In the chilly far Eastern Russia city of Khabarovsk, just thirty kilometers from the Chinese border, Yury Belkin is squatting up a storm. Usually weighing somewhere in the vicinity of 225 pounds, Belkin’s buddies managed to film the last three reps of an agonizing set of five squats of 300 kilograms, or 661 pounds. Take a look:
The caption is a little hard to decipher. After the introduction, “An interesting situation today has turned into a squat,” he writes that his plan was to finish with 300kg squats, and then he had no problem and was able to squat 300kg. That’s not really an interesting story, so at first we thought something was off with Belkin’s translation skills. But after checking with a native Russian speaker who confirmed that the English is an accurate translation of some slightly disjointed Russian, we concluded that he probably just had some typos in the original caption. (Can’t blame a guy for being a little scatterbrained after squatting 661lb for five.)
What’s striking about this particular video is that Belkin is best known for his beastly deadlift, having previously pulled an astonishing 420kg (927lb) raw, without a belt. That’s 4.08 times his bodyweight (he weighed 103kg, or 227lb), and set a new World Raw Powerlifting Federation record.
But Belkin is an extraordinarily well-rounded powerlifter. At that event he was able to outbench Dan Green and Kevin Oak, and his max (equipped) squat looks to be about 440kg (970lb) in a belt. You can watch that in the video below, which was filmed at the Super Cup of Titans 2016 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
We’ve got to say, nothing warms our hearts more than an audience cheering a lifter for almost making a lift. You’ll get there, Yuri!
Featured image via @belkin_one_power on Instagram.
