A four-time World’s Strongest Man is going to train pretty differently to your average four-workouts-a-week gymgoer, but this is some next level stuff.
Brian Shaw has one of the most entertaining and well produced YouTube channels in all of strength sports and we’re always keeping an eye out for footage of his inhuman training feats. This week we thought we saw “Brian Shaw rack pulls 1,365 pounds” which is a noteworthy feat in and of itself. Then we took a closer look.
“1,365 Belt Squat Rack Pull.”
Belt squat rack pull? The belt squat is a machine often associated with Westside Barbell and while you can and totally should read our ultimate guide to the belt squat’s benefits here, the long and short of it is that it puts the resistance largely on your hips instead of loading the spine, plus it makes it easier to lift with a vertical spine and it really fires up the glutes.
The rack pull, of course, is similar to a deadlift but with a much shorter range of emotion, allowing for even heavier lifts. They’re often trained to improve deadlift lockout and grip strength and Brian Shaw, well, he invited YouTubers Uncle Nic and Brian Alsruhe to try out a combination of the two. Here are strong people lifting heavy things.
Shaw starts preparing for his heaviest set, slowly transforming from one the most articulate gentlemen in strength sports into one of the most savage athletes on Earth, after he puts in his mouth guard at 3:56.
He explains the movement in more detail toward the end of the video:
It’s actually kind of a hybrid deadlift so it’s on the belt squat but we’re doing a rack pull while wearing the belt squat and we have a good amount of back tension through the hips. So you really have to squeeze your glutes. It makes your lockout very powerful. (…)
Certainly the training can become a little stagnant. If all you’re ever doing with the deadlift is coming in, putting weights on a bar from a standard height, you’ve gotta have a little bit of variety. Especially for me, as long as I’ve been training, I like to have new challenges, I like to do stuff that’s different, so this was a heck of a lot of fun to have these guys experience with me.
Hearing this mountain of a man saying “That was a heck of a lot of fun!” was a really delightful end to one of his best videos of late. Would you try a belt squat rack pull?
Featured image via SHAWSTRENGTH on YouTube.