From the 2015 World Weightlifting Championships Training Hall …
Tian Tao squatting 255kg x4 during his first training session in Houston.
Update: Watch the full video with warm ups here.
More: Watch his 220kg Clean & Jerk
Best of Olympic Weightlifting
Beto says
December 17, 2015 at 17:22This kid has lots of strength, speed and power, and could easily make a jerk with 215kg. I really can not understand why he does the squat jerk.
grobpote says
December 18, 2015 at 11:24I guess he was taught to jerk like that and it’s not an easy to change to split jerk.The muscles work differently too. Maybe he never even considered it – squat jerk seems to be very popular in China.
Victor says
December 18, 2015 at 15:14No, there was a story on Tian Tao. He started off with the power jerk with legs going outward in a funny fashion all by himself. All of his coaches tried to switch him to split jerk; they all told him that he needed the split jerk to succeed, but he simply couldn’t do well with it. He said that when his clean and jerk was at 160kg max, if they forced him to do split jerk, he would lose 20 kg and max out at 140kg! Nobody knew what to do with him. Then, at the 2012 national games, he injured his elbow as a 77kg lifter attempting 212kg and had to take a long rest, start anew. Coach Yujie took him on and although he too couldn’t get Tian Tao to properly split jerk, he did get his quirky jerk to get deeper and become what we see today: a squat jerk but with the powerful rhythm of a power jerk.
Victor says
December 18, 2015 at 15:14No, there was a story on Tian Tao. He started off with the power jerk with legs going outward in a funny fashion all by himself. All of his coaches tried to switch him to split jerk; they all told him that he needed the split jerk to succeed, but he simply couldn’t do well with it. He said that when his clean and jerk was at 160kg max, if they forced him to do split jerk, he would lose 20 kg and max out at 140kg! Nobody knew what to do with him. Then, at the 2012 national games, he injured his elbow as a 77kg lifter attempting 212kg and had to take a long rest, start anew. Coach Yujie took him on and although he too couldn’t get Tian Tao to properly split jerk, he did get his quirky jerk to get deeper and become what we see today: a squat jerk but with the powerful rhythm of a power jerk.
grobpote says
December 18, 2015 at 11:24I guess he was taught to jerk like that and it’s not an easy to change to split jerk.The muscles work differently too. Maybe he never even considered it – squat jerk seems to be very popular in China.
Beto says
December 17, 2015 at 17:22This kid has lots of strength, speed and power, and could easily make a jerk with 215kg. I really can not understand why he does the squat jerk.