This was bound to happen. Ashton Rouska’s inevitability as the dominant player in the -93kg weight class could have been predicted when he first stepped on the competitive stage at just 15 years old and won the USA Powerlifting (USAPL) 2013 Alaska State Championships. In his very young powerlifting career since then, the now 22 year old Rouska has won twenty-eight of the thirty competitive meets he has appeared in.
His recent win at the Arnold Grand Prix by SBD this past weekend was his most substantial. Not only did he stand atop the podium but he set two new world records in the squat and total and a new American record in the deadlift along the way. Here are Rouska’s stats from the event:
- Squat – 331.5kg/730.8lb – World Record
- Bench Press – 184.6kg/407lb
- Deadlift – 364.7kg/804lb – American Record
- Total – 880.9kg/1,942lb – World Record
Check out the world record squat and American record deadlift Rouska set in the video below courtesy of his Instagram page:
“I’m blessed to walk away with the winning performance and some records. Pure luck. The past few months have been brutal on me, and I had to fight and scrape for every single pound today.”
Despite the humility that Rouska expresses in the caption of this post, it is staggering to think that he posted these numbers in the fashion that he did while feeling less than one hundred percent, as he mentioned that he suffered from a “recent sickness”.
You could see the struggle he endured during the squat — which seems reasonable since it is the heaviest ever squat in his weight class — but his deadlift looked like it was just any other day at the office.
Check out his record breaking lifts, as well as his bench press, from another angle in the video below thanks to King Of The Lifts’ Instagram page:
If Rouska is able to recover back to peak shape and feel healthy walking into his next meet, it would be safe to predict that the likeliest threat to break the records he just set is himself.
Feature image from Ashton Rouska’s Instagram page: @ashh117
