Weightlifting is one of the purest forms of training and sport out there; it is about you and the Olympic weight plates fitted to your chosen barbell, and the challenge you set for yourself when it comes to lifting them.

Whilst it is easy to focus on the simple superlatives, technique and self-improvement are more important than sheer numbers. The person who lifts a smaller weight 10,000 times will build more strength than someone who lifts a large weight once, to adapt a famous Bruce Lee quote.

However, whilst this is undoubtedly true, there is always a curiosity surrounding the biggest and greatest lifts ever claimed, which often can devolve into mythmaking.

This leads to the question of the greatest lift that may have ever happened.

An Impossible Lifter?

Whilst there are a lot of people who have claimed to be the World’s Strongest Man, to the point that it led to a lawsuit which decided that anyone could claim it between Bill Kazmaier and John Wooten, Paul Anderson is one of a few people who people have regularly claimed is the strongest man in history.

Initially taking up weightlifting so he could play American football, Paul Anderson would set a squat world record at the age of 20 of 299.6 kg (660.5 lbs) whilst weighing 129.3 kg himself. He would later extend this record to 763.25 lbs the following year.

His crowning achievement in official competition was an 182.6 kg clean and press, undertaken during an invitational contest against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. This lift was over 30 kg heavier than the Olympic Record of the era.

He would win two gold medals in international weightlifting. The first was the 1955 World Championships, which he dominated with a then-record 184.9 kg press lift, as well as gold in the 1956 Olympic Games following a tiebreaker with Humberto Selvetti.

However, when he turned professional following the Olympics, the legend and the myth of Paul Anderson intensified.

The Greatest Lift Ever?

Whilst much of Paul Anderson’s career could credit him as the strongest man of his era, if not of all time, many of the claims start and end with one of the most controversial lifts.

At the time, weightlifting was a strictly amateur sport, so the only way to earn a living as a weightlifter was with televised feats of strength and dedicated showcases.

One of the most famous examples of this was the Silver Dollar Squat, a contest on the Ed Sullivan Show where he squatted 720 lbs in the form of two safes loaded with 15,000 silver dollars mounted to a barbell.

His most infamous lifts took place on Muscle Beach, the home of bodybuilding and the fitness craze in North America, where reports of his legendary strength started to stretch beyond what had been proven and verified in the past.

For example, it was claimed that he squatted 526.2 kg (1,160 lbs) alongside a bench press of 272.2 kg). To this day, nobody has managed this record, although Vlad Alahzov came very close with a verified record of 525kg (1157.4 lbs).

Similarly, his alleged bench press record of 272.2 kg (600 lbs) would only be officially beaten a decade later by Pat Casey.

By far the biggest and most controversial lift he ever was reported to have done, however, was a backlift of roughly 2,812.2 kg (6,200 lbs).

Backlifts are very rare in modern weightlifting because of the reliance on specialist equipment, although they were seen a lot in vaudeville and music hall strongman performances.

It consists of a specialist platform that a weightlifter stands under and lifts once weights are added to it.

It was popular in music hall because these weights could be somewhat unusual. It often involved people, animals or cars because they not only were heavy but intuitively looked as much to a general audience.

According to Peary Rader, writing for Iron Man Magazine, Paul Anderson completed the backlift, which is nearly 1000 lbs more than the highest-ever recorded backlift as reported by CBC News in Canada.

Mr Anderson’s record was reported by Guinness World Records for decades but was removed at some point in the 1980s due to insufficient evidence.

Whilst the claim has continued to be made for decades afterwards, it may never be known if the most astonishing lift in history ever happened, although it has not stopped people from claiming him to be the strongest man who ever lived.