What is the heaviest weight ever lifted?
Lifting weights can be done in a variety of ways. In the competitions such as Olympic Weightlifting or Powerlifting and Strongman competition there are some rules such as lifting rules or drug tests.
So the lifting style or rules are very determinative to the amount of the weight can be lifted.
Forexample as an overhead lift the official world record for clean and jerk in the men’s 109+ kg is 586 lb (266 kg) by Leonid Taranenko in the year 1988.
Finally when it comes to the back lifts and harness lifts we can talk about the greatest weights. A record in a back lift raised by Paul Anderson which is 6270 lbs (2840 kg) as the greatest weight ever raised by a human ultimately removed from the Guinness Book of World Records due to insufficient witnesses.
The current verified back lift record is 5,340 pounds (2420 kg) held by Gregg Ernst. He is a Canadian Strongman and his Guinness World Record awarded after 21 years.
Heaviest Weights Lifted By Different Styles and Olympic Records
International Weightlifting Fedaration (IWF) categories weight classes by bodyweight and has recently made changes in 2018. But it’s not main subject of this article.
The heaviest deadlift was achieved by Hafthor Bjornson in 2020 and new record was 501 kg (1,104.5 lb.)
Also there are other deadlift styles like equipped deadlift, long bar deadlift and partial deadlift (lifters are pulling from a higher starting point which is more easier).
Partial deadlift record was achieved by Oleksi Novikov – 537.5 kg (1.185 lb)
Hossein Rezazahed – 263.5 kg (580.9lb) clean&jerk – 2004, Athens Olympics (heaviest olympic clean&jerk)
Leonid Taranenko – 266 kg (586.4 lb) clean&jerk – 1988, Canberra, Australia (heaviest verified competition)
Behdad Salimi – 216 kg (476.2 lb) snatch – 2016, Rio Olympic Games (heaviest olympic snatch)
(Rio de Janeiro – 473kg)
Lasha Talakhadze – 221 kg (487.2 lb) snatch – 2018, European Championships (heaviest verified competition)
Don’t forget the man who nicknamed as ‘pocket Hercules’.
Naim Suleymanoglu – 190 kg (418lb) clean&Jerk – 1988, Summer Olympics
(highest clean&jerk to bodyweight ratio)
Naim Suleymanoglu – 152.5 kg (336lb) snatch – 1988, Summer Olympics
(highest snatch to bodyweight ratio)
Naim Suleymanoglu is the only man who has lifted 3.15 times of his bodyweight in clean&jerk. In other words, 10kg more than triple his bodyweight (190kg). And only man who have snatched 2.5 times (152.5 kg) his bodyweight.
He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1988. He was introduced to the International Weightlifting Fedaration Hall of Fame in 2004.