You don’t get to just be the literal strongest man in the world without occasionally showing off your freaky power.
Case in point: Hafþór Björnsson, a.ka. The Mountain, a.k.a the current reigning World’s Strongest Man, squatting 440 pounds an incredibly impressive 29 times in a throwback video.
Of course, we assume the strongman would rather be deadlifting. “The deadlift is the single best exercise,” Björnsson told MensHealth.com a few weeks after taking home the WSM title. (Did we mention his tattoo that reads, “There is no reason to be alive if you can’t do deadlift”?)
But the barbell squat is a classic for a reason. The move builds up every muscle in your lower body, making it a must for anyone looking to develop leg power. And Bjornsson is crushing them for a very specific, very frightening reason: The strongman has his eyes on a 1,000-pound squat sometime in the future.
“[W]ho believes in 455kg/1003lbs squat soon?” he wrote last year. “Raise your hand if you would like to see me squat over a 455kg/1000lbs!”
He’s gotten scary close, too. Here he is putting up 420 kilograms in October of 2017.