Another week, another Hafthor Bjornsson lifting PR. Over the last month, you’ve probably seen a lot of articles on our site covering Bjornsson’s heavy singles, and that’s for good reason. Yes, the 2018 World’s Strongest Man is crazy strong, but now that he’s competing in a powerlifting meet in two weeks, his lifts have gotten increasingly more interesting.
To catch you up, in early November, Bjornsson announced that he’d be competing in a powerlifting meet on December 15th. The meet he’ll be competing at is titled Thor’s Powerlifting Challenge, and it’s taking place at the Iceland Open expo in Laugardalshöll, Reykjavík, Iceland.
Since his announcement, the strength community has been going back and forth speculating about Bjornsson’s projected total. There are some athletes who are guessing Bjornsson will be on the lower end in the 2,000s if he doesn’t bomb, while you have others speculating a total as high as 2,500+ pounds. Honestly, it’s tough to say, especially when you see videos like his latest squat PR below.
Yesterday, Bjornsson shared his heaviest raw squat (in wraps) to date and it comes in the form of a monstrous 445kg/980 lb PR. And while Bjornsson notes it’s a PR, it looked pretty dang easy for him — could he eclipse 1,000 lbs in competition? If you recall, he did have that as a squat goal in October 2017.
After this latest squat PR, and this 245kg/539 lb bench press PR from last week, we’re becoming believers that the 2,500ish lb total isn’t an unreasonable prediction. Now, it seems like it’s a question of what Bjornsson will be able to deadlift come meet day.
The highest super heavyweight all-time world record total (with & without wraps) is currently held by powerlifting legend Andrey Malanichev at 2,513 lbs. Could Bjornsson break this feat in his first major powerlifting meet?
Feature image from @thorbjornsson Instagram page.