Ray Williams Squats 490 kg RAW

Ray Williams is on his way to squat 500kg RAW and enter the powerlifting history as one of the strongest squatters ever! Per tradition, Ray Williams chose this past weekend’s Arnold Classics festival to shake the earth and shatter a record or two.

His opening “warm up” squat weight was 449kg/992 lbs which went down easier than it has any right to be. Ray got a feeling for the bar, the weights and now it was time to hit the iron hard with even heavier weights-his next attempt is 477kg/1,052 lbs. Unfortunately, he gets red lighted at this weight as the judges thought his squat performance wasn’t good enough. Never the less, “Ray Ray” goes even higher in weight for his next attempt.The bar gets loaded with 490kg/1,080 lbs on it and Ray Williams goes under the bar, takes a moment to collect his thought, concentrate on the lift and squats.

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He goes deep and shoots his way back up. After a brief moment of anticipation, the judges give him three white lights and we’ve got a new USAPL national record, an unofficial IPF world record, and one of the heaviest squats ever done in a powerlifting competition. All in a day’s work for the mighty superheavyweight powerlifter, Ray Williams.

After demolishing the squat he went over to the bench press. At the alimighty bench press, Williams had three weights and three successful lifts. His opening weight was 227kg/501 lbs then he went up to237kg/523 lbs and lastly he successfully lifted 247kg/545 lbs on his third and final bench press attempt.

After destroying another lift, he went over to the deadlift and went for an unofficial record-setting total. His deadlift started with an easy 354kg/782 lbs, which followed with a 375kg/827 lbs successful lift. The second successful lift earned him an all-time 308+ lb weight class world record total, and an unofficial IPF world record total.

Catch full coverage of the 2023 Arnold Classic, including pre-judging, event recaps, analysis, and final and full results at our Arnold Classic coverage hub: FitnessVolt.com/arnold-classic