Nancy Johnson competing in the 2023 Official Strongman Games
Mentally, she was in the zone. Physically, few could beat her. 2022 was her year.
“I was very proud of what I was putting out there,” says Nancy Johnson, a 27-year-old Richmond native and administrative assistant at the Richmond Police Athletic League.
Then she heard the crack.
Down she went, with a 620-pound Volkswagen Beetle frame strapped to her shoulders. That snap ended Johnson’s four-year quest to become the world’s strongest woman in her weight class at the 2022 Official Strongman Games in Daytona Beach, Florida.
While men have engaged in feats of strength arguably forever, Strongman competitions only entered the mainstream in the late 1970s, when CBS started airing the show “World’s Strongest Man.” It took until 2001 before the International Federation of Strength Athletes crowned the first World’s Strongest Woman, Jill Mills.
These competitions pit athletes against each other in displays of raw functional strength such as lifting rocks, barrels, refrigerators and, as in Johnson’s case, walking a 620-pound car frame for 50 feet.
“I knew in that second something was wrong, but I didn’t know what was wrong,” she says.
The snap she felt was a break of the tibia and fibula in her right leg. Before that moment, she had been leading the competition, ahead by an unheard-of 10 points. She’d won the Viking press by lifting a 185-pound platform 11 times; the deadlift, where she lifted 415 pounds 11 times; and the sandbag-to-shoulder ladder, where she had to lift increasingly heavier sandbags to her shoulder. She placed third in the farmer’s walk, where she carried a 275-pound weight in each hand.
“I knew in that moment my shot at winning the title was over,” Johnson says. “I collapsed under the car and started screaming and crying. Everyone thought I was in this insane pain. Lucky for me, I was in shock physically. I couldn’t feel anything, but my heart was just breaking out of my chest.”
That injury, which required emergency surgery, should have ended her Strongman career. “I was told by almost every orthopedist and physical therapist that I worked with to give up the sport. They expected me to never run, walk or jump again, at least not the way I wanted to,” she says.
But Johnson couldn’t leave the sport that she is “insanely obsessed with,” as she says.
Growing up in Richmond, she was an athlete and fostered a competitive spirit. It wasn’t until after her deployment in the Marines that a fellow cohort and future coach, Greg Popejoy, introduced her to Strongman.
“Strongman was that misfit sport that really fit me,” she says. “In the military, you are supposed to be able to go at a moment’s notice. Strongman is the same mindset.”
Johnson was crowned champion in the Under 73 Kg division at the 2023 Official Strongman Games.
That began a four-year effort to compete on a national level. “She’s pretty addicted,” Popejoy says. “Strongman events are very hard because you are going to lift things most humans can’t — the log press, car carry [and] Atlas stones. You can’t just lift weights as heavy as you can and compete. You have to train athletically.”
But with the championship in sight, Johnson’s injury landed her in a hospital bed instead of the podium. “You can either allow [setbacks]
to swallow you whole or you can choose how you want to use it to continue your life,” she says.
With the support of her father, her coach and her boyfriend — Tyler Papa, a former powerlifter — she was determined to try again. “Physically, I knew Nancy would recover,” Popejoy says. “Obviously, a broken leg times two — both a fib and a tib — that’s a serious setback. I was more concerned about the mental aspect of coming back from an injury like that. The hardest part was getting her mind right to sustain the load that Strongman requires.”
“I would go to the gym, and I would break down,” Johnson says. “I would have very emotional moments where I was like ʻI will never be myself again. I will never be that athlete again.ʼ I had to focus on small goals, gaining small independences.”
You can either allow [setbacks] to swallow you whole or you can choose how you want to use it to continue your life.
—Nancy Johnson
One year after her injury, that slow but steady growth led to a win at the 2023 Official Strongman Games in Charleston, West Virginia. She was recognized as the world’s strongest woman in her weight class. Against all odds, she was there, surprising the entire Strongman community, surprising everyone, except herself.
“That moment was insane,” she recalls. “I felt like my heart was going to explode in the best way. I got to leave with the trophy I wanted and not more metal in my body.”
Mental toughness played the biggest role in her comeback, Johnson says. “There are people out there that have been told you can’t, or you won’t, and they believe those things. You can keep going and find the ways to pursue the things that you love even after a traumatic injury.”
