“If the bar aint bending, your just pretending!” Very impressive raw bench press by Mr. Eric Spoto! The “raw” in the record comes from the fact that Eric doesn’t wear a bench shirt or any other kind of helpful clothing; he’s there in a tank, leather belt and gloves.
Bench shirts are insanely taut, made of denim or polyester, and both cushion the lifter as the weight depresses and help the lifter get the weight back in the air. As a result, the current shirted world record stands at 1076.9 pounds, more than half again as much as the raw record.
There’s a bit of controversy around Spoto’s lift, because no one can have any kind of success on the Internet without somebody else coming along to dump on it. For a raw bench press to count, the bar has to be motionless at the bottom of the lift, and Spoto gets it off his chest in a hurry. You would too, if you could. Could be trolling, could be legitimate questions. We’re going with trolling, mainly because we don’t want Spoto mad at us.
via Yahoo Sports