Cailer Woolam, 22 years old, is plain and simple a deadlift guy (though he’s working hard on rounding out his lifts). There’s no questioning the strength he possesses when pulling obscene amounts of weight off the ground, but there will always be critics. And as a primarily sumo-style puller, Woolam hears from those critics with regularity.
Consider the below video a response to those critics. Woolam’s latest deadlift video is a heavy conventional pull of 800 lbs at a bodyweight of 207 pounds. In the description, Woolam points out that it’s a 35 lb personal record. While 35 lbs is a big PR, the bar moved so well, I honestly think he has was more in the tank.
There tends to be a stigma around sumo deadlifts when they’re performed with extremely heavy weight. The usual argument against sumo goes something like this: A sumo pull cuts out a lot of range of motion and doesn’t recruit as much back, which makes it a less impressive lift than a conventional pull.
This argument is exactly why it’s so great to see Woolam posting more conventional pulls. The variety of strong pulls on his Instagram page shows Woolam’s true strength and that he can do way more than pull sumo.
A little under a month ago Cailer shared a video of himself pulling 900 lbs at a weight of 206. This deadlift puts him an elite tier of lifters to perform this feat of strength for his weight. This recent 800lb pull is another heavy addition he can add to his deadlift resume.
After Woolam pulled this huge deadlift, we reached out and spoke to him about his deadlifting, in addition to his methods when prepping for big pulls. It will be interesting to see what 2017 brings for this young powerlifter’s career.
Hopefully we continue to see Woolam pull a variety of heavy deadlifts and work to silence any potential critics. He has a meet coming up this spring, so it’s going to be exciting to report on the numbers he’s able to put up.
Feature image from @cailerc40 Instagram page.
