Look, guys, no hands! Larry “Wheels” Williams, a powerlifter turned strongman, has always been a deadlift machine. We’ve seen him deadlift 800 pounds for seven reps a couple months ago, and not long after, pull 881 lbs for three reps and a big time PR.
He recently tore one of his biceps while training Atlas Stones, but even that didn’t stop the guy from deadlifting. He just got creative with it and didn’t use his hands. Wheels posted on his YouTube channel a training session where he looped straps around his traps and pulled an astonishing 937 lbs. Not bad for a recovery session!
We start the video when Wheels is getting set up for the big 937 lbs pull, but the whole video is worth a watch!
As you can see in the video, the straps are a tool he started using because of his biceps injury. “The barbell strap can be used for many things,” Wheels explained in the video. “But the primary use for it is deadlifting.”
The straps rest on Wheels’ traps, which he finds useful because it doesn’t strain his neck. He compared it to the positioning of a low bar squat.
[Check out 4 Benefits of Low Bar Back Squat]
The straps connect to links that hook onto the bar and can be adjusted based on the lifter’s height and stance. Wheels is clearly a big fan of this tool and isn’t shy about calling it a “genius invention.”
“Without this tool there is no way I would be deadlifting right now,” Wheels said in the video.
He worked up in weight throughout the session, and mentioned how the motion that he’s training using the barbell strap is somewhat similar to that of a sumo deadlift. Here’s another angle of that 937-pounder.
“I give a massive amount of credit to sumo deadlifters because I see what they do on a daily basis to achieve that level of mobility. To go through that extreme mobility work is boring, it’s tedious, and you have to be very diligent, you cant skip a day,” Wheels said. “I for one will never have the mobility, not because I’m not capable of it, it’s just I don’t want to sumo deadlift that bad. I like conventional pulls.”
By the end of the video (at 9:54) Wheels ends up pulling 937 pounds (425 kilograms). We can’t wait to see what kind of weight he pulls once he gets healthy.
Featured image from Larry Wheels’ YouTube Channel.