Watch Julius Maddox's Final Heavy Training Session Before His 800-Pound Bench Press Attempt
Powerlifter Julius Maddox is one of the strongest men in the world. In March 2020, Maddox broke the bench press world record at the Arnold Classic with a lift of 770 pounds. And since quarantine started, he's shared some of his training workouts with fans. All the work is leading up to a huge moment: On Saturday, June 20, Maddox plans to break his own world record bench press by benching 800 pounds.
A post shared by Julius Maddox (@irregular_strength) on Jun 10, 2020 at 4:43pm PDT
Maddox opened up the gym to his followers for his last heavy training session before the event. He benched 725 pounds for two reps—no small feat, since no one had even lifted that much weight raw for one rep in competition just five years ago.
"This will be a rep PR," Maddox announces at the start of the video.
"This journey has been long, since the beginning of the coronavirus," he says. "I have had the most consecutive training sessions as far as no injuries, everything moving fluidly."
He says that things around him were so chaotic that it was like "tooth and nail" to get into his normal training routine, and he missed hitting some big lifts, including 780 pounds and 790 pounds.
"My whole thought process over these past two months is, can a person recover from that? Can I actually recover from missing two of the biggest lifts of my life to going into meet day and putting up an 800 pound bench?" says Maddox. "I'm in this mindset of when the time comes, I'm going to produce. And I continue to say nothing is going to stop me."
He says this last heavy lift is to get some weight in his hands and to build his confidence.
His session begins light at 135 pounds, and moves up to 225, 315, 405, 585, 675, and then finally 725.
After the two reps, he sits up and says, "I was going for another one, but I was like nah, don't do it. I'm sticking to the process."
But his workout doesn't end there. He moves on to a triceps accessory workout before ending his session.
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