Rudy Kadlub is a co-founder of Kabuki Strength, a “training facility and manufacturing space in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.” He just celebrated his 71st birthday and decided the best way to celebrate was with some whiskey and suiting up a barbell to 227kg/500lb and deadlifting it raw in what appears to be the walkway right outside the front door of his home.
Check it out below via the video Kadlub shared on his Instagram page. We assume the whiskey bottle in the foreground was consumed after the lift:
“I still got it, baby!”
Caleb Barr, a follower of Kadlub on Instagram commented:
“This is longevity right here at its peak.”
Hard to disagree with that sentiment. Since becoming a septuagenarian last year, Kadlub has shown off that his strength has not let up. Just ten days after his 70th birthday, Kadlub deadlifted two 229kg/505lb singles. If you have not yet seen those lifts, you can view them below courtesy of Chris “Mad Scientist” Duffin’s Instagram page:
These lifts are very close to Kadlub’s competition best, which according to Open Powerlifting is a 235kg/518lb deadlift from the 2018 International Powerlifting (IPL) Drug Tested World Championships in the -100kg weight class.
Assuming Kadlub is closer to the -90kg class – which he competed in at his last two meets including the 2019 IPL Drug Tested World Championships last October – this 227kg/500lb is just 3kg/7lb under his competition best. For those curious, of the twenty-nine competitions Kadlub has competed in since age 58, he took the gold in twenty-two of them.
Although when Kadlub will compete next is uncertain, judging by the volume he incorporates into his training, there may be many more gold medals to come. Here he is below pulling one of three 199.6kg/440lb triples in his garage gym just a couple of weeks ago:
We’re already looking forward to next year when Kadlub might pull 227kg/500lb plus to celebrate is 72nd birthday.
Feature image from Rudy Kadlub’s Instagram page: @rudykadlub