Since his stellar debut at the 2022 World’s Strongest Man (WSM) competition, culminating in an eighth-place finish, Mitchell Hooper‘s star power has been on a steep trajectory. He has effectively joined the Giants Live competition circuit after accepting the wildcard invite to the 2022 Strongman Classic on July 9, 2022.
Part of Hooper’s training for upcoming elite contests is building his max deadlift. On June 29, 2022, he shared a video on his Instagram page wherein he pulled a pair of 425-kilogram (937-pound) singles while wearing a lifting suit. Hooper admits it wasn’t the smoothest training session for him in the post’s caption.
To have everything working against me and to hit not one, but two singles at this weight is a great sign for me.
Check out the first single he locked out below. He deadlifted in socks while wearing a lifting belt and used lifting straps. Notably, he hitched the barbell several times once it was over his knees. That is legal in strongman, and this would almost certainly be called a good lift in competition:
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According to Strongman Archives, Hooper stands at six feet, three inches tall and weighs 320 pounds. That is a significantly lesser bodyweight than the 400-plus pounds that both 2017 WSM champion Eddie Hall and 2018 WSM champion Hafthor Björnsson weighed when they each pulled 500 kilograms (1,102.3 pounds) and 501 kilograms (1,104.5 pounds), respectively. Björnsson’s deadlift is the heaviest ever caught on camera.
If Hooper were to make a legitimate challenge for the all-time deadlift world record at his current weight, it would be a significantly heavier pound-for-pound lift than Björnsson’s. Per Hooper’s Instagram caption, his personal best deadlift is 475 kilograms (1,047 pounds).
And while this recent in-gym lift isn’t near his all-time best, pulling two heavy singles a week-and-a-half before the 2022 Strongman Classic bodes well for Hooper’s chances of calling for 1,000 pounds on the barbell and joining that elite group. In 2021, Oleksii Novikov and Evan Singleton both his 1,000-pound personal-record deadlifts in the World Deadlift Championships, which was featured in the Strongman Classic.
Hooper’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, on July 9, 2022, will be a decent indicator of how far away he is from potentially attempting a world record deadlift. If he performs as well in London as he did in Sacramento for the 2022 WSM, a podium finish is well within his range.
Featured image: @mitchellhooper on Instagram