Yangsu Ren, aka “Deadlift Panda”, is another athlete similar to Cailer Woolam who has an Instagram handle that stands true to his name. Yesterday, Ren competed at USA Powerlifting Raw Nationals in the 83kg weight class, lifted in their prime time slot, and finished with a huge deadlift.
To provide context into how big the pull was, the current world record for the 83kg weight class stands at 325kg, and was set by Norway’s legendary powerlifter Bakkelund Kjell Egil. Ren’s deadlift isn’t an official world record (since it wasn’t done in international competition), but it’s an insane feat nonetheless and a new American record.
[Interested in watching the USAPL Raw Nationals stream? Check out this link.]
On Ren’s third attempt, he made the jump to 340kg from a successful 321kg second attempt, which would end bumping him up from 9th to 5th place in the standings.
This lift topped the previous 22 year old open 83kg raw American record of 320kg, which was set by John Haack. Ren didn’t come out on top for the day, but he now owns the American Open Men’s Raw Deadlift record. Not a bad day.
What’s possibly the craziest part of the pull is that Ren didn’t know what was on the bar going out to his third attempt. His coach made the strategic call to earn Ren the best placing possible based off of his previous lifts.
In his Instagram video’s description above he writes, “3rd deadlift attempt and the hypes way to wrap up #rawnationals2017! @joe_tsa made the call that we needed to get me from 9th place to 5th place after a 530lb squat and 340lb bench, and both him and @iron_ness made sure I didn’t know what was on the bar before I went out there 😂 This 340kg/749.6lb was the hardest grinder of my life so far, but worth every ripped callus.”
We’ve already seen a good amount of record breaking strength feats from this year’s Raw Nationals, and we still have three more days of competition. Who’s next? Tune in to find out.
Feature image screenshot from @deadlift_panda Instagram page.
