You didn’t mess with Minerva - women and weights

Now a professor, Todd was once dubbed “the world’s strongest woman” after hoisting barbells that would crush an ox.

But more importantly she showed that weight-training is essential for the health of what a few generations back used to be called the weaker sex. And this was in spite of men paying big dollars in the days of vaudeville to watch Minerva, Madame Robusta, Athleta and Mademoiselle Victorine perform astonishing feats of strength such as throwing cannonballs at each other and lifting a dozen men. Yes, that’s a dozen!

All this happened around the late 1800s and early 1900s, long before Todd made it okay for women to work out with weights. As such, she helped pave the way for the Crossfit Games. Today she’s professor of strength at the University of Texas but years ago she got into weights because of Terry, her boyfriend and later husband, who worked out a lot. By her own account, she went to the gym just to be with him but soon found that she was cut out for big iron.

But prejudice abounded and she was often the only woman in the gym and sometimes she wasn’t allowed in at all because the rules said among other excuses that her presence would distract the men from their training.  However she persisted and was soon smashing records with enormous lifts.

This was in the 1970s and the scholar in Todd became interested in the earlier generation of vaudeville strong women such as Minerva, Roberta of Cuba, Beaulah Champion of Germany, the aforesaid Victorine and other Amazons who attracted big crowds  around the turn of the century.

The result was Todd’s densely researched and brightly written Iron Game History in which she describes the mixture of salaciousness and admiration for these women. The notoriously sensationalist National Police Gazette once described Victorine as “the luscious and robust strongest woman in the world”.

You didn’t mess with these women. When a heckler got Minerva angry, she jumped off the stage, grabbed the offender and hurled him right across the tent. Otherwise she was described as “sweet-natured”!

But back again to Todd. Weight-training may have saved her life. She was once trapped for an hour under an overturned car until it could be lifted off her. Doctors said she only survived because her muscles protected her organs from perhaps life-threatening damage.

Todd’s certainly not claiming that she single-handedly got women into weights, but there’s no doubt that she exercised a considerable influence - challenging prejudices for something that's right and fair. As the New York Times headlined in May 2025 in an article about the 73 year-old, “Jan Todd may be the reason you’re lifting weights”.

Medically speaking, today, muscularity is seen as essential for everyone's long-term health. Just the other day America’s National Institute on Ageing recommended aerobic exercises that “move the body’s large muscles for extended periods” and get the heart going. The institute suggested fairly mundane (but accessible) activities like raking leaves, pushing lawnmowers and climbing stairs among others, all of which are much better than nothing.

But you can do more specific strengthening exercises with weights that work those large muscle groups. You don’t have to lift a dozen men, just a few kilos. If you’re new to weights though, do so under supervision because good technique is so important.

You may be a bit sore after the first session or two but, as the research shows, this is a good thing because it shows the muscle has been worked and is rebuilding itself stronger than before.

No gain without a little bit of pain.