competitions.

Others, like political analyst Julie Weeks of Detroit, have turned to bench pressing, resistance machines and other forms of weight training as a means to get in shape and get rid of the tensions from their work environment.

Gains by the women's movement in the 1970s combined with the nation's fitness trend made it only a matter of time before the macho barriers of weight-lifting fell.

Once athletically inclined women conquered aerobic dance, jogging and glittering equipment in exercise spas, weight-lifting seemed the next course.

Ms. Weeks said she always had been curious about the weightroom in the University of Michigan gym where she jogged during winter semesters. One day, she went inside to test out the equipment, following charts on the weightroom walls and asking other students for help.

She enjoyed the exercises, finding they did more to firm her body and were more interesting than a simple run around the track.

'I started it to firm up and get in shape. I'm not getting any younger, you know,' joked the 24-year-old.


Now, she tries to work out nightly in the weightroom of her downtown Detroit apartment building. Most of her company still is male, including several professional boxers.

Ms. Weeks works out on a Universal weightlifting aparatus, which combines several kinds of presses and other training equipment on a single frame.

It's quite a change from her routine as an analyst with Market Opinion Research. She said lifting weights is a perfect way to get rid of mental tension caused by the rigors of political polling and computer programming.

'Sometimes when I've had a hard day, I go down to the weight room and just really concentrate on what I'm doing. After a while, it all melts away,' she said.

Some women who begin for relaxation, like Ms. Weeks, turn it into avocation.

Ms. Steenrod holds the title of New Mexico's strongest woman at 114 pounds.

She competed in the U.S. Women's Powerlifting Federation Championships in Alabama, culminating months of intense training to perfect her skills in the bench press, the dead lift and the squat.

Ms. Paulick has another goal -- the crown of Miss Olympia, 1982. She came in second for the title during the first competition held in 1980 but missed last year's contest because she was having a baby.

She works out at a Clawson, Mich. gym for women only called Spunky's. The facility, the first in the state, averages 200 daily drop-in customers plus 35 full-time members.

Ms. Paulick, whose 5-foot-2 belies her weightlifting talents, said there are lucrative rewards in the bodybuilding game. Guest posers who appear at competitions can earn $1,000 for a two-minute routine. The top prize for Miss Olympia will be a $20,000 purse plus endorsement contracts with training equipment companies.


And then there's Tammy Stafford.

She's a 10-year-old fourth grader in Albuquerque who one night dreamed that she could lift the weights her father had set up in the garage.

She sneaked outside and lifted 220 pounds on her first try in a hack squat position -- lifting weights from a squat and balancing them on her shoulders. Tammy, who weighs 46 pounds, now entertains neighborhood children by lifting eight of them at a time with that technique.

Father Gordon added more weights to Tammy's load when he saw the ease with which she could lift. He stopped when the child reached 380 pounds, fearful she would hurt herself.

Her parents now let her work out about once every two weeks. She can lift 447 pounds through the use of a waist harness attached to weights that are raised by Tammy bringing herself from a sitting to standing position.

Tammy's most recent feat is lifting the back of a 1,380-pound Honda Civic seven to eight inches off the ground in front of classmates at Inez Elementary School.

'They said they'd have to see it to believe it. So I showed the whole school, and now I've got a lot of friends,' Tammy said. 'They all want to play with me and arm wrestle me.'

She said she wants to help the needy through her unusual display of strength.

'I want to help poor people, do shows for people with diseases, and help people in hospitals and get money for people who have brain surgery, cancer and all that,' said the youngster.


'I want to be the world's strongest little girl. I already am.'