Transcription
Paul Anderson is considered by many sports historians to be the strongest man that ever lived. But is that actually true? Hopefully, by the end of this video, you'll have an answer. And you'll also find that this man achieved so much more than just weightlifting records.
Paul's childhood was far from easy. He was born in 1932 in a small town in northern Georgia, and at the age of 5, he nearly died of brights disease. He was in the hospital for weeks and even fell into a coma. He survived just with permanent and severe kidney damage. Because of that, he was plagued with health issues for his entire life, and it would even lead to his death later on.
When we look at photos of him as a child, we can see he was pretty average, maybe even small. That's because the doctors ordered his parents to keep him inside and away from any kind of physical activities. But they also put the poor boy on a strict diet which contained virtually no meat or protein at all.
When his parents saw no improvement in his health, they started feeding Paul properly with milk, eggs, and meat. And slowly they encouraged him to start playing outside with proper nutrition and an active lifestyle. Paul began showing his natural strength and grew fast.
At age 14, he was introduced to weight training. And over the following years, he assembled a makeshift backyard gym with scraps from the local junkyard. During high school, Paul was on the football team where his coach tried to discourage him from lifting weights. At that time, it was widely believed that weightlifting would negatively affect athletes by making them musclebound. I know that sounds pretty crazy, especially since nowadays American football players are some of the strongest athletes. Weightlifting is an essential pillar of their training. But back in Paul's time, they genuinely thought lifting made them stiff and slow.
Now, despite the discouragement, Paul continued lifting and became a valued player on his football team. Ironically, he was known for his quickness, and he was so good that he even earned a football scholarship at Ferman University in South Carolina. It was at college as a freshman that he was first introduced to serious weightlifting with proper equipment. He shocked everyone when he squatted three plates for reps the very first time he got under a barbell.
Paul knew immediately that he wanted to dedicate himself fully to weightlifting. So, he dropped out of college and returned to his parents' home where he could focus on eating his mom's hearty food and growing through his training. By this time, he was getting huge, around 275 lbs body weight at a height of 5'10.
Even as he began taking weightlifting seriously, he was never one to buy expensive standardized equipment. He kept making trips to the junkyard with his father and together they would build increasingly bigger makeshift weights out of scraps. There are some amazing videos of Paul's early training in his backyard and it just goes to show how little someone needs to truly get strong as long as they have the necessary mindset and dedication. His most iconic piece of equipment is probably this bar, which his father made for him out of giant wheels, which were salvaged from heavy rock quarry machinery. The wheels were so big that they basically worked like built-in safeties since they were just a couple inches off the ground at the bottom of his squat.
Coincidentally, his family moved to the same town in Tennessee as Bob Peoples, the legendary deadlifter who we have already covered in another video. When Bob heard of this 19-year-old neighbor of his that was known for being so naturally strong, he invited Paul over to train in his basement gym. When asked what he wanted to do, Paul chose to squat. And when Bob asked him how much weight he wanted to warm up with, Paul said 500 lb. Bob tried to convince him to start with a lighter weight, but Paul just said, "Nope, load it up." And squatted the 500 lb with total ease. Then they loaded 550 lbs and he squatted that twice. Bob was astounded. He knew the world record at the time, which had been standing for 30 years, was around 600 lb. Yet, this teenager, who was completely unknown in the weightlifting scene, was here in his basement gym, squatting almost that much without even warming up. Bob took several photos of Paul and wrote an article about him, which he sent into Iron Man magazine and was published in February 1952, putting Paul on the map for the very first time. Paul, who had never been properly coached before, took some advice from Bob and within a couple weeks worked his way up to squatting record-breaking numbers.
We're about to find out what made Paul a contender for the greatest of all time. But first, a quick word from today's sponsor, the Robert Baraban Chest Crusher. This is an awesome piece of home gym equipment I've genuinely been using for the last couple of months. The design was inspired by a device which was originally invented by York barbell back in Paul Anderson's day. So, it fits right in with everything we talk about on this channel. The chest crusher fills a real gap in my home gym. I can get a nice stretch when doing dumbbell flies, but without a pec deck, I was always missing that solid squeeze on my chest. And this thing solves that problem completely. I've also been keeping it in my office so I can knock out a couple sets throughout the day while I work. And the gains have seriously carried over to my bench press where I'm now hitting lifetime PRs. The Crusher is built fully out of thick steel, same as the Baraban chest expander. No matter how many videos you've watched, when this thing arrives at your door, you're still going to be shocked by how heavyduty it is. You can load the Crusher with up to seven springs. So, even someone as strong as Paul Anderson would get a serious workout. I'm currently getting my ass kicked by just three springs. And look, I was using Robert Bearband's products before he ever became a sponsor, so I really mean it when I recommend them. Whether you're into old school training methods or just want to try something different, head over to shop.handgripper.net and check out the Chestcrusher. The links in the description. All right, now back to the video.
Later that same year, Paul made lifting history in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he squatted 605, 635, and finally 650 lbs with little rest in between each attempt. When the final bar was officially weighed, it ended up being even heavier than they thought at 660 12 lb. The greatest weight which had ever been squatted by a human being at that time. Paul was barely 20 years old. He had just broken a squat record which stood for three decades by over 60 lbs and he was just getting started.
At the same meet, he also competed in the three Olympic lifts, which he had barely any training in. Yet, still with pure strength and almost no technique, he broke several regional records. From that day on, Paul's rise in the world of weightlifting was sensational. He broke so many records, it would be difficult to list them all, but here are some of the highlights.
The following year in 1953, he attended a strength and health event in Norfolk, Virginia, where he put up a 760 lb squat after a brief warm-up. Once again, when the bar was weighed, it turned out to be even heavier at 762 and a/4 lb. So, in less than a year, he added over 100 lb to his already record-breaking squat. And as if that wasn't impressive enough, remember he made this lift outdoors, completely raw, no wraps, no belts, barefoot, and on a flimsy platform which wasn't even placed on level ground.
In October of 1953, Paul attended his first international competition in Montreal, Canada. We have some great footage of this meet where he took first place and set a Canadian Open record. Paul Anderson of the USA lifts 330 lbs on his first try at a body weight of 310. And now Anderson handles 402 lb. The new champ. And brother, he can really toss his weight around. To round out that year, in November, right after his 21st birthday, he traveled to York, Pennsylvania, where he set a new world record total in the three Olympic lifts of 1,65 lb. By this time, he could squat 820 lb, which was around 200 lb more than anyone else was doing in the world. At around 300 lb body weight, his arms measured 21 in, his neck 23 in, and his thighs 34 in.
1954 brought a major setback for Paul as he dealt with several serious injuries backto back. He hurt his leg while lifting a ridiculously heavy safe in a hip lift. It was a lift he had done many times before, but this time it was a cold day and the safe had frozen to the ground. Then he broke his wrist during an overhead lift and later still broke several ribs and injured his hip in a car accident. None of that held him back though. He kept training however he could. And by the following year in 1955, he was back to breaking records.
Hey, it's me from the future. So, while I was originally researching for this video, I did read something about Paul continuing to lift with his broken wrist, but I just thought that's a bit farfetched. I'm not going to put that in the script. However, now I came across this photo and I looked into it a bit more and yeah, it's true. While Paul had his broken wrist, what he did is he actually took the cast off that the hospital gave him and built his own cast, which we can see here on his left wrist, which included some kind of brace uh that allowed him to take the weight off his broken bone and continue lifting even with uh this injury, which was caused by lifting in the first place. But this guy was just so much of an animal that not even a broken wrist could stop him from Olympic lifting. So yeah, his body weight had ballooned up to over 340 lb. In February, he lifted history's first 1,100 lb total. And in April, he made the first ever official 400 plus lb clean and press, bringing his total up to 1,142 lb, 68 lb above the official world record. In June, he won the US National Weightlifting Championship, setting another world record in the clean and jerk. Nice going, Paul. What do you think about 435 lb? H Paul strongarmms his way to a new world's record 436 12 lb. And brother, he really gets a lift out of it.
That performance earned him a lastminute seat on a flight leaving for Moscow. Paul was going to compete at a unique weightlifting contest as part of a Goodwill tour where the United States and the Soviet Union faced off at the height of the Cold War. This was truly a historic moment, the first time American athletes made a visit behind the Iron Curtain since the Second World War. The event was a really big deal with both sides hoping to score a propaganda victory, the capitalists versus the Communists. Which system produced the superior athlete? All eyes were on the heavyweight category, where the champion was universally accepted as the strongest man in the world. representing the United States was the self-trained 22-year-old boy from the mountains of Georgia.
Paul was shocked to see the popularity of weightlifting in Russia. For him, it was a niche sport, but he noted that the Soviets treated weightlifting more like the Americans treated baseball back home. The event was held outdoors in Gorki Park. We can see trees swaying in the background of the footage. Despite the drizzling rain, 16,000 Russians packed into the park to watch the competition. Alexe Medvidev, the reigning Russian heavyweight champion, went first and succeeded in pressing 330 lb, which got the crowd real excited as it was a new personal best for him and also tied the Olympic record.
When it was Paul's turn, he asked for a 50 lb jump for his first attempt up to 380 lb. The audience was shocked to see him waddle out onto the stage. Paul didn't look like any of the other lifters present that day. In fact, some simply thought he looked fat and snickered at his outfit and apparently regularlooking street shoes. This was his first appearance on the global stage, and absolutely no one outside of North America had heard of him. Then everyone quickly went silent when Paul cleaned the 380lb bar and pressed it overhead extremely easily. He put the Russian heavyweight to shame. But he wasn't done yet. Next, he asked for 402 lb, which both the officials and the crowd found incredibly amusing. First, they legit laughed at him, but when they realized he was serious, the loaders had to scurry off stage to bring some additional plates because they weren't expecting to use so much weight that evening. Now, of course, we know Paul had already pressed over 400 lb earlier that year. For him, this was business as usual. But again, no one in Russia knew what he was capable of, and this kind of weight was just so much more than anyone had pressed. Paul cleaned the weight with ease. But as he went to press it overhead, it began slipping in his hand and he missed the lift. Remember, these guys were outside in the rain and Paul later noted that he forgot to wipe down the bar before starting the lift. He had just 3 minutes to rest before his final attempt. He called for the same 42 1/2 lb again and this time completed the lift without too much struggle. At first, no one could believe it. Then the crowd roared to life. Men stood on chairs shouting. Some were throwing their hats in the air. People were screaming, "He's the strongest man who ever lived." From that moment, he earned the nickname Chudo prii in Russian, which means wonder of nature.
But Paul still had two more lifts. He went on to clean and jerk 425 and a/4 lb, a world record, and a 336-lb snatch, brought his total up to a record 1,164 lb. The young man from Takcoa, Georgia, who had only been lifting competitively for about 3 years. And remember, one of those years was plagued with injuries, had just smashed the world record by the biggest margin in history. For decades after, Paul remained a legendary figure among Russians who had a deep respect for such extreme physical strength. There was no one else like him in the world. The immense popularity of the US weightlifting team and especially Paul was so evident that the international goodwill trip was extended to Lebanon, Iran, and Egypt.
When Paul returned home, he was received as a national hero and his success brought enormous attention to the sport of weightlifting in America. When he arrived in Tokcoa, he found his house surrounded by reporters who were all trying to get a moment with the world's strongest man. In October of 1955, Paul competed at the World Championship in Munich, Germany, where he once again easily won the heavyweight class and set yet another world record in the clean and press. >> Now, meet 22-year-old Paul Anderson, student of Takcoa, Georgia. A big man on campus, no doubt. That's that. A fantastic total of 1,030 lbs. 410 in the press alone for the World's Championship. Quite a boy, that Paul Anderson. >>
Upon his return home, Paul and the rest of the American weightlifting team were invited to the White House to meet then Vice President Richard Nixon. Nixon spoke to Paul in private and told him that his trips had built more international goodwill in days than their officials had done in years. Paul was essentially used as a cultural weapon of the Cold War. The government then sent him and his team off on another goodwill tour as part of their efforts to spread democracy around the world. This time they went to Iraq, Afghanistan, India, and Burma. In Baghdad, Iraq, Paul set yet another world record with a 457 and a half pound clean and jerk, which was 20 pounds over the previous record. It was also the most weight anyone had gotten overhead since Arthur Saxon's legendary 448 lb two hands anyhow 55 years prior.
The following year in 1956, he again won the National Weightlifting Championship and set his all-time highest official total as an amateur athlete at 1,175 lbs. Then he was off to Melbourne, Australia to represent his country at the 1956 Olympics. The Russians were so sure Paul would win, they didn't even bother entering their heavyweight to compete because they knew he had no chance. But what they didn't know is that Paul was sick. Really sick. He had a terrible ear infection with a 104 degree fever which left him so dizzy he couldn't train and he barely ate during the week leading up to the contest. He lost 30 lbs and the doctors were sure he wouldn't be able to compete. On the big day, he managed to take enough aspirin to bring his temperature down to the point that the doctors allowed him to enter. Being off balance and having lost so much strength over the previous week, there was no way Paul could bring his best performance. Yet, even in this state, he managed to tie the total of Argentine heavyweight Hberto Salveti after a long excruciating duel. Hberto set Olympic records in the press and snatch while Paul set an Olympic record in the Clean and Jerk. They both totaled exactly 500 kilos or 1,12 lb, which was also an Olympic record. But the gold medal went to Paul because ironically his body weight was 12 lb lighter, which is how they broke the tie.
So to recap, Paul was not even 24 years old and he had already won multiple national titles, the World Weightlifting Championship, and an Olympic gold medal. He was the undisputed best heavyweight lifter that had ever lived. And specifically, his squatting and pressing strength was in an entirely different league to anyone else on the planet. And fun fact, to this day, no American heavyweight lifter has won a gold medal at the Olympics since Paul Anderson.
There was not much left for Paul to achieve as an amateur athlete and he certainly didn't want to spend another four years barely scraping by waiting for the next Olympics. Because remember back then there was this strict divide between amateur and professional athletes. As soon as you got paid for lifting, you lost your amateur status and could no longer compete in sanctioned events or break official records. But there was just nothing left for Paul to prove and he wanted to raise money for a new project. So, at 24 years old, he turned professional and began earning money. Now, if you aren't familiar with Paul Anderson's story, you're probably going to be pretty surprised to hear what he was raising money for, but we'll get to that a little bit later in the video.
During the next couple years, he tried his hand at wrestling, boxing, and even acting, but he never felt comfortable with any of those endeavors. It only made sense that he continued pursuing strength. And it was as a professional strongman that he found the most success. Rather than focusing on the standard Olympic lifts, Paul was now a showman. He had to entertain for a living. He started focusing on flashier stunts like back lifts and hip lifts where he could move thousands of pounds instead of hundreds. As always with professional strong men of this era, the line between legitimate athletic achievement and entertainment was thin and often blurred.
Now, we know that Paul was the strongest man in the world at the time. Of this there is no doubt, but we must point out that many of his exhibition lifts were not performed in front of judges, are not considered official by any organization, and the numbers have been met with some skepticism. In fact, I'll leave a couple research articles linked in the description where sports historians have analyzed his feats in case you want to do a deep dive. Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, these are his most famous stunts. A squat with two safes filled with 15,000 silver dollars, weighing a total of somewhere around 1,160 lb. He supposedly did this daily as part of a show at the Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, where there was an open challenge for anyone else to replicate the feat and get to take home the silver dollars. A hiplift of a carousel packed with Girl Scouts weighing 2,700 lb. And a backlift of a platform packed with a large safe full of weights and cement totaling over 6,000 lb. The backlft was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest weight ever lifted by a human being. However, as more and more strength historians began questioning the accuracy of that number, Guinness ended up removing it in the late8s. The reality is we just don't know exactly how heavy the backlft actually was. Again, you can check the papers in the description for some expert analysis.
The History Channel made a pretty interesting series a couple years ago where they had some of the most famous modern strongmen like Eddie Hall and Brian Shaw recreate some of Paul's lifts, including the squat, the hip lift, and his official 400 plus lb press. Basically, they called on the silver dollar squat and said it weighed 720 lb based on their own calculations, which they didn't really explain. We can't verify one way or another just how much Paul's challenge bar actually weighed, so we can't read too much into this comparison. But anyway, they all managed to do the 720 lb squat. On the hip lift, strongman Nick Best did 2,791 lb on a setup which looked very similar to Paul's. So, we'll definitely give him that one. He outlifted Paul by 91 lb on the hip lift. And finally, the press is what interested me the most because you'll remember Paul lifted 402 lbs officially in Moscow in 1955. So this is the one comparison where we can be truly confident about Paul's record. However, it was quite disappointing to see the History Channel didn't recreate the lift accurately. Paul's press started on the floor. He had to clean the barbell to his shoulders and then push it overhead strict without using his legs. Now, the way they recreated this lift for the History Channel is they start with a 46-lb bar on a squat rack. Getting that weight above your head in any style is no small feat. But I really would have liked to see them at least attempt to do it the same as Paul. Instead, Robert Oburst and Brian Shaw unrackcked the bar and pushed it overhead using leg drive, while Eddie Hall, to his credit, pushed it overhead strict. But still, the difference between picking it up off the floor and just pushing it out of a squat rack is quite substantial. So yeah, the comparisons aren't perfect, but it is interesting to see, especially with the context of Paul Anderson doing this stuff 70 years ago in his early 20s without steroids and without any modern knowledge or equipment. Yet, he would have still been able to hang with these modern worldclass strong men who were in their mid to late 30s, had chemical assistance, and could benefit from decades of advancement in training, nutrition, and equipment science. It's quite astonishing to think what Paul could have accomplished in a modern context, or even if he had just kept his amateur status for another 10 years. It's quite common for strength athletes to peak in their 30s or even later. For example, Bob Peoples, the guy who originally discovered Paul, was nearly 40 years old when he pulled his world record deadlift.
In fact, Paul did continue improving into his 30s, and he got really seriously back into Olympic lifting in the 1960s. He set new personal bests and unofficial records, which led him to try to get his amateur status back. Throughout 1963, he campaigned to get reinstated in the Amateur Athletic Union to be able to compete at the 1964 Olympics, but the AAOU denied his appeal by a vote of 14 to 12. It was just a really unfortunate situation for athletes at the time where they were expected to dedicate their lives to become the best at their sport, but also not make any money. So, because his later feats were all unofficial, we can only be truly certain of the lifts Paul made when he was 23 years old or younger, which certainly was not his prime, especially when you consider that he competed for less than 4 years and broke a bunch of bones in the middle of it. Modern lifters have put up bigger numbers, but strength sports have changed so much. How do you rank someone who never even used a belt or wraps or sleeves, who often didn't even wear shoes? Someone who built his own equipment, had to figure out his programming by himself, and never competed beyond his early 20s. He was certainly the strongest man in the 1950s. And in context, you could even make the case for him being the strongest man ever, but everyone's going to have to draw their own conclusion on that one.
Now, there's another side to Paul's life which I think is even more impressive than his weightlifting. In 1961, Paul and his wife Glenda founded the Paul Anderson Youth Home in the small town of Vidalia, Georgia. Like I mentioned earlier, Paul turned professional to raise money and this is what he was doing it all for. Paul was a devout Christian and he felt he was put on this earth to use his strength to give back to his community. At the Paul Anderson Youth Home, they took in troubled teenage boys, the majority of whom would have otherwise been incarcerated. Paul worked tirelessly to rehabilitate the boys, instilling them with his values of faith, patriotism, and hard work. The building sat in a grove of peon trees with swimming pools, a stable for horses, wholesome food, and of course, a wait room. The rest of Paul's life was dedicated to running his youth home. He took on hundreds of speaking and strength exhibition engagements per year to fund it, while his wife Glenda largely took care of the day-to-day operations. Now, what's crazy about this is that Paul's Youth Home is still open and operational today. As I'm making this video 65 years later, his work has directly helped the lives of thousands of young people and their families. people who would otherwise be locked up or worse if it wasn't for Paul Anderson. How about that for a legacy? And to think that Paul was only 28 years old when he opened the home. His wife Glenda was barely 20. It's just an incredible and wholesome story for someone so young to achieve so much in his sport and then give it up not to pursue fame or wealth, but to serve his community. I've even had someone comment on one of my videos saying he grew up at Paul Anderson's youth home.
In 1983, Paul's childhood health issues caught up with him as his kidneys began to fail. In June of that year, his sister gave him a kidney. The transplant miraculously extended his life for another 11 years. It was a tough end for Paul. He suffered tremendously during his final years, but no one ever heard him complain. Many that were close to him later commented that he not only taught them how to live, but also how to die. Kidney failure took Paul's life on August 15th, 1994 at the age of 61.
Paul Anderson was the strongest man in the world, and he also lifted weights. If you're one of the few that made it all the way to the end of this half-hour long video, it would mean so much to me if you took a second to subscribe to the channel. The thing is that this genre on YouTube of lifting history videos is being totally overrun over the past year by AI slop channels. There's so many of them. There's like a new one every day. They just pump out videos like crazy. A lot of the videos are straight up ripping off my content. Like they'll just take my script and have an AI read it. And some of them, I'm not even joking, get millions of views. So, it's really discouraging to see. Uh, but at the same time, I still take pride in what I do. And I think there are people out there that still genuinely enjoy videos made by real people. So, something like this takes me weeks to put together between the researching and the writing and the editing. So, if you want to support me, the best way to do that is by checking out the sponsor at shop.handgripper.net. The links in the description. Um, the chest expander and the chest crusher are things that I genuinely use every single time I train. They're great products that will last you a lifetime. You know, no shade at anyone else, but some people, they have sponsors that are like VPNs or AI training apps or whatever. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that, but I am so lucky to have a sponsor that's just literally the perfect fit for this channel. So, if you like u strength and bodybuilding history, you'll probably like uh the expander or the crusher. So, if you haven't picked one up yet, picking one up is directly supporting me to make more videos. Okay, I'll see you on the next.