History of Powerlifting, Weightlifting and Strength Training – Number 11

The Jackson Barbell (Part II)

I was rather amazed that Andy Jackson had started his company in 1932 and for its entire run, other than one or two years where a friend might have helped out during his very busy times, maintained a one man show. Jackson hauled the plates, drilled and milled them to exact weight, made the bars and rotating sleeves and completed them with knurling and a finish that made them jump out at the trainee. His sets were known locally because he competed as a weightlifter and even had a fling at pro wrestling. Tony had mentioned that the great John Grimek, perhaps York’s best known representative, and former World Champion John Davis had trained on Jackson’s bars and had admitted that they were better than those from York. The only ads I had seen for Jackson Barbell were in Iron Man magazine but I was told that Jackson ran ads in some of the boxing magazines and that many trainees, once they had used his set, could tell an immediate difference from those produced by York. Years later I would read a quote from Tommy Kono, considered by some as the greatest Olympic lifter the U.S. has ever produced and he had stated that Jackson “…did make the best Olympic bars at the time. I never met the man but knew of his workmanship and his reputation in making great Olympic bars.” If nothing else, even in my ignorance about the quality and actual worth of training equipment, I knew that I was preparing on the very best of equipment and in a lesson that would remain with me throughout my days as a competitor and coach, I was preparing as completely as possible.

Tony also noted that if we used both the York Olympic bar and the Jackson Olympic Barbell set that we had in our small facility, our lifters would have an advantage. This was the first exposure I had to “contest preparation” and some of the lessons from that initial experience have been put into use even until this very day. We had a pair of one hundred pound York plates that had been sold as “standard” plates but these had been drilled out so that they fit an Olympic bar with its two-inch or in the case of the York bar, “almost two-inch” portal. With a chance that the contest organizer would have, and use one hundred pound plates, we would at least squat and deadlift with them because, as Tony explained even to the more experienced men that had been convinced to join in the planned fun, “the hundreds feel different than forty-fives on the bar” and of course, they do. The Jackson set was a mystery to me, an unknown only because I had never before seen one in any of the other garage or storefront gyms I had been to visit, nor at the local YMCA’s in the City or Brooklyn. York was the ubiquitous set and Jackson was, in my mind inferior if it wasn’t pictured in the magazines. I was incorrect.

History Supplement: Benching in California

On the East Coast, the mid-1960’s was certainly an exciting time for strength training and lifting. Of course, everyone who trained with weights, even competitive bodybuilders, was in fact “strength training.” In the modern era, specialization that is possible with equipment, drugs, attire, and nutritional supplements allows for bodybuilders to look like overstuffed Greek statues come to life with strength levels that are little above that of the average man in the street and men who can lift God-awful heavy weights who closely resemble your stereotypical circus fat man. In the by-gone era of the late 1950’s to late ‘60’s almost everyone who trained used the same exercises, other than the absence of the snatch and its variations for non-Olympic weightlifters, and everyone’s goal was to be as strong as possible and to look as if they did in fact “lift weights.” Simply put and a point I have emphasized in almost every one of the Eleikousa articles in this series, men (few women were on the lifting scene) trained in order to become muscularly larger and stronger. If they wanted to be competitive or non-competitive bodybuilders, they added “isolation exercises” or emphasized what everyone referred to as “the showy muscles” like the lats and pecs. If one wanted to powerlift either competitively or just to be strong in the three basic lifts once the sport was organized, that was their primary focus but they still included the overhead press, the power clean, and often, the front squat as adjunctive movements meant to enhance the effect of the competitive powerlifts. In short, there was a core grouping of perhaps a dozen exercises that almost every man did when they were in the gym and the set and rep scheme would be determined by their training goal. Any lifting in the New York City area was considered newsworthy with California and the New York Metropolitan areas being the focal points of training. The University Of Miami and Florida State were recruiting their best football players from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and points north because Florida was still under populated and did not have enough decent football players to allow for in-state recruiting that would allow either program to be competitive among its rivals. The lifting scene in Florida, as elsewhere, did not compare to New York or California in part due to the higher number of participants on the sandy beaches of “Cali” or in the relatively numerous, compared to other parts of the country, gyms of the “Big City.”

After a great deal of contemplation I was able to recall some of the details of the one trip I made to Springfield, N.J. to see what Mr. Jackson was doing and hopefully, purchase equipment that might have been “left over.” Unlike today where it is almost impossible to get a live voice on the telephone line and receive what passes for minimal customer service, the 1960’s were still a time where people as a general statement, worked hard, built their businesses on personal relationships, and dedicated effort to maintaining those relationships by providing the best service possible. I called Mr. Jackson to ask questions, wax enthusiastically about his barbell set that we had at the storefront gym, and asked if I could drive over on a Saturday to “look around.” I don’t believe I was surprised that he answered in the affirmative because the set we had on the gym floor was purchased via a drive to Jersey. The details after so many decades are sketchy but I did indeed drive to Springfield and meet Mr. Jackson. Perhaps I expected a larger-than-life figure like Bob Hoffman who was huge in reputation and sort of huge in stature too. Andy Jackson looked to be built like my father if not a bit more muscular. A typical “working man” who was hard looking and had noticeably developed forearms from his daily physical labor, Jackson if nothing else, was also very much like most of the guys my father worked with as an iron worker. Obviously tough, hard, to the point, and knowledgeable about what he was doing, I learned the procedure he followed to produce his stacks of plates and bars that were strewn about the basement of what otherwise looked like a large but normal house.

The casted plates were delivered to Mr. Jackson’s house from the foundry, placed onto one of his machines and milled and drilled until they weighed correctly and were of the “right feel” when grasping them. No burrs or spikes, no incomplete or asymmetrical holes, he weighed each plate to insure its accuracy and accurate they were. The bars were hand-made in that parts were machined, the “aircraft quality” round stock was knurled, and each piece was assembled personally by Andy Jackson. In truth, having spent a great deal of my youth in my family’s iron and welding shop observing as well as working and learning the skills of the trade, I was mesmerized. When someone is superb at their craft and has an obvious love and zeal for their work, it can literally take one’s breath away and I remember being incredibly impressed. He had a few unique items that I did not know existed like special Olympic type collars that were made for a standard sized bar. The large winged steel thumb screws were never seen on anything other than the large Olympic bar collars but he had a similar type of product for the “every day” one and one-sixteenth-inch diameter bars. At $3.00 a pair (yes, that’s $3.00 per pair circa the 1960’s) they were still more than I could afford but they truly were as “cool” an item as one could have for their home gym. His adjustable dumbbell was exactly that, a globe type of dumbbell whose “globe” was made from individual plates so that one could have a dumbbell that adjusted from an empty bar of six pounds to as heavy as thirty pounds. The Olympic plates of course caught my eye and as was standard for that era, they were the large hubbed and “easy to grab” rim type of plates as made by all of the suppliers of that time period. As was also standard, the hubs were reinforced by casted ridges that added strength and more or less divided each plate into sections. Unlike the first generation or two of rubber or rubber rimmed bumper plates, the Jackson plates did not break out at the hub when dropped with monster weights on the bar. When the younger generations are fortunate enough to see one of the old barbell sets, they often wonder about the wide rims, large hub around the bar sleeve portal, and the reinforcing “spines” on the bar. Dropping a loaded barbell of 400-plus pounds of casted metal weights from overhead to the platform or rubber mat would cause plate breakage at the hole and hub if not made correctly. The unique appearance of the plates was a reflection of function, not fashion! The Jackson name stood out in large letters as a beautiful finishing touch.