Believe us, we had to read this headline twice, too. Not because of us doubting the subject at hand, but because we’re so dang excited. Hafthor Bjornsson will be competing in a full powerlifting meet on December 15th. This news comes only two days after we wrote about Bjornsson’s recent win at the World’s Ultimate Strongman competition.
The meet is titled Thor’s Powerlifting Challenge and will take place during the Iceland Open expo in Laugardalshöll, Reykjavík, Iceland. And in case that wasn’t enough to spark your excitement, Kirill Sarychev will also be making an appearance in the competition. Bjornsson’s Facebook’s post from earlier today reads,
“Current World’s Strongest Man champion Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson will participate in a full powerlifting meet. @sarychevkirill of Russia, the world record holder in the bench press with 335kg/738lbs will make an appearance at the event and perform in the bench press.”
Yup, the 2018 World’s Strongest Man and the world’s strongest bench presser will be competing at the same meet — could it get any better?
We’ve written about Bjornsson on multiple occasions in regards to his deadlift, squat, and bench press, and have speculated how he would fair in a full powerlifting meet. Luckily for all of us, we’ll have an answer to this question in the very near future.
For the squat, Bjornsson has pushed close to 1,000 lbs and his best squat to date has been a 440kg/970 lb squat performed in just knee wraps. He mentioned this squat as being his heaviest to date in a comment on his most recent Instagram video (embedded below).
On the bench press, we haven’t seen Bjornsson take many maximal attempts before, so it will be interesting to see what he hits in his meet prep training and at the meet. Based off of the what we have seen, we’re relatively certain Bjornsson can bench well into the low 500s based off of how easy he bench pressed this 200kg/440 lbs for 10-reps.
And more recently on the bench press, Bjornsson has shared this easy set of 215kg/473 lbs for four sets of three.
The deadlift is possibly Bjornsson’s best lift and we’ve seen him progressively get stronger and stronger in this lift over the last two years.
This year alone, we’ve seen Bjornsson set a new elephant bar deadlift record at the 2018 Arnold Sports Festival, easily pull 455kg/1,003 lbs in February, and claim that he could easily deadlift over 500kg/1,100 lbs.
Now, it’s important to note that a majority of the linked deadlift examples above have been in a strongman setting, so obviously there will be a difference for powerlifting. Although, the point stands that Bjornsson’s deadlift is something we can be excited for.
How do you think Bjornsson will perform at this meet? Could he come close or surpass world record breaking numbers?
Feature image from @thorbjornsson Instagram page.