Academic

MAXED OUT: HOW MUCH CAN A HUMAN LIFT: In the heaviest dead lift recorded, British weightlifter A?

By Glenn Reynolds

MAXED OUT: HOW MUCH CAN A HUMAN LIFT:

In the heaviest dead lift recorded, British weightlifter Andy Bolton lifted 457.5 kilograms from the floor to his thigh.

Strongmen like Bolton are perhaps five or six times stronger than the average man, who will often struggle to lift 45 kilograms over his head, says Dan Wathen, an athletics trainer at Youngstown State University, Ohio. The record for an overhead lift is 263.5 kilograms.

So what is the maximum weight a human could ever lift? Todd Schroeder at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles thinks we are already close to the maximum. “If you look over time at the records for maximal lifts, they have crept up but are starting to plateau,” he says. “Today’s weightlifters, including those that use steroids, are near the limit of human potential.”

Nanotechnology will fix that . . . .

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 24, 2010 (boomark / email).