How many years did you compete? 5

 

Between what year and what year did you compete? 1963-1967

 

List your favorite meets you competed in.

1963 – Junior National Weightlifting Competition

1964 – The Powerlifting Tournament of America (AAU 1st ever National Championship)

1965 – AAU Senior Nationals

 

What’s the highest classification you achieved? Elite

 

What are some of your powerlifting accomplishments? 

 

• (Editor’s Note) Through a lot of reading and studying on Dr. Terry Todd for this bio, I believe his greatest and most satisfying powerlifting accomplishment is coaching is wife Dr. Jan Todd and seeing her successes and accomplishments on and off the platform.

• He was the first man to squat 700 lbs in competition. (Editor’s Note: Paul Anderson was the first man to squat 700 lbs., Terry was the first in an official 3 lift competition.)

• He was the first man to deadlift 700 lbs in competition. (Editors Note: Bob peoples was the 1st man to deadlift 700 lbs., Terry was the first in an official 3 lift powerlifting competition.)

• He was the first to total 1600 lbs, 1700 lbs, 1800 lbs and 1900 lbs in competition.

• He won his fist major title in 1963, the AAU Junior National Weightlifting Championships

• He won the first two National Powerlifting Championships in 1964 and 1965.

• He wrote the first major book on powerlifting, “Inside Powerlifting” published in 1977.

• He was instrumental in the development of women's powerlifting, helping his wife, Jan Todd, organize the first national women's meet in 1977.

 

Who are some of the most memorable lifters/people for you in your career?

Lamar Gant and Mark Henry top my list. Both, so far as I know, have been lifetime clean, and both were prodigiously strong. Lamar’s world deadlift record of 672 pounds at 132 pounds is still one of the greatest lifts ever made. Mark has the highest combined five-lift total (bench press, squat, deadlift, snatch, and clean & jerk) in history.

 

Terri Ptomey, phenomenal potential, and was robbed of a win over Beverly Francis at the Worldï’s
Beverly Francis, a great all-round lifter who opened many doors for many women.

Eileen Vanisi at 5’11’ and 285, Eileen won the NCAA shot-put title three years running for the University of Texas at Austin, but had she chosen she could have rewritten the record book in PL. In (so far as I know) her only PL contest, she did 490-275-460, with no gear and no special training.

 

Jan – She was farther ahead of her peers than anyone else has ever been–by as much as 100 pounds at one time in the squat. I saw her do five reps in the gym with 505 one day without a squat suit when no other woman could do one rep with that much, with a suit. And even today many strong men would have a hard time matching her partial deadlift with 1230. She had and still has remarkable natural, worker strength and I see it often here on the ranch as she hauls wood or water or lifts our 200-plus pound dogs into our pick-up truck. She showed the many hundreds of women who followed her that a woman could be strong and that that strength could lead to success in other fields, too. Perhaps the most important thing about Jan, who received more mainstream publicity than any woman powerlifter before or since is that she was always very aware of the political aspects of her strength and the coverage it attracted, and that she used that awareness to advance the cause of women in general and powerlifting women in particular.

 

With your name as part of the history of powerlifting in Alabama, what would you like to be most remembered for?

I would hope I’d be remembered as a pioneer, of course, someone who as a lifter, a writer, a coach, a TV commentator, and an administrator helped made it possible for men and women powerlifting to be accepted and to grow in popularity. Of all the things I’ve done in the sport, however, the thing I’m most proud of is the stance that Jan and I took on the drug issue. I like to think that I’d have taken this stance without Jan’s example, but I’m not sure that I would have. I came up as a lifter in a time before anabolic steroids were illegal or even against the rules of the sport, and I used them myself. Most of my friends in PL in the early years of the sport also used them, and I lost many friends by speaking out so loudly against drugs once I’d seen what they could do and had thought through the issue carefully. Those of us who fought against these drugs in our sport back then thought we were right and Jan and I still feel that way, and we tried to demonstrate as lifters and/or coaches that women (and men) could be very strong and still be clean. Through the years during which Jan and I were most active, we worked hard for meaningful drug testing in both the USPF and, later, the ADFPA, but we opposed inappropriate testing such as the use of lie detectors.

 

What words of wisdom would you like to pass down to future powerlifters?

He live up to that old Southern saying—which he first heard from his grandmother Todd—

“It’s a good life, if you don’t weaken…” And he never did.

 

What are some of your contributions to sport of powerlifting in Alabama?

State Chair, Meet Director and pertinent meets, Judge & level & Feds, ways you contributed to other meets (announcer, score table, spot/loader, expediter)

He and his wife, Jan, coached Auburn's men's and women's teams to numerous championships. (Editor’s Note: George Herring, Class of 2020 and later 3X IPF Open gold Medal winner, was on their team.)

In 1979, he established the National Strength Research Center at Auburn. The facility allowed top-level strength athletes, such as powerlifters Bill Kazmaier and Lamar Gant, to interact with exercise scientists and help advance the science of strength.

In 1982, he and his wife promoted the USPF Women's National Championships at Auburn.