Sebastian Oreb of Australia is a powerlifter and strength coach whose most well known client is likely 2018 World’s Strongest Man Hafthor Bjornsson. Before Bjornsson announced his official retirement from the sport of strongman following his 10th consecutive Iceland’s Strongest Man competition victory, he deadlifted a world record 501kg/1,104lb. That lift was performed on World’s Ultimate Strongman’s (WUS) “Feats of Strength” series and was broadcast on ESPN.
All this is to say that Oreb not only trains elite athletes, he is capable of lifting with them too. Yesterday, the 37-year-old Oreb posted to his Instagram page a personal best squat of 400kg/882lb in training. If you have not yet seen it, check it out below:
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Oreb’s background in powerlifting is fairly impressive despite only first competing at the age of 29 according to Open Powerlifting. He has competed in a dozen events in the last decade, mostly in the -110kg weight class — winning a third of them, and only missing the podium a single time. The competitive highlights on his resume are back-to-back wins in the 2018 and 2019 World Raw Powerlifting Federation (WRPF) Australian Championships. His competition best squat is a 375kg/826.7lb lift from his third attempt in his most recent meet — the 2019 ProRaw XI last March.
In addition to training some of the strongest athletes in the world, competing at high level powerlifting events, and hitting milestone lifts in training, the Australian strength coach has shown to eat like a strongman as well. On Bjornsson’s YouTube channel, there is a video of a full day of eating that involved consuming 8,000 calories of meat, rice, veggies, milk, orange juice, and more. It was all part of the vertical diet Bjornsson followed when prepping for competition. Oreb was in that video eating calorie for calorie with “The Mountain”, despite weighing approximately half his bodyweight.
[Related: The ultimate insider’s guide to Hafthor Bjornsson’s diet]
With this 400kg/882lb achievement in the books for Oreb, it will be interesting to see what feat of strength he attempts to do next. We look forward to watching his training continue and potentially get back onto the competitive stage.
Feature image from Sebastian Oreb’s Instagram page: @australianstrengthcoach
