E41 | Dr. Jan Todd: A Giant Amongst Men

[00:00:00] Donnie Maib: Welcome to the team behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Maid. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team-based model approach to ethic, performance, strength and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health and wellness, and sports nutrition.

[00:00:21] Donnie Maib: Hello and welcome back to the team Behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Mabe, and we are well into 2023. And I’ll tell you what, this year I’m so excited to kick off our podcast. We have a special guest we’ll get to in a minute, but first and foremost, uh, Joe Craik out this month. I got another co-host in the house.

[00:00:44] Donnie Maib: You all should know Coach Clint Martin. Coach, what is going on? It’s all good. Good to be back in the booth. Coach, before we get to our guests, who you’re gonna introduce in a moment, coach, how was your fall? 2 20 22? How was it?

[00:00:55] Joseph Krawczyk: Fall has been great. I mean, it was looking up, obviously UT Athletics had a really good year in 22 or 21, I guess Finishing 21, starting early 22.

[00:01:05] Joseph Krawczyk: So fall high expectations, and I think we’ll meet ’em,

[00:01:08] Donnie Maib: coach. I know you will. And, uh, we’re looking forward to this new year. With that, would you do, uh, the, the honors of introducing, introducing our honored guest today?

[00:01:17] Joseph Krawczyk: Absolutely. Today we are so fortunate to have Dr. Jan Todd, um, in the studio with us Doctor.

[00:01:25] Joseph Krawczyk: She’s got her PhD. She is the department chair of the kin department, honor lecturer. Really most importantly for me, she is an awesome friend and at this point I’d say she’s family to us. Uh, there’s not enough titles in the world to give Jan and to let you guys know what she means to us. But if you had to give her one word, I would say strong.

[00:01:46] Joseph Krawczyk: I would, I would say strong. I

[00:01:47] Dr. Jan Todd: like it. I’ll take that . I’ll take that . Thanks for Dr. Todd. Thanks for being here with us today. Oh, this is fun. And I’m really glad to do this. And I think you do know that you and Donnie and most of athletic staff down there underneath the the North End zone are people I consider to be family.

[00:02:01] Dr. Jan Todd: And, and if I can just say one little shout out, um, so people understand who you guys are. When in 2013, when Terry and I were flooded and our house was four feet of water in it, when we had the Onion Creek flood, just wanted to let people know that like the first group of folks who showed up at my door were Donnie and Clint and other people from the athletic department, Trey Zda and Sandy.

[00:02:24] Dr. Jan Todd: And Sandy Abney, and even Trey Hardy, the Olympian, who I didn’t really know that well, but you guys came out. And that was a thing that I will never forget for the rest of my.

[00:02:35] Joseph Krawczyk: Family. Absolutely. 100% to the core. Yeah. That’s what

[00:02:39] Dr. Jan Todd: you are to us. I think really though people don’t understand that, like, I was thinking about this the other day, that one of the things about UT that the public doesn’t see cuz they see like the big university, is there are actually families within, within, inside this institution.

[00:02:53] Dr. Jan Todd: You know, circles of friends who interacted with each other and um, and who are there for each other in really important ways. And uh, and I’ve always felt, you know, coming in like I did with my husband Terry Todd back in the early eighties when we moved back to Austin, it’s like we were welcomed by the strength community here.

[00:03:11] Dr. Jan Todd: The elderly strength coaches like Jeff Madden and other folks that I admired so much. But it’s also been like, it’s also that it’s like your family. It’s like you always have those guys to go to when you need some support or just even a good conversation, which is why I’m here today.

[00:03:28] Joseph Krawczyk: We love it. We love it.

[00:03:30] Joseph Krawczyk: So. For those of you who don’t know who she is, we’re gonna give her the mic and let her talk a little bit. We’re just gonna get into the easy piece of like, how did you get into

[00:03:41] Dr. Jan Todd: strength? So actually I grew up before Title IX passed, and so because of that I didn’t do a lot of sports in high school. We didn’t really have the girls sports teams in my school.

[00:03:51] Dr. Jan Todd: I did swim on a private club team for a while and I played a little softball on a rec sports team on for the town. But when I went to the university, I met Terry Todd. Fell in love with him. We got married, um, actually during my senior year of school, I had never met anybody really who’d lifted weights. I had never seen anybody who’d lifted weights in the kind of the way that Terry Todd had done.

[00:04:14] Dr. Jan Todd: And Terry, for those of you who don’t know, was also a faculty member here at ut and was also before that both the working journalist and the national champion in men’s, the first national champion in men’s power lifting in the heavyweight class and also a national Olympic lifting champion. So he was really much a groundbreaker pioneer.

[00:04:36] Dr. Jan Todd: And then as a writer, he helped to create what I call the iron Game. In other words, to give publicity to all the strength sports and also to be somewhat of a visionary in thinking about new things that we could try, which we’ll talk about maybe a little bit later. But back to me. So when I met him and married him, I started going to the gym with him and hanging out and doing.

[00:04:57] Dr. Jan Todd: The light stuff that girls normally do when they go to the gym. And I wasn’t really very engaged by that. And in 70, let’s see, might’ve been 73, we came home to Austin. I met, uh, a young woman who was training at a club here in Austin that’s gone now. Used to be called, uh, the Texas Athletic Club. Used to be down on 13th Street, and she was deadlifting that day in the gym.

[00:05:21] Dr. Jan Todd: It was the first woman I ever really saw lift weights. And it turned out that she was competing on a men’s team in men’s power lifting contest as their lightweight lifter. And, um, and so she was there and I was like, , what are you doing? And she was working up in the deadlift and she showed me, and Terry was there of course, and he was nodding his head in great appreciation of this

[00:05:42] Dr. Jan Todd: And so I, so I weighed, you know, I weighed like 165 pounds then and I deadlifted 225 pounds that day, the first time I tried it. So I worked up with her and I was like, . Oh, that was kind of interesting cuz I hadn’t really thought of myself as a strong person. Um, I was smart, you know, I was a good student.

[00:06:01] Dr. Jan Todd: That kind of, I mean, I had those things going on. But anyway, riding home in the car, Terry said to me, you know, I think you could train and you could maybe be a lot stronger. . But in 73, we didn’t have any organized weight sports for women. Power lifting doesn’t start officially till 1977. Women’s weightlifting starts after that.

[00:06:23] Dr. Jan Todd: Women’s body building starts officially after that. And so there wasn’t like a room full of other women that I could go or some contest where I could go to. But I decided, um, we discovered in the Guinness Book of Records that there were like two lifts in the Guinness Book at that time for women. One was an overhead lift that was supposedly done by Katie Sandino, which I think they listed it like 286 pounds.

[00:06:49] Dr. Jan Todd: I didn’t figure that was in the carts right away, but they listed a deadlift of 392 pounds for this woman named Jane Deley. And I don’t know why, but I just thought, oh, that would be interesting to see if I could break that record. And so we then, Changed what I was doing in my workouts. Terry was very encouraging and supportive.

[00:07:10] Dr. Jan Todd: And again, there was noth, there was no meat to go to with full of women. But about a year later I went to Chattanooga, Tennessee and Deadlifted 394 and a half pounds and got in the Guinness Booker records for the first time. And that changed my life because when I went home to Macon, Georgia, where we were at the time, cuz I had been a student at Mercer University when I went home to Macon then, and of course Terry always had media connections, as you guys know, he was terribly connected to everybody

[00:07:42] Dr. Jan Todd: And so this reporter calls from the Macon News and wants to come out and interview me about my lift. And it is like, remember this is right after Title IX has passed, women doing sports in general is kind of new and rare. And so this man came out and interviewed me and, and he asked this important question when he said, well, okay, well what’s next?

[00:08:02] Dr. Jan Todd: And I hadn’t thought about what was next. I mean, I was like doing this kind of like a lark, you know? It’s like there isn’t any sport here. I’m just gonna go do this. And so when we finished the interview and he says, what’s next? I was like, the first thing outta my mouth was, oh, well I don’t know. You know, I know power lifting has a total, and it would be really cool to be the first woman to total a thousand pounds.

[00:08:25] Dr. Jan Todd: And of course that got printed in the paper . And then no pressure. No pressure. But also, I hadn’t really been squatting at that time or bench pressing, and my bench always sucked anyway. I mean, I was terrible at the bench. And it was like, but then you put it out there and then you think, okay, well I guess I’ll try that.

[00:08:42] Dr. Jan Todd: Mm-hmm. . And that was really how it started. And so I did that. Um, we, Terry and I moved up to Nova Scotia in 75. Little interruption in training because of that. But we found some training partners at Dalhousie University where he was a faculty member. And that first year we were there, I was actually the secretary for the music department.

[00:09:02] Dr. Jan Todd: Oh, wow. Yeah. So that’s where my academic career started. Secretary for the music department. That’s pretty

[00:09:06] Donnie Maib: cool. It’s a cool path. That’s cool.

[00:09:08] Dr. Jan Todd: The career path is starting. Well, yeah, because you, I mean, my majors are English and philosophy as an undergrad, so I’m, I’m the least qualified person in some ways to be teaching or to be the chair now of kinesiology perhaps.

[00:09:20] Dr. Jan Todd: That’s awesome. Yeah. So anyway, um, and so, About a year after that, I went up to Nova Scotia and, I mean, excuse me. I went to Newfoundland for a competition up there and broke the thousand pound total. And in those days, sports Illustrated had a little feature called Faces in the Crowd. I remember that. Yeah.

[00:09:40] Dr. Jan Todd: A little pictures. I love this. Yeah. Part. Yeah. So you can find me in 77 in faces in the crowd, in my, since my school picture, my long hair. And uh, and somebody at SI then decided that they needed to figure out who this woman was who was lifting weights, right. And so they then sent a reporter up to Nova Scotia where we lived on a farm in the country.

[00:10:03] Dr. Jan Todd: We were kind of doing a, well, I think Donna, you know, we always had ranches and places in the country and stuff like that. And uh, and so they sent a reporter up who was supposed to write a column. Like a, just a single thing and instead decided that we were unusual cuz I mean, it is unusual to have a professor who’s doing what he’s doing and then his wife is lifting weights and didn’t make a whole lot of sense at first.

[00:10:28] Dr. Jan Todd: But, um, as you guys know and remember, Terry was an amazingly. Interesting, complicated man, and really knowledgeable about all kinds of things. And so it ended up as a big feature story in Sports Illustrated, which for me then led to more things. But one of the things that happened about that, and I just wanna, and I’ll wrap this up real quick, is that.

[00:10:51] Dr. Jan Todd: Because when that article came out in Sports Illustrated, which was in November of 77, as I recall, I started getting letters from other women, some of whom were track athletes, which I know you Clint will appreciate. They were girls who had been told by their coaches that they should start lifting weights for throwing the shot at the discos for, you know, even the sprinters.

[00:11:12] Dr. Jan Todd: And they had resisted that. And I got notes from a number of girls, which I still have and saved, saying I really want to thank you for what you’re doing and the fact that you were in Sports Illustrated and we can see, you know, I’m married, I’m, you know, cuz all, all those confusions that we had in the seventies about what women would look like if they lifted weights and how, and you know, what that would mean.

[00:11:35] Dr. Jan Todd: You know, um, it, I could tell that, and I didn’t intend this, but I could tell that weirdly what I was doing had some political impact Sure. For their women. So anyway, that’s how it started. And then it. just went on and you know, I was in the Guinness Book for, I don’t know, 13, 14 years, something like that. I did, yeah.

[00:11:57] Dr. Jan Todd: Phenomenal. I did a lot. But it was early too. It’s early. It’s always easy to be the record setter in the early stages of a sport, and I’ll admit that we’re not gonna downplay

[00:12:07] Joseph Krawczyk: that. No thousand

[00:12:08] Donnie Maib: pound total. The courage, the courage and the mentality it took for you to step out into an area nobody had ever done.

[00:12:13] Donnie Maib: That’s, that takes so much. And that’s the thing that it still marks your life today. You’re still that same person.

[00:12:20] Dr. Jan Todd: Well, you know, the Sports Illustrated de described me as the strongest one in the world. Right. And that led to Carson and People Magazine and a bunch of other opportunities. And the Guinness people had me appear for them in, you know, state fairs where they had like the Guinness booth and, you know, and for after, after I, we, I left, you know, I, I only worked at Dalhousie one year.

[00:12:42] Dr. Jan Todd: I taught public school a couple years, and I had a team of girls then that I trained from high school who actually went to the first Women’s Nationals with me. Um, but it was, it. , it was always sort of done in this like that era of like, is it still, is it okay for women to be lifting weights? We still had to navigate all that.

[00:13:02] Dr. Jan Todd: My own mother was not a huge fan, as you can imagine. Sure, of course. Yeah. Uh, cuz it was so unusual. But, um, but I competed for a long time. I was there at the birth, you know, at the first women’s nationals lifted in that I was really involved in the organization, the women’s spiral lifting. I actually helped draft the original rules for girls for sport, for power lifting.

[00:13:24] Dr. Jan Todd: Didn’t know that either. You didn’t know that. Yeah, that, yeah. I was the na I wasn’t then first National women’s chairman because I was living in Canada at that time. But I was, um, when Terry and I moved back the following year, I became the National Women’s Chairman and I was National Women’s Chairman and then I was International Women’s Chairman.

[00:13:41] Dr. Jan Todd: Um, I actually coached the National women’s team twice in the early eighties, but in. I mean, one of the other oddities of my life is that in 81 and 84, I was actually the national men’s team coach at the World’s Championships. Wow. Yeah. So that’s

[00:14:00] Donnie Maib: different. That’s that’s not, that’s against the

[00:14:02] Dr. Jan Todd: grain.

[00:14:02] Dr. Jan Todd: That’s, well, it was interesting because, The guys supported that. Cuz I actually, by that time, I mean I was friends with most of the top male lifters because Terry and I would go to the men’s nationals. Kami was living with us at our house. You know, around that time Lamar Gantt stayed with us at our house.

[00:14:19] Dr. Jan Todd: Terry. Terry and I keep adopting people in different ways. did know that one, I for sure knew that Mark, like Mark Henry later. Mark Henry. Yep. Like Mark later. But there were earlier versions of that as well. And uh, and so there were people like at the national meets, we would go and, I mean, you know, I was by that by, you know, by 80 or so.

[00:14:40] Dr. Jan Todd: There were college students that I was coaching at Auburn and other kind of things that we were doing. And so like when I took the men’s team to Calcutta, India mm-hmm. , which is a historic trip I will never forget. And, um, with lots of controversy that kind of goes beyond what we’re talking about here today.

[00:14:59] Dr. Jan Todd: But, um, anyway, but we won and, and when I was there, um, Somebody said to me, I’m not sure if there’s ever been a woman coach, a men’s team at a world championships. No. And I said, well, I’m sure there hasn’t been in power lifting. And then the guy said to me, he said, I mean, in any sport, which is actually kind of a thing to think about, right?

[00:15:24] Dr. Jan Todd: I

[00:15:24] Donnie Maib: mean, you might need to go back what you think modern day. That’s the big buzz now women crossing over into baseball and football now. It’s

[00:15:29] Joseph Krawczyk: just starting to happen now. So that was, you were doing that

[00:15:31] Dr. Jan Todd: back then. So Yeah, this was early eighties. Just

[00:15:34] Donnie Maib: didn’t get the notoriety

[00:15:35] Dr. Jan Todd: It did, you know? Well, it did in India.

[00:15:38] Dr. Jan Todd: because in India when we were there, they televised the whole, the whole World Championships, right? Was on tv all five days of it. And so Calcutta is this incredible, at that time was this incredible city full of, you know, decay. Um, you know, like the, the vestiges of the British Empire, the, all these big colonial buildings are, you know, are crumbling apart.

[00:16:00] Dr. Jan Todd: The streets are filled with people who are homeless. I saw more children there in one that week with, who were missing limbs than I ever saw in my life. And the poverty was just overwhelming. And, but, It’s sort of like their version of bbc. Like we were on the state TV all day long, every day with the contest.

[00:16:20] Dr. Jan Todd: And it got to where I couldn’t, I’m not lying, I couldn’t go out of the hotel without my guys around me because as soon as I would go out, they were yelling, Madam Coach, Madam Coach. Wow. Yeah. And then, and so Ernie Hackett and Mike Bridges and some of those guys were like my bodyguards. And we all laughed about it, cuz of course we came home and.

[00:16:39] Dr. Jan Todd: Nobody knows . Yeah. That’s a good body guys shows how, but it shows also the power of the, of television Absolutely. To help things, so. Absolutely.

[00:16:47] Donnie Maib: Well, good. We’ll segue, uh, thank you for sharing all that. I think a good piece here I’d love to circle back on is talk about Terry for a moment. Absolutely. Um, just real quick, my first, I remember first meeting, uh, you and Terry.

[00:17:02] Donnie Maib: I was a very young green strength coach in 1998, uh, 28 years old. This is what I remember the most Clint about when I first met him. Like, who are these people that keep coming to the weight room? Cuz we were, I was working with football and Mad Dogs. Jeff Madden was our, his shrink coach at the time. And I go, they seem very important and, but th this is what was throwing me off.

[00:17:25] Donnie Maib: They’re super nice. Um, and they’re talking to me. I’m the little peon on the, on the bottom of . So they’re treating me really nice, you know, which is, you don’t always see that in athletics. Right. And. The one thing I remember about Terry was Terry was always just so insightful. Like he would be watching and taking, paying attention and taking notes and you didn’t know it.

[00:17:46] Donnie Maib: And so my best memories of of Terry is just him hanging out on the weight room floor just talking about life and always got into training. And uh, so you guys, I think if I could sum up in one word, you guys are selfless. You guys give all the time and you never expect anything back, which is a rare trait to find.

[00:18:06] Donnie Maib: So Terry, just great memories, obviously, uh, honorable man, the mu as much as he’s done for our profession, we thank you. But what’s your, one of your fondest memories of Terry you’d like to

[00:18:15] Dr. Jan Todd: share? Oh wow.

[00:18:18] Joseph Krawczyk: I’m sure you’ll have

[00:18:18] Dr. Jan Todd: plethora. Well, yeah, I mean I have lots of, I’m trying to think about something that’s strength related.

[00:18:24] Dr. Jan Todd: Um, I remember the, well, I remember the very first time I was aware of him. I can tell that real quickly. And this cuz it’s, you’ll laugh at this. I hope so. I met him for the first time, or saw him for the first time when he came in to do a lecture at Mercer University when I was a freshman. Okay. Okay. And so he walks into this auditorium, there’s like 150 students there, and he’s got on blue jeans and this is, you know, early seventies blue jeans and a short sleeved shirt with, and I’m making a motion here so that the sleeves are kind of higher on the biceps than they would normally be.

[00:18:56] Dr. Jan Todd: And it’s a dress shirt with a buttons down the front and. and he has this really distinctive look cuz he weighed about two 50, then he looked more like a bodybuilder than anybody I’d ever seen in person. And he turns around, introduces himself and says, I’m gonna write, and this is before PowerPoints, I’m gonna write the title of the lecture on the board.

[00:19:15] Dr. Jan Todd: And the title of the lecture was, are You Ready? It was the educational value of hucking around that would get everybody’s attention. Well, not just attention the educational Yes. Of you know, I remember this story That’s a show stopper. That’s show I told it at the funeral. Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, and that, and I told it, I told this story at his funeral because as a student sitting there, I was like, That’s, do I laugh because, and then everybody else laughed because the book we were reading was Huckleberry Finn.

[00:19:47] Dr. Jan Todd: Sure. That was what he was doing. But that was Terry. I mean, like, he could take anything and make it interesting and put a twist on it. And he used humor over and over again to teach lessons. And I know one of the things about him that, you know, Terry was very committed to the civil rights movement. And, um, I remember Lance Blanks telling me one time that he had a class with Terry when he taught here at ut.

[00:20:13] Dr. Jan Todd: And he said, you know, I think he was the first professor that ever talked about race in class with me. Wow. Yeah. And that’s kind of who he was. But on a personal level, um, like when I think about, you know, my moments with him and like, like special moments with him, I think some of those moments came when like, and I, and I’m thinking more recently, like.

[00:20:36] Dr. Jan Todd: the day we met Mark Henry and I saw him, mark, we met Mark when he was still in high school. And uh, for those of you who don’t know, mark is a WWE superstar in their hall of fame. He was also twice the, uh, national, I mean twice Olympian and I, seven or eight time national champion in, in weightlifting. A phenomenal athlete still lives here in Austin.

[00:20:58] Dr. Jan Todd: And um, and also has a wonderful grandson right now who is tearing up the field for Lake Travis. Yeah, I see, I see news clippings all the time about Jacob, Jacob, Todd Henry, his son, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is my grandson? Oh, your grandson Officially. He’s officially my grandson. Is he listen to you?

[00:21:15] Dr. Jan Todd: Huh? Does he listen? He does actually. Yeah. All right. Anyway, very proud of Mark and Jacob and Joanna, his younger sister and the whole family. So in any case, but I remember like Terry was the kind of person who could watch Mark lift in a high school meet, which he did, and then. Understand the potential that was there in people.

[00:21:37] Dr. Jan Todd: And we then had a conversation where we sat down together and, and Terry was asking him about, well, what are you gonna do? Where, what’s your goal? Because you would sort of think automatically that Mark would go play football someplace. Right. Um, but he’d been hurt. and hadn’t had the season he wanted to have.

[00:21:53] Dr. Jan Todd: And so, and Terry, and then he said, but you know what I really would love to do? He said, I always kind of thought it would be neat to be like Va, Cecilia, Alexia of the great weightlifter. And for Terry, that was all he needed to, to hear, to think about, okay, well we’re gonna. Let’s see what we can do. So he moved in with us a little bit later and that was when Angel Spaso was first here.

[00:22:15] Dr. Jan Todd: Another great strength coach that we’ve had here at the University of Texas. And Angel had worked in Bulgaria with the Olympic weightlifters, and Angel also understood that though Mark had never done Olympic lifting, and it’s really late to try to start that when you’re about 19. You know, mark was not a normal kid.

[00:22:32] Dr. Jan Todd: I mean, he was 380 pounds, about six three. He squatted over 800 pounds at that high school meet. He benched over 500 pounds, as I recall. He’s still a senior in high school at this age. Yeah. And uh, but the other important thing about him and the thing that Angel spas off understood the Bulgarian strength coach who then helped him get started, um, with weight Olympic weightlifting, was that he could do a front to back split, just like a cheerleader could and he could dunk a basketball.

[00:23:01] Dr. Jan Todd: And you think about elevating, that’s what’s my at three 80? Yeah. Yeah. He was actually in the Slam Fest several years. . Yeah. I mean doing, he could really dunk at three 80. And uh, and if you think about, about that in terms of like power output, that’s just unbelievable. Oh, it’s

[00:23:16] Donnie Maib: unbelievable. Yeah. To elevate that fast.

[00:23:18] Donnie Maib: Yeah. And also absorb. Yeah. That’s incredible. Yeah. Well, hey, I want to, I want to get a little bit into talking about stereo, the Stark Center, just for a second. So, the Stark Center’s mission is dedicated to acquiring, providing access to archival materials in the fields of physical culture and sports. Uh, supporting and conducting humanities-based, research related to health, human performance, competitive sport, physical culture and body.

[00:23:45] Donnie Maib: Preserving the history of physical culture in sports, and educating the public about the cultural and scientific significance of physical cultures of sports through publications, digitization, web-based initiatives, and museum exhibits. That’s a mouthful. What do you think? , you’re setting out your legacy.

[00:24:04] Donnie Maib: What are you setting out to do? What, what’s kind of the, the end

[00:24:06] Dr. Jan Todd: goal there? Let me back up just a second and sort of explain a little bit about what this is and how it started, if I could. Absolutely. Um, so when Terry Todd was a doctoral student here at UT in the sixties, he wanted to write about the history of weightlifting, and that was what he wanted to do for his dissertation.

[00:24:24] Dr. Jan Todd: If you think about institutions like universities, like part of what we do as universities is we preserve knowledge. Like we’re we, we save things. I mean that’s, we do that by writing textbooks that say, this is what we need to know about exercise physiology. But we also do it by creating libraries and special collections and things like that, that the institution then sub provides and supports, provides support for.

[00:24:48] Dr. Jan Todd: So in Terry’s case, when he. Active lifter wanting to write about the sport he loved and that he also understood probably before most people in America, the value of weight training for sport. You know, I mean this is, he’s living through this era when there aren’t strength coaches and then we’re going to start having strength coaches and the N S C A is gonna be coming along.

[00:25:10] Dr. Jan Todd: He was fully aware of all that and he really understood that like most institutional libraries had almost nothing related to strength and weightlifting or training in their collections. And so he, for his dissertation, found a guy up in Pennsylvania who had a large private collection. He used his collection and then he decided, you know, on his own nickel to start thinking about we have to.

[00:25:36] Dr. Jan Todd: Collecting this stuff, somebody has to start saving it. And he actually thought that Ottley Coulter’s collection should have come to Texas back in the sixties. And Mr. Coulter actually came down and talked about this in the sixties with the librarians, and then it didn’t happen. So when Ottley Coulter died in the seventies, after I had become involved with lifting, we were living in Canada at the time, and when Ottley died, his family contacted Terry and said, Hey, dad’s stuff is here and we’re gonna sell it.

[00:26:04] Dr. Jan Todd: And he said to call you first. So Terry and I had like zero money at that time. We just, you know, we’re young, we’re newly, newly married and all this. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, like, you know, it’s not, it’s what it is. And, um, in any case, so we, Terry said to me, , we really have to save this. And so we went down to, to near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and, uh, worked out a deal with his family.

[00:26:29] Dr. Jan Todd: We bought the collection. Terry then left me to pack it. He had to go on to do more important things, which was okay, . That happened often in our relationship. But I hired, um, a, a grandson of Mr. Coulter’s and I packed 385 boxes of materials at his. I also fell through the ceiling spec. That’s a lot. My gosh, that’s a lot.

[00:26:50] Dr. Jan Todd: Spectacularly. They had fell through the ceiling. Yeah, they, cuz it was all up in his attic and they actually had his weekend or something. Well, they had a, they had moved a staircase. It was an old Victorian house and at some point they had moved a staircase and so there was a section of this, of the attic, which I didn’t know about that was only Sheetrock like there.

[00:27:08] Dr. Jan Todd: And I was walking, carrying a box, just going across the floor and truly fell all the way through the 10 foot ceiling down to the living room below where the family is sitting at the couch tv. It’s a movie. Literally. Movie scene. Well, no. And they’re on, they’re eating tv. On TV trays and where I happen to land, and I swear to God this is true, I land exactly on top of the television with the box kind of in my lap, and the TV explodes cuz it has one of those old, you know, um, big tubes in it.

[00:27:39] Dr. Jan Todd: Oh yeah. You know, that makes the picture. And then I fall over to the side into a bookcase. So it’s one of those fairly flimsy metal bookcases that cuts you up. And so anyway, but I wasn’t hurt. Thank God for my bone mass being what she is. And so because, and that was probably like a Friday or something cuz I was doing an exhibition with Larry Pacifico, the great.

[00:28:03] Dr. Jan Todd: You know, power Lifter? Oh yeah. In Ohio, like on Monday we were doing a sort of promotional thing there. We were gonna try to do a double deadlift world record to promote the world championships. Yes. Yeah. And um, and I, that was the first thing I thought about was, uh, what’s gonna happen here? But we, we made the record anyway, so it was good.

[00:28:22] Dr. Jan Todd: What was that record? Uh, 1100 pounds. .

[00:28:25] Donnie Maib: Nothing

[00:28:26] Dr. Jan Todd: big. Something little something. Well, the nice thing about Larry and I was that, um, he probably won’t like me saying this was we were exactly the same height. . No, he won’t like that. He won’t like that. No, that’s okay. But it was perfect because when we were lifting, like the thing with the trick with the double deadlift white’s dangerous is you wanna make sure that your finished position is so that the hands are all the same.

[00:28:48] Dr. Jan Todd: So it doesn’t really matter what leg lengths are body limp. It’s just, it’s where the hands end up. Sure. And we actually matched up. So anyway, that was fun. That’s awesome. But, um, but that was kind of the start of the collection and then, and so over the years we kept adding to it. We brought our collection as it was in 83 with us when we came back to campus.

[00:29:09] Dr. Jan Todd: When we moved into the North end zone where the Stark Center is right now. We moved more than 3000 boxes of materials. Oh my goodness. We have the LAR 3000 boxes and book carts and other kinds of odd things. And we have lots of course of ways. But the thing that Terry and I realized along the way was that given the importance of strength and conditioning to the entire world of sports and to the world of health, which we don’t really talk about as much as we should, I mean, but there’s just no question that lifting weights as you age is one of the most important things that you can do.

[00:29:42] Dr. Jan Todd: Um, and so, , we, you know, I say we, but it’s was originally Terry, but then also me. We continue to try to do that and to, so we really have the largest collection in the world now in that field there at the Stark Center, including lots of really, really rare personal papers. Um, like George Hacken, Schmidt’s original scrapbooks, pudgy Stockton from Mussell Beach.

[00:30:05] Dr. Jan Todd: We have all of her stuff and all of that. . But the other side of what we do, and you mentioned the sports side, is that we do collect materials and have a library that people can come and use related to general sports, but also in particular, we’re also the depository now for UT Athletics. And so when Yeah, I know that.

[00:30:25] Dr. Jan Todd: Yeah. So when, hmm. When you guys moved out of the west side of Belmont Hall and all those media relation files that Nick Vois used to be in charge of, all of those files are now at the University of Texas and since then, Mack Brown, Jody Conrad, Chris Plansky, um, Augie Garrido, I could go on and on and on.

[00:30:46] Dr. Jan Todd: All of those people have donated stuff to our collections. So for example, I have Darrell Royal’s scrap. Oh my gosh. I’ve got his, I have like, I have over 20 scrapbook that were kept by Tom Kite’s mom, uh, all through his golfing. The golfer. Yeah, the golfer, the famous golfer. We have Ben Crenshaw’s stuff. We have things from all kinds of people and, um, and you know, I mean, There’s just dozens of UT athletes who have now started donating things to us.

[00:31:18] Dr. Jan Todd: And one of the things that I really hope people can appreciate and understand is that that is as important a mission for us because not only because we’re here, but also because there’s more student interest in some ways in those kinds of materials than there are in other things. I mean, like Terry and I were over with Mac Brown, um, you know, he always had his staff meetings on Wednesday mornings.

[00:31:40] Dr. Jan Todd: You remember that? Yeah. Yep. And so the last Wednesday that he was in his office, he invited us to come over and help him make choices of what would get saved. So I have actually some of his daytimers where he would have his notes Yeah, yeah. About what he was gonna do. They have notes in them, like what he was gonna say at, at halftime until the team.

[00:31:58] Dr. Jan Todd: And so some of that stuff is really wonderful. I

[00:32:01] Donnie Maib: got this, I gotta pull this out, Clint. Yeah. Um, cuz she’s got me thinking about it. One of my favorite is Arnold Schwarzenegger. You guys are mm-hmm. are good friends with him. Uh, and I know this, I’m jumping ahead a little bit, but like That’s okay. Talk about Arnold in kind of your relationship and kind of, because he’s been in the Stark Center and he

[00:32:19] Dr. Jan Todd: has, in fact we have a new exhibit that’s we just put up, um, that, um, actually is filled with material that Arnold sent us that, um, so in, in the.

[00:32:33] Dr. Jan Todd: Most people are aware that somewhere in the, in the early days of sort of cable TV people began looking for all kinds of new TV shows. And one of the early inventions was a show called, uh, the World’s Strongest Man that started in the late seventies. Terry actually was involved in the first couple years of that show, and then, but it has gone on.

[00:32:54] Dr. Jan Todd: It’s one of these long-standing success stories. And so it’s also though interesting, it started as a TV show, but that TV show actually created a sport, which is the sport that we now call strongman. And so in the nineties, Um, as the sport was getting bigger and bigger and there was more interest, especially in Europe and other countries, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been a friend for a long time, um, and asked Terry, um, and me, but more Terry than me in the, in the beginning, asked us about the possibility of creating a special strongman show for his sports festival that he does every year in Columbus, Ohio.

[00:33:36] Dr. Jan Todd: And I was actually on the phone with my, you know, with Arnold’s office this morning, in fact. Yeah, that’s good. About the fact that of what we’re gonna be doing in, in, um, March of 2023 when we’re gonna be doing for the first time. what we now call the Arnold Strongman Classic. But for the first time this year, we’re also having a, the same kind of contest for women, which we’re gonna be calling the Arnold Strongwoman Classic.

[00:34:02] Dr. Jan Todd: No love. Oh, I love that. And I’ll be directing. That’s great. So I’ll be directing both of those. So I’ve already invited, so to back up a second, so in 2002, Terry. Terry and I started running a show for Arnold and his partner Jim Larmer, and Mr. Larmer just passed away. I saw that in the fall to my great regret.

[00:34:20] Dr. Jan Todd: One of the best guys I ever met is, you

[00:34:23] Donnie Maib: know Jim. Yeah. You posted something on him and I took time to read it. I was blown away by, he’s the kind of individual he

[00:34:28] Dr. Jan Todd: was. He was an amazing guy. I mean, and, and for you guys who don’t know anything about track and field history, so in the fifties, this is an aside, in the fifties when, um, the Soviets were beating us all the time at these international meets, cuz especially mainly because our women were bad, our men’s track teams were pretty good, but our women hadn’t, there were no women, you know, except maybe a few women at some of the historically black colleges who were really into track and field.

[00:34:55] Dr. Jan Todd: And so Larmer, who at that time was working for Nationwide Insurance, um, he actually decided, went ho, watched one of these meets, went home to Columbus, Ohio, and decided to form a women’s track team in the fifties. And so he created interracial track teams for girls who were like 13, 14, 15 years old. On his own nickel in the city of Columbus, out of patriotism so that American women could do better in track.

[00:35:21] Dr. Jan Todd: That’s amazing. Yeah. I mean that’s who he was. And um, and then that led him to connections to the A A U, which led him to running some weightlifting meets cuz he was a lifter as well. And that led to his friendship with Arnold, which is how the festival started. Truly one of the most admirable men I ever knew.

[00:35:40] Dr. Jan Todd: And uh, and the other interesting thing about him, he just died at 96, was that when he was in his eighties, he decided to go back and start auditing classes at the University of, at, at, uh, in his eighties at Ohio State. Wow. Yeah, he wanted to stay fresh and so he was taking sport philosophy classes with a guy named Bill Morgan, who I know.

[00:36:02] Dr. Jan Todd: And then he would send me little notes, Hey Jan, what about this? You know what I, he was talking about this in class. What do you think? I mean, it was just, it was just, he was an extraordinary person. Terry and I started the Arnold Strongman Classic. Based around the idea. Not that we should try to find out how much muscular endurance the guys have, but to actually figure out how strong they were.

[00:36:22] Dr. Jan Todd: Because strengthened muscular endurance are not exactly the same thing. And so we were also limited in our thinking about the show by creating events that could be done on a 40 by 40 stage, where in the middle of that you actually have about a 25 by 25 foot square that’s actually solid enough to hold weights cuz of us up on a big platform in a convention center.

[00:36:45] Dr. Jan Todd: So the show became. It changed the sport. I mean, you can look at what we did, the, the ideas for events that we created. Um, I was Terry’s partner through that, along with another guy named Steve Slater, who’s terrific and still runs the show. Um, after Terry passed in 2018, um, they asked me to continue running the show and so Steve and I continue to be partners and, um, we’re gearing up right now for 2023.

[00:37:14] Dr. Jan Todd: Love it.

[00:37:15] Joseph Krawczyk: When was the first Arnold? What

[00:37:16] Dr. Jan Todd: year? The very of the festival or the, or the, the contest of the actual contest. 2000, uh, I’m sorry, 2002. 2002. Yeah. Well, that’s, so we’re, this’ll be 21 years I’ve done it. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so, and it’s true. That’s sort of pulled me away from power lifting in some ways.

[00:37:33] Dr. Jan Todd: And, um, . But I’m very excited, you know, strong women has been, there are a lot of women interested in competing. There are contests for both amateurs and pros and strong women, but we’ve never really had the same sponsorship packages. And this is really because of rogue fitness. Yeah. Who has stepped in to try to, to sort of help with some of these inequities that we’re having in the sport.

[00:37:56] Dr. Jan Todd: And so the contest that we’re gonna be doing in March in Columbus, Ohio, tickets are on sale now. , I should put my little shout in. Huh. But we’re gonna have the men and the women do the exactly the same events. Um, and so that is incredible. And so we’ll actually have as much equity as I can create. And I have to admit, I’m really, I’m really happy that I’m being, I’m able to be part of, of this and bring this to this new opportunity out there for women.

[00:38:26] Dr. Jan Todd: I’m, I like, I like doing this since we’re

[00:38:29] Joseph Krawczyk: talking about the Arnold. Yeah. I, I have to do it like, obviously if you guys are listening. You hear the dates and you hear the names, like she is an academic, right? You understand where she’s coming from. She’s got a full plate, she’s a damn good athlete. Now we, we gotta talk about that, right?

[00:38:42] Joseph Krawczyk: We, we talked about the, the thousand, like a thousand pound or 1100 pound double deadlift. We talked about some other things we’ve done, but. You were the first woman to ever lift the Denny Stones. Yeah, I did do that. You’re the first woman to ever lift the Denny Stones. And it wouldn’t happen for another almost 20 years.

[00:38:56] Joseph Krawczyk: Uh, no

[00:38:57] Dr. Jan Todd: more than that. Yeah.

[00:38:58] Joseph Krawczyk: Like 2018 was the next time it happened.

[00:39:00] Donnie Maib: Explain to Denny Stones real quick before

[00:39:02] Dr. Jan Todd: you I’m gonna, I’ll let you Yeah, because Clint lifted the Denny Stones. Uhoh. .

[00:39:07] Donnie Maib: Come on, Clint. Don’t puff his tires. Don’t dude that didn’t hear. No, no, no. You just

[00:39:10] Dr. Jan Todd: did it. It’s, it’s

[00:39:11] Joseph Krawczyk: funny cuz you talked about earlier, like when you put it out there, then you kind of have to live it.

[00:39:15] Joseph Krawczyk: Yeah. And it’s kind of what happened with you and I like we talked about it and we talked about it and then we put it out there and I was like, oh, I guess I’m gonna try,

[00:39:21] Dr. Jan Todd: because I come to the gym and I watch and I watched Clinton deadlift and deadlift and he’s strong and he’s, I mean, you guys should know he’s really strong.

[00:39:28] Dr. Jan Todd: I’ve seen him pull over 600 pounds a bunch of times. He’s stupid strong. He’s stupid. He’s not stupid strong, but he’s really strong. , I

[00:39:36] Donnie Maib: appreciate you. She brought you down

[00:39:38] Joseph Krawczyk: Aden, the Denny Stones, for those of y’all who don’t know, 733 pounds, something like that. Yeah. 733 pounds between two different stones.

[00:39:46] Joseph Krawczyk: Um, they’re on rings. It’s not even, so it’s kind of a, it’s a weird split. Um, it’s like a little bit more weight in, on the front stone, like 90 pounds or difference or so 733 pounds in total. She lifted them. What was the year you

[00:39:59] Dr. Jan Todd: lifted? I think it was 78 or 79. Okay. So

[00:40:03] Joseph Krawczyk: it hasn’t, it’s a long time ago. No one else did that until 2018.

[00:40:06] Joseph Krawczyk: Right. So that pioneer when it comes to that, um, y’all do that at the Arnold. What was that like? What was that experience like? Well actually doing it and

[00:40:15] Dr. Jan Todd: then that feeling of actually doing it. Well, actually the way that all worked was kind of complicated, but the idea for Terry was very good friends with a man named David Webster in Scotland and, um, who promotes the Highland games.

[00:40:26] Dr. Jan Todd: He also, David was a big part of the start of the Arnold Strongman Classic and lovely guy. And um, and David was actually the person who kind of. Popularized the idea of the Denny Stones. And there have been a few men through the years who were able to go to this remote region of Scotland there at the Patar Bridge outside Aberdeen.

[00:40:49] Dr. Jan Todd: So it’s not like right at the Edinburg airport or something, um, where they would lift the Denny Stones. And it was not a big list at the time that I did this. Um, one of the guys who did it though is the guy who played Darth Vader in the movies and David PRUs, and first guy, of course was Jack Shanks, an Irish policeman who, that’s your size really.

[00:41:10] Dr. Jan Todd: You know, not, not a, not that you’re not a giant, but he’s, I appreciate it. But you’re, you’re not , but you’re not. I’m slender. You’re not a 300 pounder. I’m not. Absolutely not. No, no. So anyway, but, so there was, um, Terry, after the article came out about me, there was some interest. There were opportunities for me to do things in different places.

[00:41:32] Dr. Jan Todd: And so I actually kind of did strength performances. I, when Bill Kazmi was in my life, bill and I repped for a company called Diversified Products. They sponsored us. We used to go and give demonstrations and different kinds of places. Um, I did stuff for the Guinness people on TV and all this kinda stuff.

[00:41:52] Dr. Jan Todd: So anyway. Johnny Carson. Huh? Johnny Carson. I did Johnny Carson, of course, yes. And other things. But the, I could lift, I could squat the side of my car. Did I ever tell you that? I don’t think he ever told me that. I had a fiesta and I could get under the driver’s door and I could pick it up just so that that side of the car would pull up.

[00:42:10] Dr. Jan Todd: It hurt, but I could still do it. But I, but I also learned to do things like drive nails through boards with my hands. I could do . Yeah. I opened for Bill Cosby One. Like,

[00:42:21] Joseph Krawczyk: oh really? Uhhuh . We don’t know that story. Do

[00:42:23] Dr. Jan Todd: you know? Yeah, no, and, and he did not hit on me, which I’m very disappointed by .

[00:42:28] Donnie Maib: He probably was, he might have been a little scared.

[00:42:30] Dr. Jan Todd: I was actually out in Portland at the, uh, state fair out there where he was like the comic headliner, and I was appearing there in a, in for the Guinness World Record people. I did appearances for them, and I, and this is somewhere in the eighties and so and so, I did my little strength act where I drove the nail.

[00:42:47] Dr. Jan Todd: I lifted a bunch of kids on a table, kinda like Paul Anderson did all this kind of stuff. Anyway, somewhere in all that, in the late seventies, this idea of going to. To Scotland and lifting the Denny Stones, um, came up and Sports Illustrated was interested in it because of, kind of as a follow up thing, cuz I was known at that time, if you follow, and Bill Kami had just come into our life at that time and we had met Bill out in California who was a great powerlifting champion and also three times World’s strongest man winner.

[00:43:20] Dr. Jan Todd: And Bill had come into our lives and was living with us. We were at Auburn, Alabama at this time. And so Terry invited Bill to come and, and so we went over and I had, I trained really hard for it. That was when I started doing all those heavy partial movements where I would do, pulls from my knees and then pulls from higher up on my thighs, just trying to lift as much weight as I could to mainly to strengthen my upper girdle, upper upper body structure cuz I’m not.

[00:43:49] Dr. Jan Todd: I’m not big in my upper body, you know, I don’t build a lot of muscle in my upper body. And so I would do, you know, these heavy, heavy lifts. So anyway, but when we got over there and David Webster was gonna meet us in Glasgow and then we were gonna take a car together, the group of us would go up. You know, several hour trip up to Patar where we would try to lift the stones.

[00:44:11] Dr. Jan Todd: And so one of the things that was memorable about that trip was that David had gotten a van, but it was like a utility van and it didn’t have any seats in the back. So, so Kam Myer’s with us, Kaz is weighing probably three 15 at this time. Kaz Kaz. And so Terry’s of course, up front with David, and they’re talking a mile a minute as they like to do about everything.

[00:44:33] Dr. Jan Todd: And, but Kaz and I are in the back in lawn chairs, , woven lawn chairs, and we’re, they’re not tied down to anything. And so we’re kind of like sliding around as we’re going through this. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then Cass stories and then Cass’s chair breaks. And so, cause he’s ginormous, he’s, yeah, cuz he’s ginormous.

[00:44:52] Dr. Jan Todd: And anyway, um, but then the whole. . But then we got there and um, the stones were looked more daunting than I expected them to, and they were really heavy and I didn’t pick ’em up on the first time. And, um, and, um, I had to try ’em. I took three tries before I got ’em cleared. And one of the things that happened was that, um, when I, we had had a thing the night before with a guy who was a local official.

[00:45:22] Dr. Jan Todd: And even though the trip was kind of about me doing the try and bill was kind of the afterthought, and I don’t mean that in the wrong way to Cas, but that was really. That was in the beginning. That was the sort of the plan. Okay. Yeah. Was that, um, uh, this guy had come and like, he had, had scotch and all this kind of stuff for everybody, and then he had presence that he gave to Bill and to Terry, but not to me, which were these, you know, these little knives things.

[00:45:50] Dr. Jan Todd: So it, it’s no big deal. But the next day when I missed it after like the tried it twice and I still can, because for me my legs are shorter. You know, I have relatively short legs, good for squatting, but not so much for the other stuff. Um, but Terry just said, you know, you might want to think about last night and when that guy didn’t give you a knife, like he did the rest of us.

[00:46:11] Dr. Jan Todd: Huh. Yeah. It was kind of good motivation. Yeah. And, and then he just said, you know, and Terry always, always was so good about thinking about like the historic significance of what we were doing, and he just said, you know, you need to think about, you know, You know, think about this, because he said, if you can do it, then later other will st.

[00:46:32] Dr. Jan Todd: Others will too. And, uh, anyway, and then I did it barely, you know, I mean, um, I don’t know. It was, it, the funny thing about it is that in hindsight, like, you know, I, I ended up breaking a thousand, 1100, 1200 pounds in the total. So I hit the, all three of those marks. I did roughly 60 different world or American records in my career.

[00:46:58] Dr. Jan Todd: Um, I lost, I competed in five different body weight classes Oh, wow. And set records in all five body weight classes. Mm-hmm. as a lifter. I did not know that. Yeah. All the way down to 1 46, 1 40 eights. But the thing that people remember most now, and Terry was right, is that Denny. because it was the record that lasted the longest and it was also the thing that at the time seemed least likely that a woman would pick up plus 700 pounds, even though now we know that there are lots of women who can do that.

[00:47:29] Dr. Jan Todd: Cuz I mean, I was in Scotland this summer judging a contest in which there were several women there who picked them right up and ER’s really happy to see that. Yeah, I love that. I love that we have so many women now in involved in sports and. I’d

[00:47:42] Donnie Maib: love to bridge into that a little bit. Um, we definitely have women that listen to this podcast, and I’m still relatively young in, in the field compared to the, the work you’ve done.

[00:47:54] Donnie Maib: I’m,

[00:47:54] Dr. Jan Todd: this my 20, he just turned me under the bus. . Yeah, right. ,

[00:47:57] Donnie Maib: sorry. It just, you’re, you’re like, you’re like, master Yoda. But, um, so 28 years for me, and then even now, today, and Jan, you know, this, like, it’s still hard for women in this profession. So you have been a pioneer. You’ve broken barriers in power lifting, being in hall of fame, one pioneering study of strength.

[00:48:16] Donnie Maib: What would you say to our women listeners out there? Like, you just, it’s like you’re in a, it’s a male dominated field and you go, yeah. Oh, I, that’s okay. I’m just gonna shatter that. What would you say to him? Like, how do you, how have you done that?

[00:48:29] Dr. Jan Todd: Well, I think in the beginning I was, I was lucky that I had.

[00:48:32] Dr. Jan Todd: you know, because like in power lifting, there were women who were, who came in right after me, let’s say, who also started showing up in meets in like 75, 76. And we didn’t really have a national, we didn’t have a women a meet that was just for women until 77. That was called the All American Women’s Open.

[00:48:49] Dr. Jan Todd: Okay. Okay. That was when we can sort of mark the real beginning of women’s power lifting. But there were women in the seventies who were showing up at like contests run by male judges, cuz there aren’t any female judges yet. And they would be told things like, you know, the rules say that you have to lift in a jockstrap and there’s nothing in the rules that says you can wear your bra.

[00:49:09] Dr. Jan Todd: And so if you want to compete in this con, I mean these were guys who were not encouraging women to be there. But I always had Terry with me, you know, who sort of, you know, big presence and. Famous guy, if I can put it that way. And so he helped with that. But I’ll take, I think the secret Donny for me was that, and this is why I think sports are so important and why I will always argue that sports belong at universities, is because sport taught me how to be confident about myself.

[00:49:39] Dr. Jan Todd: So powerful. Yeah. The sport taught me how to not be afraid to speak up for myself, and it also taught me that, that I could try and do things that I never imagined I would do as a girl. I mean, I have to be honest, I did not go through my life in as a kid thinking I’m gonna be a university professor. I became a university professor because my experiences being an athlete and whatever kind of minor celebrity I had in those years as a sort of personality in the world of strength, I was confused and interested in and like wanted to understand why it was that.

[00:50:19] Dr. Jan Todd: The fact that I was doing that as a woman was so unusual to people and what it meant. And for me it was like, , it empowered me in so many ways to Absolutely. To be a better personal, you know, to feel like I could speak mm-hmm. to be a leader, if I can say that. Cuz I think I have some of those qualities, you know, I would say so.

[00:50:37] Dr. Jan Todd: I would say so. Yeah, no question. Question. I mean, it’s very funny, you know, it’s like, I think about, um, a friend of mine recently invited me to go to a lunch thing and he said, but I think you just wanted to warn you. I think all the other guys there will be men are there, all this people there. And I said, that’s not a problem.

[00:50:53] Dr. Jan Todd: I’m not afraid to walk. I love it. It love it. Yeah. I’m not afraid to walk into a room of men and speak to them and have lunch. But I think as an academic, you know, that’s really why I went back cuz I wanted to understand strength. And the more I understood about strength and its importance in people’s lives was it also made me realize that for women, we have actually sold them a bill of goods.

[00:51:14] Dr. Jan Todd: To think that they don’t somehow have the right to be strong. Hmm. But let me just say there is nothing in your life that is better if you’re weak. period. I mean, I don’t care if it’s just, you wanna be, you wanna stay at home and be a mom or whatever you wanna do, but there is no advantage to anybody’s life to try to just say, let me celebrate my weakness.

[00:51:35] Dr. Jan Todd: Absolutely. That’s what I put. Mm-hmm. , you know, I don’t think that makes any sense for women. And uh, and you know, I think that, . One of the other things that I’ve tried to do, and again, I am blessed, you know, that I was married to a man who got it and who also said, go get it. You know, and who understood that if I started, cuz I didn’t take a start, my PhD, so I was in the middle, my middle thirties.

[00:52:00] Dr. Jan Todd: I mean, I didn’t do it in my twenties like most people do. But who understood at that point that, um, that for me to do that he would also have to make some sacrifices in time. His life was gonna be impacted by my desire to go do things, and he was willing to give me that space and say, yeah, we can do that and not support that.

[00:52:19] Dr. Jan Todd: But, but for me, myself, I really think that a lot of it also has to do with, I don’t try to fall back on my, not that I have any feminine while left at this point, but I’ve always just tried to behave like somebody who’s. I’ve always believed I was the equal of anybody. I mean, I’ve al I really do think that, I know I’m not the smartest person in most rooms, but I always believe that I’ll probably work harder.

[00:52:49] Joseph Krawczyk: And I think you’ve proven that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you’re, yeah. One of the smartest people in most rooms, Jan. Well,

[00:52:53] Dr. Jan Todd: I know, but I’m just saying I’m not gonna sell you short. But I’m just saying that it’s, um, I think, and I think those are, again, lessons you learned from.

[00:53:02] Donnie Maib: Yeah. No, I, I mean, I can definitely, I’m glad you said all that.

[00:53:05] Donnie Maib: Thank you for sharing. I think I have four daughters and I fully, you know, can attest to your conviction and your belief that’s made you so amazing. Like, that’s why my daughters, I wanted all them in sport, you know? Yeah. And not that they were, they weren’t, all of ’em weren’t super gifted, but I just wanted in ’em, because of what you just said, they would have more confidence and have more belief in themselves than they would if they didn’t do that.

[00:53:28] Donnie Maib: So strength,

[00:53:30] Joseph Krawczyk: strength training is so empowering. It’s huge. How many times in your day to day do you see someone do something that you can tell they don’t think they can do it? Yeah. And then when they do it, you just see this, oh, I. I am

[00:53:42] Dr. Jan Todd: stronger than I think I am. Well, I think the other thing about lifting that works pers for me personally was I’m a planner.

[00:53:49] Dr. Jan Todd: And so like we would always, like if I was getting ready for our meet, we would figure out 12 to 14 weeks out, we would start, we would sort of lay out the master plan. Mm-hmm. , we would actually kind of figure out, you know, I was using periodization way back before most people were, and then I would sort of set those goals up so that I knew that I was going in a certain direction.

[00:54:08] Dr. Jan Todd: And so hopefully if things worked right, I wouldn’t miss a single rep of that workout that I pre-planned before that competition. And actually it worked pretty well for me. You know, and, and, but that’s, that actually shows you planning works. It also shows you that if you can believe in the process that you can get there.

[00:54:29] Dr. Jan Todd: And I, I’ve, I worry sometimes these days when I talk to folks who are training and, and, and every, every time they turn around, they’re using their app to find a new workout. of the day. And so that the, that kind of systematic approach, I think maybe, and I mean, I’m not saying you can’t stay fit that way cuz you probably can, cuz you’re getting movement and exercise and all that.

[00:54:51] Dr. Jan Todd: But I think if you really have specific goals in mind and you wanna maximize what you’re trying to do, physi physically, I think that you need professional help or at least make yourself into a professional who understands enough that you can actually make the right choices. Yeah.

[00:55:08] Donnie Maib: There’s a book called by Andy Galpin.

[00:55:10] Donnie Maib: I don’t know him that much, but it’s the book’s called Unplugged and whole book’s about what you just said. Like how can you really push the limits physically if you’re always following some technology to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do? And you don’t, you don’t get tuned into your body. So we miss a lot of the application to just be unplugged from that sometimes to know, to find your limits.

[00:55:30] Dr. Jan Todd: Yeah. I, I actually really enjoy CrossFit, not the practice of it, but watching it and seeing the incredible. Fitness levels of some of the, the cross, most of the CrossFit athletes who were at the national level, I mean, you saw them. That’s astounding. Yeah. You know, when we did the Rogue Invitational up here, which is where Clint lifted the Denny Stones, by the way.

[00:55:50] Dr. Jan Todd: that was, it

[00:55:51] Joseph Krawczyk: was pretty, it was incredible

[00:55:52] Dr. Jan Todd: watching those, those athletes. But you see those people and you’re going, oh my God, because, um, they’re, they’re beyond Navy Seals. I’m, I would have to say, in terms of their overall fitness and ability to do things. And, um, we didn’t have people on the planet like that in 1973 when I began lifting weights.

[00:56:12] Dr. Jan Todd: I mean, I think one of the, when I think about why history matters, I think it’s because it’s always easier when we think about like where the lifts are now. Like, do you know what the Women’s Deadlift record is now? I’m not sure. What is it? Over 640 pounds. for women, 640 pounds for women. So, and that’s only possible because, you know, Andrea a couple years ago did six 30 something and before her, somebody does, you know, six 10, you showed it could be done and then, and so you’re pushing that limit.

[00:56:43] Dr. Jan Todd: You’re pushing limit. But it’s also that psychologically, you know, it’s possible. It’s like that four minute mile. It is exactly like the four minute mile banister. Yeah. And because in the year after he ran that there were like three other guys that did the same thing in the next year exponentially more.

[00:56:55] Dr. Jan Todd: Yeah. And that’s what happens.

[00:56:56] Donnie Maib: Quick que Sorry, Clint, I go a question for you ahead here, just to jump into that. I know we’re, we’re getting close to the end here, but Jan just kind of as a historian and looking at where we’re at present day, um, with training or the sport of strength is now what are we, any gaps?

[00:57:11] Donnie Maib: We’re missing? Anything you see that’s just not Oh, you know, talk at high level. You don’t have to be super Yeah,

[00:57:17] Dr. Jan Todd: I, I think it saddens me a little bit that there’s still women who are worried about lifting weights. , and I still think there are a few women that are, but I think, yeah, for the most part we’re over that hurdle.

[00:57:28] Dr. Jan Todd: And I think most young women do that. I do think when I look, and I’m not in the, in the, as you know, I’m not in the weight rooms as much as I used to be, especially now that I’m running the department. Um, but I do think that in terms of like scientific research, we still pay less attention to women than we do to men in terms of how to maximize strength.

[00:57:48] Dr. Jan Todd: Mm-hmm. , I think in general, um, there’s more of a tendency to think. on the behalf of some coaches, but not all that women should still be maybe treated a little bit differently because they’re women. And I’m not, not suggesting there aren’t some psychological reasons why we need to sort of think about that, but um, I remember in AD when I was at a, when we were at Auburn, the woman who was the ad there asked me if I would help them with the women’s basketball team.

[00:58:16] Dr. Jan Todd: And she had some money and she said, I think we should hire you, like as a strength coach for women athletes. And I said, that was great and I’d be willing to help. And you know, I was, you know, Terry was teaching there and so, Anyway, and I was in the office having the meeting with her, but she said, I just wanted to sort of clarify.

[00:58:32] Dr. Jan Todd: She said, now you wouldn’t ask the girls to lift weights when they were having their period, would you? And I was like, well, actually, yeah. I would ask them to lift weights if they felt comfortable doing it. I mean, that wouldn’t be a barrier for me. And I think we’re past all that, you know, thankfully.

[00:58:48] Dr. Jan Todd: Mm-hmm. . Um, but I, it was, I think it takes a while for those ideas to change fully. And, um, so I’m not sure I answered your question exactly. No, you did.

[00:58:59] Donnie Maib: I think, yeah, there’s, there’s definitely still out there, but I mean, a lot of the big hurdles have definitely

[00:59:04] Dr. Jan Todd: been, but I, well, what I do see, I mean, if you look at, do you know how, I mean, if you look at the competitive lists now of the number of women who are involved, Power lifting and Olympic weightlifting, which is huge.

[00:59:18] Dr. Jan Todd: And CrossFit, which is another enormous sport now where women participate. And the much smaller group of women who are participating now in strong women. You know, if we can call it that earth, they still call it strong men as an event. Um, we have to figure out another name for the sport. I mean, it’s incredible to me that there are that many women now in America who are actually competing in competitions.

[00:59:43] Dr. Jan Todd: Given the fact that when we began back in the seventies, I think there were less than 30 women at the first

[00:59:49] Donnie Maib: nationals. Yeah. I mean, I not, I’m not super like, no, all the names, but even recently I’ve just noticed a lot of like Olympic lifters women just moving some big weights for small bodies. Yeah. Like in coaching, you coach long enough, you see somebody that small put that much weight overhead.

[01:00:04] Donnie Maib: Yeah. You’re like, she’s strong. Yeah. You know, I mean, it doesn’t take you even, you look at your teams

[01:00:10] Joseph Krawczyk: like you got some pretty athletic women, right. On a couple like that women’s volleyball program. And track program. We have some really phenomenal athletes. And they don’t

[01:00:19] Donnie Maib: even realize it. They have no, no, they don’t.

[01:00:21] Donnie Maib: The girl that they see, the

[01:00:22] Joseph Krawczyk: girls don’t even know it. They see themselves every day and they’re like, oh yeah, this is what we do people. So if a random person from the general pop came into those weight rooms and saw that going on, they’d have no idea. .

[01:00:31] Dr. Jan Todd: Now, I was gonna say years ago when Mark Henry first came to Austin, which was 90, there was the shot putter here at the time was Eileen Vei, who went onto a career coaching, as you know.

[01:00:41] Dr. Jan Todd: And when she had finished her eligibility, I was in the weight room. Hanging out with Mark and Terry at the time and I started talking to her. I said, you know Eileen, you ought to come over cuz she was moving big weights and she was a big woman, you know, but she was the sh you know, but she was built for her sport of course.

[01:00:58] Dr. Jan Todd: Anyway. And so I finally talked her into coming over to this gym meet we were having, but it was officially sanctioned in old Gregory Jim. And um, and she did like three workouts with Angel Spak and she broke the American records in the Drug-Free Federation at that meet squatted over 500 pounds, benched over 300 pounds.

[01:01:17] Dr. Jan Todd: I mean it was just, and like, and then that was it. She was done. Never, never captured her back again. Check the box, checked that box. And I was like, come on violin, you could do so much. And she said, ah, I’ve got some other stuff to do. So, but that was fun

[01:01:30] Joseph Krawczyk: getting, I know we’re getting closer, um, but I have to ask you.

[01:01:34] Joseph Krawczyk: you’ve seen a lot of really awesome strengths of feet. Mm-hmm. or feats of strength. Sorry. Um, what is one of the most impressive

[01:01:41] Dr. Jan Todd: you’ve seen? Ooh, there’ve been a lot, but I, one, um, if I can tell it quickly, cuz I know we’re getting close on time. Um, shortly after we started the invitation, the Arnold Strongman Classic, I think it was the second year, we brought in this Russian weightlifter who was the best weightlifter in the world named Mihail Co.

[01:01:59] Dr. Jan Todd: Iev. And Misha as we called him, um, was just this phenomenon of like, he had clean and jerked over 500 pounds in the Soviet Union. He’s the real deal. Yeah. He’s the best weightlifter in, in Russia and. Terry wanted him because he wanted the contest to not just be strongman competitors cuz he knew that there were other strong people out there.

[01:02:22] Dr. Jan Todd: So he invited him to come, he came in and he told Terry that he would, he would do it, but he wanted to give an exhibition in Olympic lifting because that was what mattered most to him. That was really his sport. So we have two days of the most heavy stuff you can imagine that the guys do in the Arnold Strongman Classic.

[01:02:42] Dr. Jan Todd: And then after the events, or Misha does really well in the contest, we finish the last event finishes at about 10 o’clock at night. Everybody goes to the bar and Terry and I leave the bar at like one to go up to go to bed. And Misha and several of the strong men are from Europe, are still there drinking and um, and nothing else has been said, but I mean they’re beat up.

[01:03:04] Dr. Jan Todd: I mean these guys are exhausted. And the next morning at seven o’clock we hear a little knock on our door. And I’m not, you know, we’re not awake, we’re just sound asleep. And anyway, and we open the door and there’s Misha standing with his little gym bag and he says, we go exhibition with a question mark

[01:03:25] Dr. Jan Todd: We go exhibition. And Terry’s like, we didn’t think he had remembered and he has just done the Arnold, which is really, really hard. So anyway, Terry makes a couple phone calls and it turns out that there was a kids’ weightlifting competition going on with guys who were like 10 to 14 years old. It’s the only.

[01:03:44] Dr. Jan Todd: And so we end up taking Misha to this children’s ex event over at the convention center, and he then warms up with several lifts and he cleans and jerks through a series of warm, after a series of warms 529 pounds for those kids. What was his body weight? Probably three 15. Wow. That’s weight. Now you have to think about that.

[01:04:10] Dr. Jan Todd: 529 pounds after you’ve done two days of the Arnold. Yeah, early in the morning. And I’m not sure what time he came in, what time he came in. Clearly as he trained and sweated, we were aware that there was a lot of alcohol still in that system. Smell . But I mean honestly it was unbelievable. Like cuz like no crowd there to psych him up.

[01:04:33] Dr. Jan Todd: There’s like 30 kids out there, a couple of old weightlifting coaches, Terry and me. And one of the most amazing things about it was afterward there was a guy who came to take some pictures and the barbells on the floor and um, and the guy said to Misha, he said, Hey, he said, would you pose and like, put your foot up on the plates.

[01:04:52] Dr. Jan Todd: And he looked at the guy like he was crazy and he had some English but not great English. And he said, he said, I do not disrespect the bar. I do not disrespect the bar. And uh, and I was like, wow, this love that,

[01:05:06] Joseph Krawczyk: that’s different. That’s

[01:05:08] Dr. Jan Todd: different coach. So it’s like I like it. I want you to pose, but no, no, he’s not gonna put his foot up there cuz that would disrespect the bar.

[01:05:16] Dr. Jan Todd: So he is a complicated man. He lives way out in Siberia and uh, it was the first time we were ever around him. But he is one of those memorable folks that makes you love sport and likes you. Makes me happy to think about what the world of strength has to teach us about all kinds of things. That’s,

[01:05:39] Joseph Krawczyk: I’m gonna wrap it up here, but the, like, the world of strength.

[01:05:41] Joseph Krawczyk: Like we live in a weight room all day every day. Coach Downey Wright. Yeah. Um, the first time I went to the Invitational with you last year, um, when we were fortunate enough to be able to help and be around, around you was a crew. You were great. It was awesome. going into that space. I remember thinking, oh, you know, this is what we do.

[01:05:58] Joseph Krawczyk: I went into that space and I felt completely out of my element. Right. So it’s, I I, those of you listening, you just got a whole bunch that there is to unpack. I hope you get to see that. There’s so many, there’s so many more things that led to where we are right now. Um, if you haven’t researched those, please do check out The Stark Center.

[01:06:17] Joseph Krawczyk: Stark Center is phenomenal. Get on campus, get to Austin if you get a chance, check out. Yeah. Come to center.

[01:06:21] Dr. Jan Todd: Yeah, it’s open every day. And, and then we have galleries. We have a library where researchers come and do research, but it’s also about education. There’s public exhibits up, there’s a big exhibit up right now about UT football coaches, including some of that Mac Brown material I mentioned.

[01:06:37] Dr. Jan Todd: We love. We

[01:06:38] Joseph Krawczyk: love you. Oh, I know. Thank you

[01:06:39] Dr. Jan Todd: for joining us. I love you. So

[01:06:41] Joseph Krawczyk: thanks for

[01:06:41] Donnie Maib: joining us all you’ve done for us. Where can we find, if somebody wants to go to the Arnold this year, where can they sign up, get tickets on that

[01:06:48] Dr. Jan Todd: again? So the Arnold Sports Festival is called, it’s, it’s Hi in Columbus, Ohio.

[01:06:53] Dr. Jan Todd: Always the first weekend. And just go to the website, Arnold Arnold sports festival.com. It’s in March, right Mar first weekend in March. And, um, and the lifting will, the strongman stuff and strong woman stuff will be on, um, on Friday and Saturday this year. There’ll be some record breaker events that rogue fitness sponsors on Sunday as well.

[01:07:14] Dr. Jan Todd: And, uh, it’s an incredible festival. Um, it’s, it, you know, we have cut back on the, on some of the sports a little bit in the last couple of years, but, um, in one weekend there will be as many athletes competing in the city of Columbus as are in the Olympic Games. Hmm. It’s amazing. Yeah. And some of

[01:07:35] Joseph Krawczyk: those athletes, all of those athletes are phenomenal.

[01:07:37] Joseph Krawczyk: We’ve seen ’em firsthand and it’s mm-hmm. It’s an

[01:07:39] Dr. Jan Todd: awesome space to be in. I think the thing about it is that it changes your idea about human potential. Absolutely.

[01:07:46] Donnie Maib: Absolutely. Yeah. It changes the way you view it and think about it and Yeah. It’s that platform, right, that you just talked about. When you get on a platform like that, it just changes

[01:07:54] Dr. Jan Todd: everything.

[01:07:55] Dr. Jan Todd: Well, I think it’s also when you stand next to somebody like hath Thor Bjornsen who played the mountain and Game of, of Thrones Mountain. Yeah. Who’s one of my good friends. And, um, but when you stand next to Thor and you realize that he’s six feet, nine now, he’s lost a lot of weight. He looks terrific now, but when he was competing, he was lifting at over 400.

[01:08:16] Donnie Maib: and, uh, I met him. You brought him by? Yeah. We got to meet him to the listers, this human being. I, I I felt like he was really literally like a modern day Goliath. . Yeah. I felt like a tiny

[01:08:26] Dr. Jan Todd: person. And Brian Shaw is the same way. I don’t think he show. I met Brian

[01:08:29] Joseph Krawczyk: too. Picture, I don’t think I showed you the picture of me and Brian.

[01:08:32] Joseph Krawczyk: Yeah. Um, the Denny’s was happening. Uh, I’ll have to show you

[01:08:34] Dr. Jan Todd: after this. So Brian Shaw’s six, eight. What’s he weigh over? And he’s still competing. And he looks lean though, like, well, people saw

[01:08:41] Joseph Krawczyk: that picture. They were like, his shoulder is as big as your head . And it was not no joke. He is absolutely eor and he’s so nice.

[01:08:49] Joseph Krawczyk: Oh, nice as Dick. Oh, they’re, they’re all nice, nicest dude.

[01:08:51] Dr. Jan Todd: There’s nobody who’s mean. I

[01:08:53] Donnie Maib: could smash you in a second. A,

[01:08:55] Dr. Jan Todd: I mean, some of the men, you know, you know it’s angels. Passov used to have a, an expression that he would use sometimes a Bulgarian friend of ours and he would say for every train there’s a passenger.

[01:09:06] Dr. Jan Todd: So that could be true about romance, but it also can be true about sports. Cuz not all sports are gonna be good for all people. Mm-hmm. Yes. I mean, power lifting is actually a great, that’s good. Yeah, that’s good. Powerlifting is a great sport for shorter men actually. You don’t have to be a real tall person to sell levers.

[01:09:20] Dr. Jan Todd: Tire lifting. Your levers are better if you’re shorter, but the sport is strong, man. And it’s sort of like when you go to the. , do you want to go see the insect house or do you wanna go see the elephants? And I’m not saying they’re elephants, but like we’re, we are enraptured as a, as people by the biggest things.

[01:09:38] Dr. Jan Todd: Mm-hmm. . And so seeing the biggest weights and maybe even the biggest humans who are lifting the biggest weights, there’s, there’s interest in that and it’s attraction and, um, it’s captivating. Yeah. Yeah. And it sort of opens up your world to all those like childhood fairy tales about giants and, uh, you know, and what we think about that.

[01:09:59] Dr. Jan Todd: But, but when you meet ’em, but then you meet ’em in person and you realize that they are these amazingly nice, really thoughtful and often extremely scientific, Trainers, you know, and men and women I should say. But, um, like, you know, they’re just lovely in many, many ways. Not all of them. I have my, I have my favorites , but, but I think we all do, you know, and, um, you know, it’s, uh, I realize that at this point in my life, it’s an odd thing to be still running around with a bunch of pro strong men, and trying to think up, which I just finished and sent the list in what the events will be for this year’s.

[01:10:44] Dr. Jan Todd: Arnold can’t wait to see ’em. Yeah, there’s, there’ll be something new. There’s always something new. So, anyway, thanks for you guys for letting me do this. Thank you for having, I had a great time.

[01:10:52] Donnie Maib: Well, Dr. Todd Jan, uh, friend, mentor, uh, world record holder, pioneer, who knows what you’re gonna do in the future.

[01:11:01] Donnie Maib: We know you’re not done, and to your wonderful husband, honor him. We thank you for him. What you’ve done for us, what you’re doing for UT and for this whole profession that we’re in. It’s crazy. But thank you for your time today and we’ll close it. This will be a great, uh, episode for 2023. We’ll catch you on the flip side.

[01:11:20] Donnie Maib: This is the team behind the team podcast. We’ll make sure we put all Jan’s contact information in the show notes, the Arnold and all that kind of stuff, stark center stuff. Please come to Austin and track her down and shake her hand and hug her neck. So, hey, y’all have a great 2023. We’ll catch you on the flip side.

[01:11:38] Donnie Maib: Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the team behind the team podcast. For future episodes, go to iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, or Stitcher. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show and great content. So if you have a moment, please go to iTunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing.

[01:12:00] Donnie Maib: I’m Donnie Maib, and thanks so much for tuning in.