It looks like Jezza Uepa is interested in adding some more world records to his resume.
The 37-year-old powerlifter from the tiny Micronesian nation of Nauru (population: 10,000) is training hard for the IPF World Championships, which start tomorrow in Minsk, Belarus and run for two weeks. (Uepa won’t be competing until the tail end of the event with the rest of the 120+kg athletes.)
Check out the video below that he just posted from Minsk: a 460kg (1,014lb) raw squat.
We know, we know, that depth wouldn’t quite count in official competition, but it’s worth pointing out that a) it’s a high bar squat, b) shallow squats can help to strengthen sticking points and train heavy with a lower injury risk, and c) it’s a training lift!
Uepa, of course, is one of the all-time best squatters on Earth. In December, he set a new IPF raw world record when he squatted 455kg (1,003 pounds) without wraps at the Oceania Classic Powerlifting & Bench Press Championship in New Zealand. That’s the first IPF squat ever that exceeded 1,000 pounds. (Ray Williams had previously completed a 1,000-pound raw squat, but as it wasn’t done in international competition, it didn’t count as a world record.)
If you’re wondering if he can beat that record squatting to depth, wonder no longer: here he is completing an astonishingly fast 460kg squat at full depth in December:
And then there’s the time he made a 470kg raw squat (1,036lb) in training.
But if we’re talking Jezza Uepa, we couldn’t go on without mentioning the 400 kilogram (882-pound) front squat he pulled off in 2016, which to our knowledge is the heaviest front squat ever performed — at least on film.
It’s looking a lot like Uepa’s biggest concern at the IPF World Championships will be Ray Williams. Williams managed a 477.5kg (1,053-pound) raw squat at this year’s Arnold Classic, which is currently the IPF world record. It looks like a fierce battle for the next world record squat is something we can look forward to.
Featured image via IronUndergroundTube on YouTube.