(Paul Holding his famous wagon wheel bar, with which he used to train squat with. The wheels where welded to the bar, which in total weighed 660 pounds)
Dimensions
Height: 5 feet 10 inches
Weight: 360 pounds
Chest: 58 inches
Bicep: 22.5 inches
Waist: 45 inches
Thigh: 36 inches
Calves: 20 inches
Notable Lifts
- Olympic weightlifting
- Clean and press: 185.5 kg (408.5 lbs) on 1955-10-16, in Munich at the 1955 World Championships
- Snatch: 152.5 kg (335 lbs) on 1956-06-02 in Philadelphia at the 1956 Senior Nationals
- Clean and jerk: 199.5 kg (440 lbs) on 1956-06-02 in Philadelphia at the 1956 Senior Nationals
- Total: 533.5 kg (181.5/152.5/199.5) / 1175 lbs (400/335 /440) (clean and press + snatch + clean and jerk) on 1956-06-02 in Philadelphia at the 1956 Senior Nationals
- Unofficial lifts
Lift included in the Guinness Book of World Records (1985 edition)
Backlift: 6,270 lb (2,840 kg) (weight raised slightly off trestles; done June 12, 1957, in Toccoa, Georgia)
→ listed as the greatest weight ever lifted by a human being - Powerlifting
Guinness also listed Anderson’s best powerlifts
Done in small exhibitions
Squat: 930 lb (420 kg) raw
Bench press: 628 lb (285 kg) raw
Deadlift: 820 lb (370 kg) raw
Biography
(Anderson pressing a show girl overhead with one arm)
Anderson was born in Toccoa, Georgia, on October 17, 1932. He began his early weight training on his own in his family’s backyard to increase his size and strength so that he would be able to play on the Toccoa High School football team, where he earned a position as first-team blocking back. He used special homemade weights that his father created out of concrete poured into a wooden form. Anderson later attended Furman University for one year on a football scholarship before moving to Elizabethton, Tennessee with his parents. There he met weightlifter Bob Peoples, who would greatly influence him in squat training and introduce him into weightlifting circles. At the age of nine-teen, Paul Anderson was already breaking world records in Power Lifting and showed that he was capable of being the strongest there ever was.
(Paul lifting 402.5 pounds overhead in Russia, 1955)
In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, Anderson, as winner of the USA National Amateur Athletic Union Weightlifting Championship, traveled to the Soviet Union, where weightlifting was a popular sport, for an international weightlifting competition. In a newsreel of the event shown in the United States the narrator, Bud Palmer, commented as follows: “Then, up to the bar stepped a great ball of a man, Paul Anderson.” Palmer said, “The Russians snickered as Anderson gripped the bar which was set at 402.5 pounds, an unheard-of lift. But their snickers quickly changed to awe and all-out cheers as up went the bar and Anderson lifted the heaviest weight overhead of any human in history.
(Anderson preforming a 330 pound snatch at 1956 Melbourne Olympics)
In 1956, Anderson won a gold medal in a long, tough duel in the Melbourne, Australia Olympic Games as a weightlifter in the super-heavyweight class, while suffering from a 104 °F or 40 °C fever, with Argentine Humberto Selvetti. The two competitors were tied in the amount of weight lifted, but because Anderson, who weighed in at 304 pounds, was lighter than Selvetti, who weighed 316 pounds. Anderson was awarded the gold medal, the last gold medal to be earned by an American athlete competing in the super heavyweight division.
(Statue Of Paul Anderson holding his Famous 408.5 pound press, in the Paul Anderson Memorial Park)
In 1961, Anderson and his wife Glenda founded the Paul Anderson Youth Home, a home for troubled youth in Vidalia, Georgia. They both helped to build and support the Home with an average of 500 speaking engagements and strength exhibitions per year—not withstanding the chronic congenital kidney disease that eventually killed him at age 61. He would perform stunts such as hammering a nail with his bare fist and raising a table loaded with eight men onto his back. Anderson has been immortalized at the Paul Anderson Memorial Park, which features a large statue of him performing his world record overhead barbell lift of 408.5 pounds.
Videos
Paul Andersons T.V. and movie appearances.
Homemade Training footage of Anderson
Full Documentary of Paul Anderson and his career.
Cites
“History of USA Weightlifting – Motivation & Muscle.” Motivation and Muscle Podcast, 23 Feb. 2013, motivationandmuscle.com/stories/history-of-usa-weightlifting/.
Siem, Brooke. “How Paul Anderson Became One of History’s Strongest Humans.” BarBend, 2 May 2016, barbend.com/how-paul-anderson-became-one-of-historys-strongest-humans/.
Morais, Dominic G, and Jan Todd. “Lifting the Iron Curtain: Paul Anderson and the Cold War’s First Sport Exchange.” Digital Commons @ Trinity, digitalcommons.trinity.edu/busadmin_faculty/55/.
“The Strongest Man in Recorded History: A Documentary on the Life of Paul Anderson.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Sept. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qfnHtzNbHk&t=3s.
Very interesting to read about! The amount of information and details presented is like reading from a professional article. I love the layout that you have for your blog and your site.
I don’t really know a lot about lifting or anything of this sort but my roommate does crossfit so some of these terms are familiar to me. What made you decide on this topic for your passion blog?
From a very young age, I was surrounded by “Strongmen”, my papa was a stone mason and had built homes from stone his entire life. While I played a lot of sports, I never was passionate about any of them until I got into wrestling, football, and boxing. I loved these sports, but there was something missing. I remember as a child watching the world strongest man competition and seeing a man step into the frame of a car, carrying it on his shoulders, and proceeded to march down a path, almost jogging with it and saying to myself, “I want to be like that guy”.
I don’t know a lot about powerlifting, but Anderson is clearly an amazing athlete! It was very interesting to learn about his life and world records held throughout the sport. It’s unfortunate to hear that he died so young. Do you think he helped increase the popularity of the sport in the United States?
Of Course! Now to be clear, while Anderson had done some powerlifting, he is known most famously as an Olympic Weight lifter. Sadly the sport of Olympic weight lifting had started to die out in America after Anderson, with the U.S. failing to have an athlete to medal for decades in international coemption. However What Anderson contributed to the sports world was the importance of squat training in building strength and athleticism in sports. Paul had given his success in his career do to the fact he stressed squat training, an ideology that was passed onto him by his mentor Bob Peoples. Since then, Olympic Weightlifters have incorporated squats as the corner stone of their training all around the world.