British powerlifter Tom Martin is continuing his meteoric rise in the sport, and his success is all the more impressive given that he experienced a complete tear of his bicep last summer.
[Check out our article on how to prevent a bicep tear if you’d rather avoid this fate.]
But Martin got back on the horse pretty quickly, and by quickly we mean that he went ahead and totaled 920 kilograms (2,028.2 pounds) in a mock meet before he even went into surgery. At the time he said,
If you have to ask why I feel the need to do this then I really couldn’t adequately explain to you how much of a mental battle it is for me to stay positive and hopeful through this, and how much it means to be able to still do this. Today was a big win for me and makes me a lot happier about the situation.
Powerlifters gonna powerlift, and this week during a mock meet he totaled 1,001 kilograms (2,206.8 pounds), the first time his total has ever reached four figures. He credits this to a new personal record in the squat of 375 kilograms (826.7 pounds), and as you can see in the video below it truly was a max effort lift.
He followed the squat with a bench of 211 kilograms (465.2 pounds) and a very difficult-looking deadlift of 415 kilograms (915 pounds). He added a caption to the video that read,
A squat PB of 375kg tonight sees my best lifts from this training block up over 1000kg for the first. Now to put it together on the platform in a little over 4 weeks.
We’re pretty sure that deadlift is a personal record too, since he posted a slightly lighter lift of 410 kilograms (903.9 pounds) about a month ago and said it was the heaviest lift he’d ever made to competition standards. That means he wasn’t using wrist straps and the bar was loaded with calibrated plates.
Martin already holds the -120kg British records in the raw squat (370 kilograms/815.7 pounds), deadlift (402.5 kilograms/887.4 pounds), and total (785kg or 1730.6lb) in addition to an IPF equipped deadlift world record of 345kg when he competed in the -83kg class. So it certainly looks like he’ll setting new British records at his meet next month.
Featured image via Tom Martin on Facebook.
