Taylor Atwood is a big name in the sport of powerlifting. He is the reigning back-to-back International Powerlifting (IPF) World Champion of the -74kg weight class, holding the IPF world records for the squat (283kg/634lb) and total (790.5kg/1,742.75lb). He has also claimed gold at the USA Powerlifting (USAPL) Raw Nationals for the last six years straight. The man has competed in fifteen events since his debut in 2014 at 25 years old and has placed first in twelve of them. He took silver in two of the three outstanding events. (Outstanding!)
So when we hear a powerlifter of that caliber hit a new personal record in training, our ears perk up really quick. If you have not yet seen it for yourself, check out below this huge 205kg/452lb bench press from the post Atwood shared on his Instagram page:
We are not privy to Atwood’s body weight at the time of this PR, but for context, his competition best bench press is the 195kg/430lb he pushed at USAPL Raw Nationals on October 16th, 2019. That means this new PR is 2.77 times his competition body weight.
Although it was a huge lift for Atwood and he seems pleased afterwards judging by the expression on his face, he thought he could have been better.
“Not happy with execution, but given how I felt and not being peaked, I’ll take it.”
He does not say specifically what it was about his execution that he believed was flawed, but we had Atwood in at the BarBend office to guide us through the proper way to bench press. You can watch it below from the BarBend YouTube Channel:
Atwood’s next competition is the IPF Sheffield 2020 Powerlifting Championships on March 28th in Sheffield, England. And according to the caption he made on a previous Instagram post, he expects to put up some big numbers:
“Looking forward to seeing the progress made at Sheffield. Things are groovin.”
Feature image from Taylor Atwood’s Instagram page: @t_atwood