At a meet held at Pro-Fit Deer Park in Long Island, 23-year-old Team USA athlete Matt Sohmer just entered a new class of elite lifters with a raw deadlift of 804.5 pounds (365kg) at 264.5lb (120kg) bodyweight.
And he makes it look fairly easy, too.
(Yep, that’s announcer is indeed a pirate – he’s called Geno, the Pirate of Powerlifting, the treasured hype man for many of the USAPL’s events. He’s so beloved that someone made a full twenty-four minute video dedicated to him on YouTube, and USAPL even bought him a golden microphone for his ensemble.)
This was a giant PR for Sohmer. His best squat is 828 pounds (375.5kg) at 250 pounds bodyweight and his best total is 1,962 pounds (890kg) at 256 pounds (116.1kg) bodyweight. He claims his bench is currently sitting at 336 pounds (152.4kg).
Hailing from New York, Sohmer started lifting after a slew of knee injuries cut his football career short. (ACL, PCL, MCL and meniscus injuries are no joke.) He rehabbed his injuries through weight training, and when he pulled 600 pounds in a local New York powerlifting meet in late 2011, he decided that becoming a pro powerlifter was the career for him.
When he was just nineteen, he became the youngest person to ever squat 800 pounds raw and without wraps, and over the course of his career he has won over twenty gold medals in eight different powerlifting federations.
Sohmer’s current goal is to break the all-time raw, drug-free, strap-free record for the open squat, which stands at 865 pounds. With this kind of tenacity, we think he’s got it in him.
Featured image via @thehulksmash75 on Instagram.
