Four-time World’s Strongest Man Brian Shaw has shared another update on his “Road to 701” bench press series on his Shaw Strength YouTube channel. The highlight of this session is his top set of pressing 520 pounds (235.8 kg) for two reps while looking like he had a lot more in him.
Ironically, the footage of him performing that set starts at the 5:20 mark in the video. After he gets up, Shaw is clearly excited about what he had just accomplished.
“That was a joke. Honestly, that was a joke. That was so easy. We’ve got to bump the numbers up. I was way too pumped up for that.”
In the next exercise, Shaw performs speed reps with 450 pounds (204 kg) while supersetting with neutral grip lat pulldowns. At the beginning of this program, his initial heavy sets were with 470 pounds (213 kg) as a stand-alone set. So doing speed work with only 20 pounds less than he started with is a sign of his strength progress over the last three months.
After this, Shaw begins the assistance work of his training and starts with high incline dumbbell presses. He explains why he and coach Josh Bryant made this adjustment at this phase of the program.
“We’ve been doing a lot flat pressing as all of you guys have seen. So with it getting a little bit closer to World’s Strongest Man now, we’re going to start changing and modifying the training to throw in a little more incline and probably some more shoulder work as well.”
Based on what Shaw said, it appears that he would still be training on the bench press as he begins training for his original sport.
It was announced in April that the 2020 World’s Strongest Man had been rescheduled for November this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That gives Shaw around five months to prepare for that contest. He last won the top title in strongman back in 2016. Martins Licis is the defending champion. 2018 winner Hafthor Bjornsson retired from World’s Strongest Man and Giants Live contests. With his absence, Shaw will be considered a top contender. Should he win, he would join Marius Pudzianowski as the only five time winners in the contest’s 43 year history.
Featured Image: Instagram/shawstrength