Meanwhile in Russia …
Aleksey Nikulin squats 315kg at 81.6kg!
When you look through his channel you see that he usually squats in knee wraps (325kg). So it’s even more impressive to see him compete Raw and still put up a huge number like this.
Best of Olympic Weightlifting
I’ve been following Nikulin for years: he has a great total, and for squats, no other 181 can touch him at the moment. He holds both the no wraps AND wraps all-time records. He squats 315 kgs with no wraps and 335 kgs with wraps.
This also reveals that claims of lifters getting 50 kgs from wraps certainly don’t apply to Nikulin.
Do you know anything about his background? Not much out there.
There is a lot on the Russian web, but not much on English. He has been training steadily for quite some time, slowly creeping his squat up higher and higher. 6 years ago he was squatting 370 kgs in a suit… then 5 years ago he was squatting 270 kgs without wraps. He put wraps back on, slowly crept back up to 300 kgs… then 310, 315. Then he was back to no wraps for a while and was hitting around 300 kgs. Then back to wraps to squat all-time WR of 335, then no wraps 315.
He’s an avid skier, and although I don’t think he’s had any PL related injuries, he’s torn his knee up skiing a few times, so he’s had some lay offs.