STRONG Life Podcast BONUS Series • IRON ROOTS 

Special thank you to my good friends at PLAE who filmed all The IRON Roots episodes and brought this all to light!

Iron Roots Ep 23: Grimek vs. Kono, the YMCA War on Weightlifting, and the End of an Era

There are podcast episodes you record, and then there are the ones you sit with long after the mic is off. Episode 23 of Iron Roots is the second kind.

This is Part 7 of my series with Jan Dellinger — and it's the last one. Please share with friends so we can spread the word on IRON Roots and to honor the men who paved the way before us. 

John Grimek Challenges Tommy Kono

Picture two of the greatest physiques and lifters the Iron Game has ever produced, standing across from each other, and one throws down the gauntlet.

John Grimek, the man who defined an era of American strength and physique challenged Tommy Kono to a dual of strength. Listen in as Jan Dellinger shares the challenge as a gauntlet was thrown down!

Jan walks through this moment with the kind of detail you can only get from someone who lived inside York Barbell, not someone who read about it. This wasn't manufactured rivalry for a magazine cover — this was two legends measuring themselves against each other the way lifters have always measured themselves against each other: directly, physically, no excuses.

The YMCA Tried to Ban Weightlifting

Here's the part that should make every strength coach, gym owner, and lifter listening shake their head.

At one point, doctors sitting on the YMCA board tried to push through the idea that weightlifting was dangerous. Not "use caution," not "here's proper coaching progressions". No, Sir, this was an outright attempt to say the barbell itself was the enemy.

Think about that. The YMCA, one of the most influential institutions in American fitness history nearly became the place where organized medicine tried to slam the door on our sport before it ever had the chance to grow into what it is today.

Jan's account of how that played out, and what it took to keep weightlifting alive inside that institution, is a direct line to why we still have the freedom to train the way we train today. Every kid doing a clean and jerk in a YMCA weight room owes something to the people who pushed back on that.

Why This Series Mattered

This is the last episode of IRON Roots with Jan, and I want to be straight with you about why I've poured so much time into it.

History doesn't protect itself. The men who built this sport; men like Grimek, Kono, the York Barbell crew, and the people fighting institutional battles most lifters never even hear about don't get remembered by accident. They get remembered because someone decides it's worth doing the work to keep the story alive.

That's what IRON Roots has been about. Not nostalgia for its own sake, it is from my heart, honoring the people who paved the way for all of us so the next generation of lifters understands that the freedom to train hard didn't come free.

Jan Dellinger gave me something I can't put a price on: a direct, lived connection to York Barbell and the history inside it. Few people alive can tell these stories with his level of firsthand knowledge, and fewer still are willing to sit down and pass it on.

I'm grateful for every part of this series, and I hope you walked away from it with the same respect for the Iron Game's roots that I have.

🎙️ Listen to Iron Roots Ep 23 now — Jan Dellinger Part 7:

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Listen HERE on Apple Podcasts 

Listen HERE on Spotify 

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This Episode is Brought to You by The SSPC Certification

Real history. Real strength. Real business.

That's what Iron Roots has been about — and it's also exactly what SSPC Certification is built on.

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This is the part nobody else is teaching. Because a gym full of great coaching and an empty bank account is still a failed gym. SSPC hands you the actual operational playbook — how to run it, price it, market it, and keep the doors open long enough for your coaching to matter.

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Live The Code 365,

ZACH EVEN - ESH