Mart Seim is a weightlifter on a role, and heading into August, he’s in the conversation to be a medal contender at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The Estonian superheavyweight doesn’t quite have world-elite numbers in the snatch — his competition best is 190 kilos, around 20kg behind the likes of Lasha Talakhadze, Behdad Salimi, and other elite superheavies — his clean & jerks have earned him recent high placings.
Seim is the silver medalist from the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships, where he hit a 248kg clean & jerk. (Aleksey Lovchev originally won the competition and set a clean & jerk world record, but his title was stripped after a positive drug test.) He also finished third at the 2016 European Championships and looks capable of closing in on 250kg in the clean & jerk — perhaps enough to put him in contention for an overall medal under the right circumstances.
Seim is also known as having some of the strongest, most explosive legs of any weightlifter in the world. He recently took to Instagram to show off his impressive jumping prowess, clearing these stairs in two jumps at a bodyweight of 150kg/330 pounds.
The 25 year old also back squats around (or north of ) 400kg: high-bar, Olympic style. It’s a staggering number to contemplate until you see it on video. Check it out below; Seim has also repped out sets of 10 at 320kg, which we’ve also included below.
Seim was also named the Estonian Male Athlete of the Year for 2015, a nod to the progress and accomplishments of a lifter who still looks to be improving rapidly in the Olympic lifts.
And for more fun, check out Seim strict press 160kg for reps. The Olympic Press hasn’t been a competition discipline since the early 1970s, but if it ever comes back, Mart looks like he’s preparing well (though still has a long way to go to match the 220+kg marks of lifting legends like Vasily Alekseyev).
