Japanese powerlifter Yoshihiro Higa is putting up some pretty serious numbers in training. The -74kg athlete’s greatest claim to fame right now is his IPF world record squat, a monstrous lift of 276 kilograms (608.6 pounds). He made that lift at just a couple of months ago at the IPF World Powerlifting Championships in Calgary.
You can relive that magical squat below — the hype is real for this one.
[Watch Ray Williams set a new world deadlift record and win this year’s IPF World Championships here!]
Now a new squat of his is lighting up powerlifters’ social media feeds and it’s not hard to tell why. In this clip the twenty-seven-year-old makes a lift of 285 kilograms (628.3 pounds) and while, sure, maybe the depth isn’t absolutely flawless, you can see above that he always manages to hit depth in competition. In any event, it’s hard not to be astounded by how darn slow the eccentric portion of this lift is.
[Slow eccentrics are great for building strength — here are six ways to eccentrically load your exercises and why you should.]
Higa wrote underneath that video that his deadlift is 285 kilos (628.3 pounds) but we don’t think that’s his heaviest of all time, since last week he put up this video of a mighty 300-kilo pull. That’s 661.4 pounds. We’ve got to say, we love the music this guy trains to.
We’re not sure when the man’s next meet will be but judging from his YouTube results he sets a lot of his records and PRs at the annual IPF World Championships. Here’s a 270-kilo (595.2-pound) low-bar back squat from last year’s championship, a lift that was particularly exciting to watch because it was the fourth time the squat world record was broken in that weight class during the event.
Suffice to say, we’re looking forward to his next meet.
Featured image va @yoshihiro.270 on Instagram.