Powerlifter, all-time world record holder, and BarBend contributor Ben Pollack added five pounds to his personal record in the high bar squat with a monstrous 805-pound (365.1kg) lift somewhere around 200 pounds bodyweight. For a PR, this lift is remarkably fast and it looks pretty easy, given Pollack was able to say the words, “Fucking easy!” as he was finishing the lift.
Pollack admits that the depth might not pass muster in a competition, but emphasized in a discussion on Reddit that he hasn’t missed a squat on depth in any federation since 2012. This is a training lift, and there are plenty of benefits of squatting a little higher than parallel every now and then. (Though we think his hip crease did look pretty close to parallel.)
[IPF world record holder Ray Williams doesn’t hit competition depth when he trains, either. Here he is explaining why.]
Note that if Pollack had successfully made this lift on a competition platform at competition weight, it would be just six pounds short of the 198lb world record for the raw squat with knee wraps, set by Russian Alekseyev Vyacheslav this past December.
Pollack posted a caption with his lift that read in part,
here’s a #PR 805 #squat (my first over 8) – after having done only #highbar #beltless work with less than 600 for the past month or more. I don’t plan on getting weaker 😂 In all seriousness, even though the weight moved well, I shouldn’t have attempted it without a better plan. I needed to move something heavy to help deal with being pretty darn #stressedout over (hopefully) finishing school and moving on with my life.
Pollack has been spending more time bodybuilding lately and is on a mission to prove that it won’t necessarily make you weaker. The squat PR, coupled with last week’s beltless deadlift PR of 750 pounds (340.2kg) above, makes for some pretty compelling evidence.
Featured image via @phdeadlift on Instagram.
