A lot of ink gets spilled promoting the strength feats of Eddie Hall and Hafthor Bjornsson, but Brian Shaw is on his way to becoming a household name.
Right now, Shaw is deep into training for the Arnold Classic, which will be held from March 2 to 5 in Columbus, Ohio. That’s soon, but Shaw is pulling out all the stops in his training; in a video just posted to his Instagram, Shaw pulled an earthshaking 467.65kg (1031lb) on the long bar, also known as the elephant bar. We should note that he lists the weight as “1031lb/469kg” although 469kg is actually 1034lb. We erred on the side of safety and wrote this unofficial lift as 1031lb — which would be a world record in competition. Watch a serious bar bend in the clip below.
The current record for the long bar, which is rarely tested, belongs to Eddie Hall, who pulled 465kg (1025lb) at last year’s Arnold Classic Strongman. Straps and hitching were allowed, and while Shaw used both straps and a belt for this lift, there was no hitching to be seen.
This was an impressively smooth pull, and while Shaw’s offscreen coach completely lost his mind watching the lift lock out (as would anyone who knows the sport), Shaw himself was pretty chill about it, allowing himself a little fist pump before strolling off the platform.
At this rate, Shaw could break multiple records at the 2017 Arnold Classic. A 4-time World’s Strongest Man and two-time winner of Arnold Classic, Shaw also released a clip of himself performing a 211kg (465lb) log press earlier this week. While it’s not quite the world record of 228kg, it was, like his deadlift, incredibly smooth-looking.
Eddie Hall won’t be at this year’s Arnold, but Jerry Pritchett will likely provide Shaw with some pretty serious competition in the deadlift event. The event will take place on March 4th at 1:15pm EST.
Featured image via @shawstrength on Instagram.
Editors note and correction: An earlier version of this article had misspelled Shaw’s name in one place. It has since been corrected.
