Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated Hafthor Bjornsson deadlifted 435kg. The actual weight lifted was 425kg. We apologize for the mistake.
While we spent most of the last year talking about building his squatting strength, Hafthor Bjornsson has been quietly bringing his deadlift to superhuman levels.
Okay, not that quietly. The hype is real in this new video that The Mountain uploaded of a mind-boggling personal record: two reps of a 425-kilogram (937-pound) deadlift accompanied as always by a big hit of ammonia up the nose.
He posted it with the caption:
425kg / 937lbs deadlift x 2 reps. I’m not stopping until this is mine. I hope you’re paying attention. PB baby, and more in the tank #Teamthor
Besides his goal of winning World’s Strongest Man, Thor Bjornsson’s 2017 was in large part defined by his relentless quest to squat a thousand pounds (we last saw him hitting 970). But last September, he also announced his goal of breaking the world deadlift record.
Bjornsson has been steadily increasing his deadlift strength toward Eddie Hall’s 500-kilogram benchmark. At the World’s Strongest Man in 2016 he finished with a 425-kilogram (940lb) deadlift and at the 2017 contest he made what looked like a pretty easy 460 kilograms (1014lb). Here he is lifting the same weight a few months later in September.
Bjornsson’s friendly-but-maybe-it-isn’t-so-friendly rivalry with Eddie Hall is no secret, and it makes sense that his goals for 2018 are to take the World’s Strongest Man crown and Hall’s world record to cement his dominance in strongman.
If you believe Hall, though, he couldn’t care less if someone took his record from him. In an interview with Sport360 released earlier this month, he said,
I was the first man to deadlift half a ton. There’s no one even f*cking close to me at the minute. If someone else were to come along and deadlift 501 kilos, who gives a shit? I was the first man to do 500 and that’s the truth.
Maybe he wouldn’t care, but it’s perhaps not quite true that there’s no one approaching Eddie Hall’s record.
Featured image via @thorbjornsson on Instagram.
