Consider the bar raised — or lowered, then lifted. In any case, powerlifter Vlad Alhazov has once again shown the strength community that in the sport of powerlifting, he could be argued to be one of the world’s best squatters, if not the best overall.
Yesterday, the Russian athlete shared a monstrous squat video highlighting a 525kg/1,157 lbs lift in knee wraps. For those not in the know, this is a feat that is incredibly uncommon even among the world’s strongest equipped lifters, and it’s even more rare for raw squatters. In his Instagram video’s description Alhazov writes, “I’m doing again!”, and if you ask us, that’s probably the best way to describe Alhazov’s latest video and lifting.
Ten years ago during an attempt at a 590kg squat, Alhazov sustained a catastrophic injury that required a full knee replacement. Since then he took some time away from the platform but in the past year, he’s been consistently pushing new feats that others had never considered possible after full knee reconstruction. In July 2017, nearly ten years following the knee replacement, Alhazov became the first athlete ever to squat 500kg/1,102 lbs raw with knee wraps in competition. This feat still stands across the globe as the all-time squat world record for super heavyweight athletes.
In early March 2018, a video surfaced of him squatting a monstrous 532.5kg/1,147 lbs in training. And as far as we know, this video has been the heaviest squat performed in knee wraps to date. (Let us know if you’ve heard of any others.)
Fast forward two weeks later to mid-March, and Alhazov squatted 505kg/1,113 lbs in knee wraps at the ProRaw Powerlifting exhibition held at the Arnold Sport Festival in Australia. This squat topped Alhazov’s current official all-time world record, but went down as an unofficial record since the squat was performed at an exhibition, and not in a competition, even though it was technically in a competition setting.
After seeing how deep Alhazov just hit his 525kg squat, we’re interested to see when he’ll officially break his 500kg world record. How long into 2019 will it take?
Feature image from @vado.a Instagram page.
