December 20, 2021September 30, 2022
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Here’s to the Students!

Because of the pandemic and that stagnant period of time before vaccines were available, I (like most people) suffer from an affliction where I occasionally find it difficult to differentiate between the year 2020 and 2021. For nearly seventeen months, The Stark Center, as a physical space, was closed to the general public as well as The University of Texas student population. During that time, The Forty Acres was seemingly hushed as the vast majority of students, faculty, and staff left campus and relocated to complete their work and studies at home. This semester, that all changed. With access to...

Plaster Cast, 8-foot-tall, Ricky Williams
November 5, 2021June 13, 2024
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“Big Ricky” Comes to The Stark Center and Other New Artifacts

Last month, The Stark Center opened a new exhibit featuring sculptures by David Deming and Michael Deming. It’s called Degrees of Fitness / Sporting Bodies; if this is the first you’ve heard about it, click the title for more detailed information about the exhibit. I highly encourage everyone to make a trip to The Stark Center to see the Deming sculpture show – it’s a terrific showcase of sculpted works that delves into the world of physical culture with fresh focus and presentation. I’m quite proud of the exhibit and the way it offers something new to our galleries. I’m...

Film poster for The Commissioner of Power
October 20, 2021October 20, 2021
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Rogue Fitness Honors Terry Todd with Documentary Premiering at Austin Film Festival

The H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports announces the premier and theatrical release of The Commissioner of Power, a feature-length documentary about the life and work of Terry Todd, Ph.D.  Todd was the founder (with his wife, Jan) of the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center in the College of Education and taught in the Department of Kinesiology & Health Education for 35 years specializing in research related to strength and sport history. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of strength training and strength coaching. The Commissioner of Power premieres on Wednesday,...

David Deming with his bronze sculpture of Terry Todd
October 20, 2021June 14, 2024
It's a Good LifeBy
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A Surprise Gift from Artist David Deming

For 15 years renowned artist David Deming and I shared The Forty Acres—as we call UT’s main campus—but our paths never crossed. Deming was in the Art Department teaching sculpture, then serving as chair of the department, and finally as Dean of The College of Fine Arts until he moved back to his hometown in 1998 to become President of the Cleveland Institute of Art. During those same years, Terry and I were teaching weight training and other classes in Kinesiology and Health Education.  We were friends with other Art Department faculty like painters Kelly Fearing, and Vincent Mariani, (who...

John Davis, Jim Bradford, Norbert Schemansky, and Paul Anderson of the US Weightlifting Team stand behind a barbell.
July 23, 2021July 23, 2021
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STRONGMAN PROJECT Celebrates the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo by Looking Back at the Golden Age of American Weightlifting

According to weightlifting historian John Fair, the Golden Age of American Weightlifting was defined as the period from 1945 to 1960. It was a time when American athletes regularly populated the podiums of international weightlifting competitions. In fact, counting from the Paris World Championships in 1946 through the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, the United States weightlifting team won seven of eleven world team titles and more than half of the individual titles. Some of the greatest lifters in history were members of the United States weightlifting teams during this successful run of years. Over on Strongman Project, we have...

Mark Henry
June 18, 2021June 26, 2024
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Celebrate Juneteenth with Mark Henry at The Strongman Project

In celebration of tomorrow’s Juneteenth holiday, I’ve published a new Feature over at The Strongman Project all about the life and strength career of Mark Henry. In a 2009 blog post titled “Broad Shoulders,” Terry Todd explains his detailed method for accurately measuring the width of Mark Henry’s shoulders. In the post’s final sentence, he wrote, “As for Mark, he may not be the broadest, but he’s a real shadow-caster,” a clever and playful description of Mark’s prodigious size. Mark very accurately fits the bill, both in physicality and personality. Mark is one of the Iron Game’s greatest lifters and,...

Tommy Kono competing on stage in Moscow, 1958
May 17, 2021June 26, 2024
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Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month with Tommy Kono

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which provides an opportunity for our nation to pay tribute to the many Asian and Pacific Islanders who enriched America’s history and established its future prosperity. In celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, I highly recommend that everyone check out Indomitable: The Tommy Kono Story, an on-line exhibit produced by The California Museum and currently hosted on Google Arts & Culture. Here is a link to the exhibit. Back in March, Amanda Weyer, who is the exhibitions manager at The California Museum, reached out to us with plans for the exhibit and the hope that...

Scanned Cover of Iron Game History Volume 15 Number 1
May 13, 2021May 20, 2021
It's a Good LifeBy
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The Terry Todd “Special Issue” of Iron Game History

Since we began Iron Game History in 1990, we’ve dedicated a full issue of Iron Game History to one person as a memorial tribute on several rare occasions. The last person to be so honored, in fact, was Olympic weightlifting gold medalist Tommy Kono whose life is detailed in a special double issue of IGH published in 2017. Last month, however, we mailed out a very different kind of special issue about the life of Terry Todd, who passed away in 2018. Instead of having people write tributes to Terry, I decided to republish pieces written by Terry at various...

Photographs from the Anna Hiss Collection
May 6, 2021May 20, 2021
Collection in FocusBy
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Photographs from the Anna Hiss Collection

This week at The Stark Center, I’ve been thinking a lot about the history of women’s fitness and physical activity here on The Forty Acres. On Wednesday night, we were fortunate to host the University’s distinguished Tower Fellows.  After our director, Jan Todd, addressed the visitors and told them about how the Stark Center was founded and what our mission is, she turned the floor over to Tower Fellow Amy Porter, a University of Texas alumnus, highly successful businesswoman, and a former Texas Cheerleader (1990-1994) who spoke movingly about the role of cheerleading in the lives of American women and...