French weightlifter Benjamin Hennequin made his name in strength sports as an 85kg weightlifter on the international stage, and he represented his country at multiple Olympic Games, making his first appearance in 2008. He was the overall silver medalist at the 2011 Weightlifting World Championships, bronze medalist at the 2014 European Championships, and gold medalist at the 2015 European Championships.
Simply put, he’s been an elite-level strength athlete for a long time. But in the true spirit of strength, Hennequin fairly recently decided excelling in just one sport wasn’t good enough, and he’s spent the past year or so building proficiency on a different kind of platform: powerlifting.
Hennequin began training for powerlifting competition sometime around early 2017, and though he’s actually competed in a few meets since then, we only recently came across this video from a competition in September of this year. It shows his heaviest lifts from the Western Europe Athletic Strength Championships, in which he won the -93kg weight category, a bit up on his weightlifting days at 85kg bodyweight.
Check out Hennequin’s lifts below, complete with one of the deepest back squats you’ll ever see on a powerlifting platform (he started as a weightlifter, after all).
Hennequin’s heaviest successful attempts in each lift are listed below:
300kg squat
170kg bench press
285kg deadlift
Impressive numbers, but what stands out most is his back squat technique, which looks like a direct carryover from Hennequin’s weightlifting days: High bar, outstanding depth, with a rhythm you’ll usually only see from years of back squats for weightlifting. It’s not the most common squat technique in powerlifting, but clearly Hennequin decided to play to his strengths and keep a good thing going.
We’re excited to see Benjamin Hennequin’s continued growth as a powerlifter!
Featured image: Captain Fight on YouTube
