In the last year, Larry “Wheels” Williams has made some crazy strength progress and has arguably become one of the better known powerlifters in the sport. After a minor setback in April when Williams fell at the CETC US Open under 793 lbs leaving him with a quad tear, he’s continued to make incredible upper body progress.
Check out his latest bench video where he hits 585 lbs for a solid two reps, and a near third.
Williams has been recently competing in the 242 lb weight class, and the current record for this class’s bench is held by Mike MacDonald with a 603 lb press. With Wheels’s recent near 600 lb triple, it might be safe to say that we may be seeing that record fall sometime in the near future.
In fact, Williams has a recorded bench that tops the current record by 17 lbs. At the end of May, Wheel benched 620 lbs for a PR at the opening of Bradley Martyn’s gym Zoo Culture. Mind you, he was spotted by the White Rhino Stan Efferding, so your strength is naturally higher from the Rhino’s presence alone.
This bench didn’t have a pause, so it wouldn’t hold in a meet, but the strength behind it suggests Williams can and will hopefully be making a run for the record soon.
One of the standout characteristics of Wheels’s lifting – and possibly what makes his videos so popular – is his ability to crush both maximal and endurance style lifts. Check out the video below where he presses 385 lbs for 20-reps. Talk about bench cardio.
After his quad injury in April, Williams has been coming back and rehabbing slowly. If you check out his Instagram, you can see more on his thoughts behind the injury, how he’s building back up, and ways he’s been addressing imbalances that led to it.
There’s still no word on when Williams will be formally competing again, but when he does we can expect to see big numbers.
Feature image screenshot from @larrywheels Instagram page.
