It’s the squat that had countless powerlifters telling their buddies, “I told you this kid was the real deal.”
Joseph Peña is the real deal. There have been a lot of historic lifts made at this year’s IPF World Championships in Alberta, but Peña’s squat really deserves attention. The 19-year-old, who is nineteen years old (that bears repeating) competed as a superheavyweight junior and pulled off a squat of 425.5 kilograms (938 pounds), even after he had to rerack it because his fingers weren’t covering enough of the bar. (That’s a rule that’s meant to help prevent the bar from rolling off of his back.)
He posted this to his Instagram with a comment that just said, “Good times!”
First of all, this is more weight than Ray Williams was squatting when he burst onto the international powerlifting stage at 27 with a 905-pound raw squat.
Peña’s squat broke his own junior world record from last July, which he set at the 15th Annual NAPF North American Regional Powerlifting Championships held in Orlando. What was that record?
387.5 kilograms (854.3 pounds). He broke the junior world record record by thirty-eight kilograms.
We had trouble believing this until we remembered that the 387.5kg lift broke the prior record by 21.5 kilograms. This guy doesn’t break records, he annihilates them.
Peña, who started powerlifting when he was ten years old, is perhaps best known for his equipped lifts. We named this equipped squat below as one of the top 10 strength feats and performances from 2017. (Check out the rest of that list.) Here’s that 1,025 pound squat that would have been a sub-junior world record had it taken place on a stage.
We can’t imagine where someone squatting this kind of weight at 19 is going to go as an open athlete, but we absolutely cannot wait.
Featured image via @theipf on Instagram.
