Mick Wadge is squaring up for a 75kg deadlift in the Barbell School gym in Burnley in a singlet and shorts and – at my request – talking me through his favourite bits of his body.
‘I’m most proud of my triceps, oh yes!’ he says. ‘And my biceps are all right – not bad at all I suppose. But my triceps! I’ve put so much time into them!’
And with that, he flexes his arms and the muscles bounce about like little bricks under the skin. ‘But the odd thing is that everyone who comes always takes photos of my upper body – they never seem to notice my legs, and I’ve got some great legs, look at that thigh! Very strong!’ he says proudly.
And he’s quite right. Sticking out from his little blue shorts, his legs are not the longest – he’s barely 5ft 3in – but they are smooth, freckly and as solid as steel. Particularly when he starts dead-lifting – his knees bobbing like shiny pistons as he clears 75kg with barely any effort.
Which would be impressive on anyone, but Mick, a former Rolls-Royce designer, beer and damp-proof salesman, is 88. Yes, 88 years old.
And on top of that, he only started weight training seven years ago, when his beloved wife Margaret died shortly after their 60th wedding anniversary.
‘It was very traumatic and suddenly, without her, I didn’t have anything to do,’ he says.
At first he tried to fill the time meeting people for coffee and cake, and seeing his lovely daughter, Maxine, who lives nearby. And he spent a lot of time feeding the sheep grazing by his house.
Grandfather Mick Wadge, 88, who took up weightlifting after the death of his wife has become a TikTok hit. He is pictured working out with Jane Fryer
The pensioner’s biggest fan is former model and movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger (pictured in 1977)
‘I’d give them bits of cake and biscuit, anything that took their fancy,’ he says. ‘They didn’t seem too keen on farm food, so they’d all come running down when I opened the back door.’
Then, one day he grabbed a broom handle and two milk containers filled with water and, as the sheep looked on in wonder, started working out in the garden.
‘I had a massive belly. I just ate everything and didn’t really move and was 18 stone, but I had to be doing something!’ he says.
Then, three years ago, he started training with Ross Starkie, the 35-year-old founder of Barbell, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Because if you follow the news or look at social media, you’ve probably heard of Mick already.
A month ago, Ross started posting their weightlifting videos on TikTok. Of the massive loads Mick was lifting in their training sessions. And suddenly Mick found himself an unlikely internet sensation with the videos getting nearly a million views.
Partly because of his extraordinary strength – his personal best deadlift is 110kg, nearly twice his bodyweight of 60kg. But I suspect just as much for all his lovely chat in his soft Lancashire burr. ‘At first I tried to edit the videos and keep it just to training chat, but I soon gave up on that and let it run,’ says Ross.
Fitness companies like My Protein and Gymshark started sending Mick boxes of products – protein powder, creatine and gym kits. And TV and radio stations badgered him to travel to London to appear on their shows – ‘Oh no thank you very much, I’m very happy here,’ says Mick firmly.
But then last week the great Arnold Schwarzenegger got in touch with the message, ‘Love what you are doing! Keep pumping!’
At first, Ross, who handles the social media, assumed it was a hoax. ‘But it wasn’t,’ he says. ‘Arnie has 6.5million followers and follows just 19 people and one of them is Mick!’
If Ross was surprised, the shock nearly did it for Mick.
‘He was always my favourite weightlifter and I’ve watched all his films loads of times,’ he says. ‘So when my daughter said, ‘Arnie’s contacted you!’ I nearly passed out on the floor!’
But it didn’t end there, because after Ross replied, Arnie, 79, said he would ‘love to introduce’ Mick ‘to two of my coaches in the US’ who could be ‘a great resource’.
They’re not sure whether that’s an invite to America, but if it is, they’ll go. ‘Of course! I’ve only ever been to France and Spain and maybe Italy,’ says Mick. ‘But oh we did have some lovely holidays, let me tell you about them…’
Mick is the sort of person you want to chat to all day. About everything from his decades as a semi-professional drummer playing at clubs four nights a week, to his job as a designer for Rolls-Royce which ended because he couldn’t face leaving his beloved Burnley when the company relocated to Derby.
Not forgetting his years as a judo brown belt – ‘I’d keep them all away from me with my big belly’. And how he met Margaret when he was just 21 at a dance at the Ritz Ballroom in Accrington and asked her to dance ‘because she was the best looking girl there’.
Mick, from Laneshaw Bridge, Lancashire, began exercising at home with a broom handle and milk containers
Here Mr Wadge is pictured with his wife. He began weightlifting after she died
Indeed, he could probably go on all day about how kind she was, and how good at finance and investing – ‘I’d have blown the bloody lot’ – and always helping others. And how brave she was in her long, hard battle with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis. But eventually we get back to the weightlifting and how, after a year or two of lifting the broom handle with milk containers and adding wheelbarrow wheels for extra ballast, Mick eventually graduated to a proper barbell and 5kg weights – still in the garden with the sheep.
Then, three years ago, on his 85th birthday, his daughter (‘she’s the absolute best’) treated him to four sessions with Ross, who was a great pal of his grandson Jack.
‘I’d never done anything like it, but I needed to keep busy,’ says Mick.
‘And I’ve not been able to get rid of him since!’ laughs Ross, 35. ‘We’ve become best friends.’
Perhaps because Ross, a great bear of a man, is almost as chatty as Mick and doesn’t treat him like an 88-year-old. Or even a 70-year-old.
‘A lot of people treat old people like old people – giving them those little plastic weights and rubber bands and the first thing they do is sit them down in a chair!’ he says. ‘They’re too afraid of hurting them. I just treated him like normal and soon he was putting all this muscle on and the weights started going up and up.’
As well as the 110kg deadlift, he’s bench pressing 60kg, squatting 60kg and using 25kg dumbbells.
‘I’ve never known anyone put on muscle like Mick,’ says Ross. ‘I’ve learned so much from him.’
‘He makes me do it!’ cries Mick. ‘Every time I say, ‘Oh no, I don’t know if I can do that’,’ he says. ‘Of course you can, just get on with it’. And I can. It’s fantastic.’
Ross says they thought about going in for competitions, or trying Mick for the Guinness Book of Records. ‘But there wasn’t any point as there was nobody in Mick’s category, so it would have been an empty victory.’
Right now, they’re chasing a new personal best after Mick recommended Barbell School to his 77-year-old pal John, who came in and deadlifted 120kg.
‘We call him Strong John, but we can’t have that, so now we’ve got to equal it,’ laughs Mick.
As well as his session with Ross every Tuesday – ‘I’d see him every day if I could’ – Mick goes to the gym at the local leisure centre on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when he does his own thing.
‘I’m just one of the lads there, not 88-year-old Mick,’ he says. ‘I like to warm up with 40 push-ups, 40 sit-ups and 40 triceps dips, before I start on the weights.’ Blimey.
Of course, as well as all the strength training, there’s nutrition. ‘With Margaret it was always bacon and egg – she’d sit in the armchair telling me what to do. But now there’s no one sat in the armchair so it’s always the same bloody thing – porridge with a swirl of honey.’
He also has a daily protein shake, takes creatine powder – a supplement that helps muscles and cognitive development – has a big salad in the evening and still eats quite a bit of cake at endless coffee mornings with pals throughout the week.
It is clearly doing the trick. Because he is as happy as he can be. ‘I don’t think you ever get over the loss, but it doesn’t grind me down any more,’ he says.
The bond between Mick and Ross is extraordinary. As well as all the training, once a month they go for coffee (and more cake) with Strong John. ‘Our collective age is about 350, but the chat is good,’ says Ross, who tells me that when Burnley football club was buying out its shareholders a few years back, Mick spent his returns – ‘thousands!’ – in the club shop on merchandise which he then gave away in local schools and on the street to Burnley fans.
His TikTok account, set up by his personal trainer about four weeks ago, now has more than 3,600 followers and 44,000 likes, while the videos have been viewed about 700,000 times
Mr Wadge, whose personal best dead-lift is 100kg, is now considering entering a powerlifting competition and exploring a potential Guinness World Record attempt
Mick tells me how Ross is such a good man – ‘though he’s a bit overweight around the belly, mind, but I don’t tell him.’
And how he probably wouldn’t still be here without him. ‘He’s saved me.’
Neither seem remotely interested in fame or fortune. Ross, because he’s already booked solid with professional football players and athletes – ‘though Mick is my most famous client!’
And Mick because he says it isn’t real. ‘Sometimes – not often, mind – I get stopped in the street by someone who’s been watching me on TikTok. But it’s not a big deal and I prefer it that way,’ he says. ‘You can think you’re making a lot of pals, but they’re acquaintances, not the friends you spend half the day talking with.’
Maybe, but as we move between exercise stations, I can see why there’s been so much fuss. It’s impossible not to stare – at the way he springs on and off the rower like a man half his age, clambers into the chest press and japes about with 20kg dumbbells.
Not surprisingly, the videos garnered quite a response. And, er, any women expressing interest?
‘No. Unfortunately, no!’ he says.
And so finally, the million-dollar question, does he ever feel his age, or remotely near it?
He thinks before he answers.
‘Sometimes. First thing in the morning and when I don’t engage my brain properly – you have to engage the brain!’ he says. ‘And often I try and remember a name and just can’t catch it, which is very frustrating,’ he says.
‘But then some people forget where they live so I’m very lucky. I always say I’m the luckiest man on the planet.’
And with that, he starts limbering up again and says, ‘Shouldn’t we do some more lifting?’
So we get back to it. Mick pumping away with his 75kgs with not a bead of sweat, and me clutching a paltry 6kg weight and feeling every gram. What a man!
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