Vegan superheavyweight smashes 20 year powerlifting record

More recently he had an eye on the State record for Equipped Bench Press in his home state of Maryland. With a new baby at home preparation wasn’t easy to plan, but Bill managed to fit training into three days of the week – the days he was coaching.

16 September 2017

“What I did was carve out like 60-90 mins each one of those days to get a quick workout in. Since I have been home a lot with my daughter I have been able to take on a lot of new Virtual/Online Clients, I do their programming, video analysis, meet day prep, etc.” he explained to us soon after the record attempt.

The record had been set by former IPF World Champion Kirk Karwoski and had stood at 255kg (562.5lbs) since July 1996.

Family life and lifting challenges

“I saw the record maybe a year ago and decided to train for it" says Bill .”My wife Jill and I had our daughter Wren in December, so basically training sessions while having a newborn at home was almost impossible. Once she hit 6 months and we got into a regular schedule I was able to increase the frequency of my training, so I got a good 12 week cycle leading into the meet.”

“I was pretty sure based off of my training that I would be breaking the record, I actually broke it on my second attempt and then rebroke it again on my 3rd. It wasn’t a limit lift that day, if I had a 4th attempt I think I could have broken the 600lb marker.”

Bill increased the record to 265kg (584lb).

Bill, who has been vegan since completing a 28 day challenge has great respect for the fellow gentle giant he took the record from. “Funny thing is there is a poster of Kirk in our gym and once I saw the opportunity was there to break the record, I thought well I have to go for this. I’ve meet Kirk a bunch of times and he’s a super nice guy.”

More planned!

Following this, life will not be quiet for Bill. “I’ll be coaching over 25 lifters at USAPL Raw Nationals in Orlando in October, then in June I will be an Assistant on the USA National Team in Calgary for IPF Worlds. As far as lifting goes, I think I would like to do another meet towards the end of the year in December maybe and the compete at USAPL Open Nationals in Spokane, WA in May and do USAPL Bench Nationals in Scranton, PA in Sept of 2018.

“Another goal of mine is to Qualify for the Bench Only Meet at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, OH. I’ve done the full Powerlifting meet there 7 times but I have a lot of my clients who qualify for that meet now, so I’m basically coaching all day for the first 2 days, the Bench meet is on the 3rd day so it would really fit my schedule nicely.”

The lift adds to Bill’s personal bests of 340kg (749lb) for Squat and 300kg (661lb) for Deadlift, giving him a total of 895kg (1972.5lb) at a bodyweight of 120-125kg (265-275lbs).

Congratulations Bill and thanks for sparing us the time out of your schedule.

Bill's profile