Sure, Georgian superheavyweight Lasha Talakhadze can snatch and total more than anyone in history (seriously, he did it a couple weeks ago), so we shouldn’t be too surprised when the Olympic and World Champion shows off some insane strength. But there’s just something about the below video that’s getting the weightlifting community’s attention online, and we have to agree it’s impressive.
The video comes from Talakhadze’s training, presumably in the lead-up to the 2017 Weightlifting World Championships. In the video, Talakhadze — still just 24 years old — performs a clean pull with 310kg/683.4 pounds. The impressive part isn’t necessarily that he’s able to pull the weight; honestly, we’d be surprised if he wasn’t able to deadlift this.
What’s almost shocking is the speed and noticeable “POP!” he’s able to get on the bar with weight far, far above what any human has ever cleaned.
Check it out below:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcX3DA3D500/
And yes, that’s a human being keeping great positioning on a clean pull with about 100 pounds over what anyone has ever even attempted to clean.
At this point, it’s almost impossible to argue that Talakhadze ISN’T the top male superheavyweight weightlifter in the world. What’s probably still up for debate is where he ranks all-time. After a record-setting performance in Rio — in a session that saw TWO lifters set snatch World Records — it was clear Talakhadze had more big things in his future. He followed that up with a new snatch World Record at the 2017 European Championships, but his incredibly performance at Worlds in Anaheim blew just about everyone’s expectations out of the water.
By raw numbers, Talakhadze leads the pack in snatch and total all-time; no one else has ever snatched 220kg in international competition, and no one else has ever totaled 477kg. With what looks like plenty of prime competition years ahead of him, we’re interested to see if he can make a run at claiming the all-time clean & jerk World Record, which would require a 267kg lift (the current World Record stands at 263kg).
Judging from this recent video of Talakhadze’s clean pull, we don’t doubt he’s working on it.