If you’re not really into powerlifting then you might now know the name Marianna Gasparyan, but if you are, you don’t have much of an excuse. Arguably the strongest female powerlifter on Earth, the Kazakhstan-born athlete has the highest Wilks score of all time with 720, which she earned at last year’s Kern US Open.
Known for her prodigious squat, she holds the all time world record in the lift in both the -148lb class (with 496 pounds) and the -132lb class (with 507 pounds). Those are raw; she also has two world records in the raw squat with wraps: 573.2lb at -123lb and 562.1lb at -132lb. Her best squat ever was an unofficial world record: a 585lb lift at 123lb in the Animal Cage. That’s 4.75 times bodyweight.
Her 292.1lb bench is second heaviest of all time in the -132lb class (behind Jen Thompson’s 300.9lb), her deadlift is third in the -132lb class, and her -132lb and -148lb raw totals are both all time world records: 1,287.6lb and 1,256.6lb, respectively. She has two more all time world record totals for when she lifted raw with wraps, 1,350.3lb at -123lb and 1,300.7lb at -132lb. Yes, she has higher totals in the lighter weight classes.
Anyway, she’s god damn strong, so we could think of no one better to pull the classic “very strong person in old person make up does very heavy lifts” prank. Here’s Gasparyan rocking up to an LA gym with Russian transplant Eric Kanevsky.
https://youtu.be/68NZlYyUELc
She starts her warm up with some easy 315lb squats, adding four plates to the work set of the gent whose squat rack they borrowed. Then they give her some vodka to add some pep to her reps, before she goes on to rep 225lb bench presses (that’s 77 percent of her just-behind-Jen-Thompson world record).
That’s the strongest woman I’ve ever seen!
“I’m sorry, she makes me take her to the gym,” Kanevsky kvetches. “I don’t even work out.”
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If you like this video, you might enjoy the time Meg Squats turned up at Gold’s Gym in full grandma regalia and Midwestern accent. This is a video that, at 30 million views, is the second most viewed of all time on Bodybuilding.com’s YouTube channel.
And then there’s the time CrossFit® Games athlete Kenneth Leverich did a bunch of Oly lifting at Muscle Beach in grandpa makeup. Old people lifting pranks! Fitness influencers cann’t get enough of them and neither can we.
Featured image via @power_mayan on Instagram
