I doubt any human could have broken the 550 barrier. But perhaps someone knows of a guy who did this. We'll axe.
Hey coach,
So I was watching Serge reding's 502lb press earlier on youtube and it got me thinking, do you think we would of broken the 600lb press barrier by now if the press was still a contested lift? Or was Serge approaching the ceiling of human potential? I'm not sure who the best presser is on the planet at the minute and I checked savickas PR press and according to Wikipedia his best is 440lb.
I doubt any human could have broken the 550 barrier. But perhaps someone knows of a guy who did this. We'll axe.
Not exactly the same thing but here's Eddie Hall pressing 476 with no leg drive or double layback:
As no one has clean and jerked 600 lbs, I doubt we'd have seen a 600 lb press by now. However, Alexeeyv officially pressed 521 when the C&J record was 518 (I think). He was rumored to have pressed 250kg in training, but you know how strict that probably was. Patera reportedly did more, off the rack though. I think he did a 505x3 push press.
What do you consider the heaviest olympic press that was done without knee bend? Is this something that can be determined in retrospect or is there not enough footage around? I like watching old lifting vids on youtube (especially from eastern europe) and there is quite a bit of "push" in many lifters press.
I haven't seen them all, so I don't know.
I would guess at least 201.5kg. That was apparently a record set by good ol' Zhabotinsky back in '67, and every damn single piece of footage I have seen of the guy indicated a very clean lift in terms of knee bend. I could imagine higher, but it would be hard to find; footage is already rare, and by that point you frankly were an idiot for going into international competition and not being willing to go for the "slump press" (as one article in a Milo magazine rather effectively put it.)
Part of me wonders about what someone like Kirill Sarychev could press if he pursued the lift with the same dedication he has his bench. It certainly isn't like he is lacking in raw pressing power. Of course, from the perspective of an olympic clean and press, the real question gets to be: whose press stalled because of the press, and whose stalled because of the clean? Going back to Patera, he had suffered several lower body injuries, and seemed generally inflexible, so his clean often was much more of a sore point than anything having to go over his head, press or jerk.