Zydrunas “Big Z” Savickas PRs His Log Press, Won’t Say How Heavy It Is

By
Nick English
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As the Europe’s Strongest Man contest approaches, one of the most hotly debated questions is the matter of who will win the log lift event. Some of the strongest overhead pressers on Earth, including Eddie Hall, Hafthor Bjornsson, and Zydrunas “Big Z” Savickas, will be in attendance when the event kicks off on April 7th.

Savickas currently holds the all-time world record in the log lift: 228 kilograms (502.6 pounds), which he made three years ago at the Arnold Classic in Rio, Brazil. Having Schwarzenegger himself watching him lift undoubtedly gave him some extra motivation for the PR.

And in an video he posted yesterday, the Lithuanian claimed — in a now deleted Instagram story, unfortunately — that he hit “a new PB” in the log lift. He did post the video, but steadfastly refuses to say how heavy it is. Take a look below.

Maybe he didn’t get to full extension, but when a cynical commenter called the lift “a fail,” Big Z had a response ready.

are you referee? I explain for you. It’s video from my training. It is in my gym. Not in competition. I train 30 year and I know how to prepare for competition.

That’s fair. So how heavy was that log? We have a few hints. In a post last week, he said that he’s aiming to lift over 230 kilograms (507 pounds) at Europe’s Strongest Man and agreed with one commenter that 235 kilograms is “achievable.” Today, he gave a more precise answer:

this year my plan to lift 235kg. But I never lift in training records. My best in training 220kg. But my best before I lift 228kg world record was only 205kg. Its not important what I lift in training. Most important what I will lift this year in competition

[Watch Savickas hit a glute-burning 8-rep set of 772-pound hip thrusts last week here.]

Most commenters are pretty sure that was a 230-kilogram lift he posted yesterday, but we don’t know. We do know we’ll be in for a fight come April 7th at Europe’s Strongest Man. Eddie Hall recently made a 226-kilogram seated log press in training, and that was following a 40-rep set of 60kg dumbbell overhead presses.

This is only Hall’s second ever Europe’s Strongest Man (he came 2nd last year behind Hafthor Bjornsson) and it will be the first time that Hall, Bjornsson, and Savickas will be competing for the ESM title. Buckle up.

Featured image @savickas_bigz on Instagram.

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Nick English
Nick is a content producer and journalist with over seven years’ experience reporting on four continents. His first articles about health were on a cholera outbreak in rural Kenya while he was reporting for a French humanitarian organization. His next writing job was covering the nightlife scene in Shanghai. He’s written on a lot of different kinds of things, but his passion for health ultimately led him to cover it full time.Shanghai was where he managed to publish his first health related article (it was on managing diarrhea), he then went on to produce a radio documentary about bodybuilding in Australia before he finished his Master’s degrees in Journalism and International Relations and headed to New York City. Here, he’s been writing on health full time for more than five years for outlets like Men's Health, VICE, and Popular Science.Nick’s interest in health kind of comes from an existential angle: how are we meant to live? How do we reach our potential? Does the body influence the mind? (Believe it or not, his politics Master’s focused on religion.)Questions like these took him through a lot of different areas of health and fitness like gymnastics, vegetarianism, kettlebell training, fasting, CrossFit, Paleo, and so on, until he realized (or decided) that strength training fit best with the ideas of continuous, measurable self improvement.At BarBend his writing focuses a little more on nutrition and long-form content with a heaping dose of strength training. His underlying belief is in the middle path: you don’t have to count every calorie and complete every workout in order to benefit from a healthy lifestyle and a stronger body. Plus, big traps are cool.

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