Very strong Norwegian man Kjell Bakkelund quietly uploaded a no-big-deal deadlift to his Instagram this week with a gut busting 330 kilograms, or 727.5 pounds.
We like how he pulled off a deadlift that was almost a combination of sumo and conventional, given how his arms seemed to stay in contact with his legs for most of the lift.
Bakkelund posted the lift to his Instagram with the casual caption,
330kg rawdeadlift.
Feels good to pull this weight with Steel plates and titex bar😁Next goal: 340kg
He added in the comments that the Titex bar “works very well”. It looks like it.
The reason this lift is a big deal is that it was a personal record for the guy who holds the current IPF world record in the deadlift. We’re unsure of how much he’s weighing right now, but since he holds the record for both the -74kg and the -83kg weight classes, it seems pretty likely he’d have broken some kind of record if he’d done this on stage.
The interesting thing about his record in the -83kg class is that he meant to compete as a -74kg athlete, but turned up weighing 77.36 kilos. Then he went ahead and won his weight class anyway, pulling 325.5kg and winning the entire competition with his Wilks score of 539.32. You can sort of see his lifts in this post below, but be warned that it’s very dark.
He wrote on the day that, “the deadlift was better than worlds, but not where I want it to be,” a pretty unusual attitude for a guy who just set a world record. It’s probably because he went for a 330-kilogram pull as his third attempt but didn’t make it, which must have made his latest 330kg pull all the sweeter.
He might consider his showing at the IPF World Classic Powerlifting Championships last June as his finest performance, since he not only set a world record deadlift as a -74kg athlete (322kg) but also the world record total with 757kg.
We won’t see him at this year’s World Classics though, since he’s decided to focus on equipped powerlifting for a while. We’re excited to see where it takes him.
Related: Romanian Deadlift Guide
Featured image via @kjelllbrell on Instagram.