🏋️‍♂️ tips to deadlift 500 pounds

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by WHOOP. For a limited time, BarBend readers can get a free WHOOP 4.0 strap, an extra month of service, and a $0 signup fee. Click here for more.

Here’s everything happening with this edition:

• The best bodyweight exercises for strength gains. 

• How to deadlift 500 pounds.

• Watch powerlifter Jesus Olivares squat 1,024 pounds in training.

Workouts

Get to the Body Shop

Bodyweight exercises exist as more than just an entry point into the world of resistance training. While many people begin their lifting journey with push-ups and air squats, too few ever return to the training that started it all.

The 16 bodyweight exercises we’ve rounded up for you today not only lay the foundation for sustainable strength gains — they also go a long way toward boosting your overall mobility.

Burpees, for example, grant explosive strength and endurance that few moves can match. And if you really want to boost your triceps strength (and therefore boost your bench max), you’ll want to start adding more dips into your life. You’re never too good to get back to the basics, and using your body the way it was designed never goes out of style.

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Training Tips

The 500 Club

Deadlifting 500 pounds is a goal that seems impossibly far away when most people first touch their chalked hands to a barbell. But it is possible for many lifters out there — you just need a sound strategy (and some luck when it comes to injuries) to get there.

The journey may be long, but BarBend has you covered if you want to slay the dragon and finally pull half a grand off the floor. Our tips guide below goes over everything you’ll need to hopefully progress to the promised land, including form tips, diet advice, progression plans, and more. 

For many lifters, pulling five hundo is an eminently achievable goal that solidifies your status as “intermediate” in the eyes of the gym literati. It won’t be easy, and it won’t come cheap, but if you commit to your goal and attack it, you can get all the side-eye you can handle with people in the gym really wanting to know what in Odin’s name you are doing over on the platform.

Powerlifting

The Road to Sheffield

Already one of the strongest raw powerlifters to ever exist, Jesus Olivares is still pushing himself to greater heights of brute force. And just last week, Olivares hit a massive 463-kilogram (1,020-pound) squat in training as he looks to peak for his next meet in Sheffield, England, in February of 2024.

Is he putting the world on notice that he is not content with merely having the all-time total and IPF raw deadlift world records? If training keeps going well, he may be able to challenge for the all-time raw squat world record. Check out this beastly lift, and don’t sleep on Olivares to carve his name into the history books right next to the all-time greats in the sport of powerlifting.

Everything Else

And NEW Mr. Olympia

• Bodybuilder Derek Lunsford shocked fans of the sport when he was crowned the 2023 Mr. Olympia over the weekend. Click here for a full rundown of all the action that took place in Orlando.

• Selecting the most powerful multivitamin for your body can turn into a mess of brightly colored bottles and irritatingly happy people jumping into pools in television commercials. Rather than go through that song and dance again, try out this guide to the best multivitamins on the market.

• Meme legend Mike O’Hearn and fount-of-fitness-knowledge Gabrielle Lyon sit down and discuss the benefits and risks posed by the laissez-faire nature of social media fitness advice.