News, The Presidents Blog
Meet the President of the A/BPU, Dr Emma Ylitalo-James
Aug
Dr Emma Ylitalo-James is the founder and President of the British Powerlifting Union and started the federation in her spare time in 2012. She has the all time biggest female bench press at competition in history in the world across all age divisions in the 90kg class and is the biggest female bench presser of all time and all weight divisions of any woman over 45 years old with a 275kg bench press which she did at the age of 54.
Emma is a full time psychologist in research in the area of defence and security. She is a published academic and specialises is the psychology of terrorism in the processes of radicalisation. She has presented her work at conferences like the Society of Terrorism Research International conferences and delivered to government bodies such as NATO for publications. Being originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland and grew up in “the troubles”, leaving Northern Ireland and living in England for nearly 25 years. She graduated from Kings College University London with a distinction from her Msc in War and Psychiatry and then on to Cranfield University where she completed her PhD and is still a Visiting Fellow.
Her passion for competing came from beginning to train in her teens in Northern Ireland and starting to compete in her late teens. She has a very long and distinguished international competing career spanning over 35 years in powerlifting, bodybuiding and then specialised in bench press from 2005 onward having lost the “oomph” for full power and absolutely disheartened by womens professional bodybuilding after the changes being made to the womens phyique classes in the early 2000s. Her last competition was in New York when she lost the “love” although repeatedly threatens to come back when her bench press starts going down! However, she never looked back and went on to become the “grande damme” of bench press and an all time world record holder.
After successfully taking the all time world record of 275kg, she then went on to bench 305kg in training with the hope to take the 300kg title in 2026. Meanwhile, during early 2025, she took another milestone in the multiply division benching 230kg which was once again an all time world record, the biggest bench ever completed in that discipline over the age of 50 in the M3 division and 265kg in Finland in the unlimited division. She has been hindered by a degenerating elbow condition which she had surgery for in 2016 and was then told she would need major surgery in order to keep the use of the arm in later life. However, this final operation would mean the end of her competing career.
In August 2025, on a build up to competition in the USA to try and bench 300kg and break another all time world record, she broke her elbow in a fall, the one requiring surgery. She then spent 3 months unable to weight bear until late October 2025 when she was permitted to begin weight bearing again. She then began a new build up from the empty bar to compete in the A/WPC European Championships 2026 and benched 220kg in the multiply division, not only take the WPC World Record, but also breaking the all time world in the M4 division of the biggest ever multiply bench press by a woman is history, beating the previous record by 65kg. She is now getting ready for the 2026 WPC World Championships.
She is married to Kalle, who is also a competitive benchpresser and the holds the title of biggest bench press attained in Europe of 505kg. Kalle completed and passed his PhD this year and is a full time script writer as well as having been a professional actor in his home country of Finland. They live a semi-nomadic life due to the amount of international travel from work and competing and the federation.
Dr Emma Ylitalo-James intends to speed up, not slow down within the realms of her work and competing and sees no reason for age to be anything but a good reason to take better care of yourself. She is incredibly proud of the 2500 strong members of the federation and is ferocious about defending her lifters right to have the best and most performance productive experience on platform and demands a lifter centred approach from all the referees. Some people and referees dont last long with her, but then, it is better for the competitors if they dont!
She currently holds the biggest bench press by any woman in history in the UK as well as multiple all time world records, WPC World records and has a history of being the first female to achieve many bench press records.
