Thor Sets a New All Time Deadlift World Record: Lessons for the Bro Scientists

Thor Deadlifts 505 KG!

First things first: A man - an actual human being, though you’d be forgiven for mistaking him for a forklift - has actually lifted 1,113 pounds off the ground all the way up to full standing. In case you missed it, Icelandic Strongman Hafþór Björnsson usually known as Thor, deadlifted 505kg this past weekend to break his own all time world record of 501kg set back in 2020.

Hell ya

But that 501 kg record had an asterisk attached to it - it was done in May 2020, at the time when the covid pandemic restrictions were at their tightest, so it didn’t have the usual rigor of world record level feats: His father weighed the plates, there were few live witnesses, it was performed at his own gym with his own equipment, not in the context of the pressure of a broader event or competition, there was only one judge (who was also Icelandic), and so on.

While there’s no doubt that the 501 kg deadlift was impressive as hell, it did have many people questioning its legitimacy as the true world record.

But that’s all behind us now. Thor pulled an incredible 505 kg/1113 lbs this past weekend without any of those caveats, and owns the new world record free and clear.

Now check out the video of the 501kg from 2020 and notice the difference in his stance and grip widths:

Stance and grip were both wider in 2020, by a significant margin. This is clearly something he’s thought about and worked on since then - ultimately figuring out that the narrower stance and grip give him more of an advantage.

Sebastian Oreb, known as Australian Strength Coach, is a well known strength and powerlifting coach who has worked with a lot of high level lifters, including Thor, and influenced this change. He talks about the difference in Thor’s technique below, also mentioning Mitch Hooper, another world class lifter who made the same adjustment at his recommendation:

Now put all that into the back of your mind for a bit, as we go over some of the conceptual background for the point of this article.

Bro Science: Good But Not Perfect

A topic I’ve written about a lot here on SubStack is the bro science vs exercise science debate: exploring the differences between the two, my issues with both methods, and my preference for bro science over exercise science. However, despite my preference for bro over exercise science, it has some real flaws such that I don’t truly consider myself completely in the bro science camp. I’m more closely aligned with the bros than the exercise science camp as a whole, but as more of an ally than a real group member.

One of the major reasons why I don’t go all in on bro science is something I wrote about in my very first article exploring this topic in 2023:

To this day, some of the most common retorts thrown about in the strength/sports world are, “Oh ya, how much do YOU lift?!” or “If so-and-so’s method is so great, why don’t I see him in the warmup room coaching a dozen elite athletes at nationals?!” Superficially compelling, and perhaps not even entirely without merit - theory must work in the real world to be worthwhile - but still extremely simplistic and uncompelling to anyone not already invested in a different system.

While fealty to bro science has been surprisingly resilient and still comprises a large proportion of how people are influenced to train, an analytical mind quickly finds some flaws.

The first, big glaring one is that it’s essentially a big appeal to authority. Granted it’s based on some empirical evidence too - we’re following whoever gets the best results - but that evidence is hopelessly confounded. How do we know that the biggest or strongest guy couldn’t even be bigger or stronger if he took a different approach? How do we disentangle variables like genetic potential, effort, consistency, the use of performance enhancers, etc? If we followed this idea to its logical conclusions, we’d still be training like Eugen Sandow did over 100 years ago.

A frequent counter-example against the “Oh ya, well how many champions have YOU coached?!” line, is the development of the Fosbury Flop in the high jump. Fosbury was mocked and ridiculed for his silly looking technique, and of course told that no champion or gold medalist had ever done it that way. And that was true, but his method was still superior, which he proved by going out and winning a gold medal with it in 1968.

“And yet, it didn’t come from sports scientists, and Fosbury was warned against it by some coaches who felt it wouldn’t work, and that he’d probably get hurt. But the older methods of high-jumping hadn’t been working well for him, so he experimented. Fosbury wasn’t thinking about the physics; he was just searching for something that felt like it would allow him to more easily get his butt away from the bar. Clearly, he hit on something that worked for him. And then for everybody.”

A gold medal was enough for other jumpers to notice, and beginning in the 70’s, the world record holders consistently used the flop instead of the old western roll and straddle techniques. But let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine if it wasn’t Fosbury who figured out this technique, but little old me, your humble author. I’m a 6’ 275 lb powerlifter who is well past my explosive peak and can’t jump nearly as high as I could when I was 16 and casually grabbing 10’ basketball rims with no running start, to show off. If I just discovered it today and had to prove that the Fosbury flop was superior by my own performance, it would never get anywhere, and I’d be laughed out of the room. It took the lucky, fortunate coincidence of someone whose baseline performance was close enough, that the small additional benefit of the flop made the difference.

The analogy to strength and muscle building is clear. If a genetically average guy comes up with a superior method, many people won’t believe him simply because “How much do you squat? 525? LOL that’s not even a warmup at nationals!” Meanwhile, if he had used their method, he’d have been stuck at 475 forever. The same is true even if you’re a coach. Unless you’re fortunate enough to get the genetic cream of the crop in your athlete pool, coming up with a method that’s 2 or 5% better won’t allow you to prove its superiority in the bro science method, simply because your athletes are at a 40% genetic (and/or performance enhancing compound) disadvantage, and your 5% better training method can’t overcome that deficit. The other guys will still be bigger and stronger, and everyone whose evaluation starts and ends solely based on end results, rather than cause and effect, will never be open to the possibility that you’re right.

Bro Science and Thor’s Deadlift

Now to tie this back to Thor and his incredible deadlift:

Something that really holds back the lifting field is that probably 95%+ of Starting Strength Coaches (or former SSCs like myself who still broadly coach using that method even if we have small nuances of our own) would’ve instantly identified this issue of the wide grip and stance, and suggested the exact change that Sebastian recommended and that Thor made, eventually leading to him breaking his record.

But had we done so back then in 2020, every last one of us would have been mocked and derided by almost everyone else for “thinking we know better than the strongest man in the world and his coaches.” I’ve seen this too many times to count whenever one of us would suggest a high level athlete might have something to learn from our approach.

But now that he made the change, now that a more high profile coach talked about it, everyone is like, “Oh wow ya, it’s so obviously more efficient this way!”

It’s not that we will always be right. It’s not that real world results and experience with high level lifters don’t matter at all, of course being at the top of the strength world or a sport might mean you found something that works for you even if it doesn’t match some generally true principle.

But it’s also true that suggestions that are built on a solid foundation of deep first principles thinking and years of application with tens of thousands of lifters - even if not with world champions - are at least likely enough to be right, to give them a serious thought and a fair shake, even when they clash with the conventional wisdom. Even when they differ from what a world class lifter is currently doing.

Instead, responses are mostly a variation of “Post fizeek,” or “Oh ya, what world champions have YOU coached?! LMAO!”

But we see now that regarding Thor’s 2020 technique, we would have been 100% right. But imagine if Thor never met Sebestian and the recommendation to narrow his stance and grip was instead only made by someone like me, or an SSC working with regular people at a franchise gym, we would have been mocked and scorned for our arrogance and thinking we know better than the strongest deadlifter in the world.

This common and reflexive response - the “post fizeek,” or “Oh ya, well who have YOU coached?! lol” attitude, holds the whole enterprise back.

Ideas should be evaluated based on their merits, not based on who puts them forth. It’s true that a high level of proven performance gives you some credibility, but it doesn’t mean everything you’re doing at that moment is definitionally the best way to do things.

Sometimes useful principles that help get average guys from 135 to 500 are not the same thing needed to get a world class strongman from 900 to 1000 or from 1000 to 1113. But sometimes they are. Don’t dismiss good ideas and concepts out of hand solely because a champion does it a different way at the moment.