Who is the strongest man on Earth? The heaviest weight lifted by a person What is the maximum weight a person can lift

Ant

10 grams (0.01 kg)

If you build a scale of carrying capacity not in absolute, but in relative terms - relative to its own mass - it is far ahead of a man and an elephant. He can lift objects several times (up to 50!) heavier than himself.

True, this is far from a record: it is believed that rhinoceros beetle capable of lifting up to 850 of its mass.

266 kilograms

That's the record Olympic champion Leonida Taranenko in the clean and jerk (one of the two main techniques for lifting a barbell), listed in the Guinness Book of Records. It was installed 20 years ago, but has not yet been beaten by anyone.

1 ton

Elephants are the largest land animals. Male African elephants can reach a height of 4 meters and a weight of 7 or even 10 tons.

How much can an elephant lift? There is no doubt that he is the largest heavyweight (in absolute numbers), but in relative terms he is far from not only an ant, but also a man: an elephant can lift no more than 20–25% of its weight.

Nobody holds official competitions between animals; reports about their capabilities in different sources are different and not always completely reliable: sometimes the abilities of animals are exaggerated, but more often they report not maximum, but normal loads. Since Indian elephants (smaller than African ones) have been domesticated and have long been used to carry heavy loads, more is known about them. An Indian elephant can lift 200–250 with its trunk kg; grabbing a rope with his teeth, he can drag a load of up to 500 kg. Placing it on its tusks and holding it with its trunk, an elephant can carry logs weighing up to 700–800 kilograms.

African elephants if necessary, they pick up with their trunk and carry their cubs, which already at birth weigh about a hundredweight. The maximum weight that they can “take”, according to various sources, is from 1 to 2 tons.

10 tons

Greece, around 5th century BC

Plutarch says that in response to King Hiero’s request to demonstrate how a heavy load could be moved with little force, Archimedes “took a three-masted cargo ship, which had previously been pulled ashore with great difficulty by many people, seated many people on it and loaded it with ordinary cargo. After that, Archimedes sat down at a distance and began to effortlessly pull the rope thrown over the pulley, causing the ship to easily and smoothly, as if on water, “float” towards him.”

This story may be fictitious, but the ancient Greeks actually widely used simple mechanisms for lifting weights - levers, pulleys and pulleys.

(from Greek poly a lot + spao to pull) - a lifting device consisting of a system of movable and fixed blocks, encircled by a rope or chain. The pulley system provides a gain in strength by distributing the weight of the load over several branches of the rope, while reducing the speed of lifting the load and the distance it travels.

365 tons

The most powerful dump truck: Liebherr T282B(Germany, late 20th - early 21st centuries). This machine weighs 220 tons, and can transport up to 365 tons - one and a half times its weight. The height of the dump truck is 7.4 meters, and even its wheels are twice the height of a person (3.5 meters in diameter). The dump truck is driven by two electric motors, the alternating current for which is generated by a diesel engine with a capacity of 3,650 horsepower (2,725 kilowatts). The same electric motors operating in generator mode are also used for braking.

Such machines are used in large quarries, they transport coal or ore from the mining site to the processing site. There are no technical obstacles to the creation of even more load-lifting machines, but there is simply no use for them yet.

1000 tons

Rosenkranz K10001(Germany, 1971). This is the first crane in the world that has surpassed the lifting capacity of a thousand tons (land cranes have already been built that can lift 3 times more). This faucet exists in a single copy; he worked in construction olympic stadium in Munich, then built bridges, power plants, etc. in several European countries.

The crane is transported on a platform, but is stationary during operation. The maximum height of the crane is 200 meters, but it reaches a lifting capacity of 1000 tons only with a mast height of 97 meters.

Weightlifters lift impressive weights, but there are other animals in nature that can put weightlifters to shame. Paul Anderson may have been one of the strongest men to walk the Earth. He could carry eight people on his hump or drive a nail through two boards with one blow. In 1957, Anderson is said to have lifted 2.8 tons on his back. This temporarily earned him a world record, but the entry was later removed due to lack of supporting evidence.

No one has ever, even though they have come close, been able to surpass Anderson's feat. At least human. But there are creatures in nature that are capable of amazing feats of strength.

And while a 2008 study suggested that light horses should carry no more than 20% of their body weight, their heavier counterparts were bred specifically for strength.

By selectively breeding large animals, people created such giants as the Shire and Clydesdale horses. These heavy horses are known as "draft horses" because of their pulling power. They helped people squeeze through the Industrial Revolution, first pushing carts and trolleys, then barges and cars carrying material for the railroads.

In fact, when the first steam engines appeared, they were comparable in strength to traction horses.

Draft horses are still used in some places, in traditional breweries, for example, and to attract tourists. They were also used for forestry because they cause less disturbance to the environment than heavy machinery.

“Shire horses have the same musculoskeletal system as other horses,” says Angela Whiteway of the Shire Horse Society in Market Harborough, UK. “However, it is believed that their closely spaced hind legs allow them to harness power more effectively than horses with widely spaced legs.”

Whiteway says it is generally accepted that working shires can comfortably pull twice their weight. That is, a horse weighing one ton can pull two tons of weight. This is impressive, but there are other animals capable of even more.

John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London, UK, studied the movement of Asian elephants. He attributes their strength to several features.

While the skeletons of many mammals make up about 10% of their body mass, in elephants the figure is closer to 20%, giving them a stronger frame. Hutchinson also says their straight limbs allow them to resist the downward force of gravity better and support their own mass plus any load.

And there is a wonderful trunk. It contains no bones or cartilage, only 150,000 tufts muscle fibers. This multifunctional appendage allows elephants to communicate over vast distances, pick up individual branches, strengthen social bonds - and lift significant weights.

As with our own records, the maximum lifting weight of an elephant is unknown. An elephant can lift up to 300 kilograms with its trunk alone. African elephants can weigh a ton more than their Asian cousins, so they may well be even stronger.

In terms of sheer tonnage, elephants may well be the strongest living animals. But of course they are quite large in themselves. This means that the strongest animals must also be the smallest.

In 2010, the Asian tailor ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) was filmed lifting 100 times the ant's own weight by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

Humans rely on their back muscles to lift heavy objects, while elephants use their trunks. Ants lift weights with the help of their powerful jaws. Ondontomachus ants have such powerful muscles in their jaws, that if they rest their mandibles on the ground and cling to it, they can throw themselves into the air.

There is another group of insects with a talent for lifting weights: beetles.

Hercules beetles belong to the group of rhinoceros beetles. Insect locomotion expert Roger Crum of the University of Colorado Boulder, determined to find out the truth, put rhinoceros beetles to the test. And I found out that they can only carry 100 times their weight.

In 2010, the world's new strongest beetle was crowned. As is customary in stories about the humble origins of human champions, he lives in simple conditions. The horned dung beetle (Onthophagus taurus) can lift up to 1141 of its body weight.

Rob Nell from Queen Mary University in London discovered the dung beetle's power by studying its mating tactics. Males use their horns to fight rivals, pushing them out of tunnels and away from females.

Proportionally, the strength of the horned dung beetle can only be rivaled by the oribatid mite (Archegozetes longisetosus). It is microscopic, weighing only 100 micrograms, and lives in forest soil. In 2007, scientists discovered that it could lift 1,180 of its weights.

The unusual power of these creatures is explained by the quirks of physics.

Large animals may have more strong muscles, but since most of the strength is spent supporting the animal's own weight, there is not much left for additional weight. In contrast, tiny creatures need to carry less mass, so they can devote more force to lifting heavy objects.

There are several additional biological factors that favor small animals. For example, the larger the animal, the more energy it needs to maintain important functions like breathing and circulation. With simpler, more compact internal systems, smaller animals like beetles can invest more of the energy they get from food into building strong exoskeletons that lift weight better than soft tissue.

This means that while insects can exhibit amazing proportional strength, you can't scale it up to human size and expect it to persist.

"An ant the size of a person would be incredibly weak because the cross-sectional area of ​​its legs would increase significantly less than the volume of its body," says biologist Claire Asher. “He won’t even be able to stand. And breathe. "Ants use tiny holes called spiracles to distribute oxygen throughout the body, but in human sizes these tubes would be too small to supply oxygen to the entire body."

These principles apply to all animals, and each body type can only operate within a limited range of sizes. Neither giant killer ants nor King Kong could exist.

This means that the strongest animals now living on Earth may represent the strongest animals that have ever lived in principle. The earth was also a home for - but these animals could hardly be stronger than elephants. Strength has its limits.

There is this photograph circulating on the Internet, under which they usually write that this is the Kazakh wrestler Baluan Sholak holding a bull weighing 816 kg.

Of course, all this information came to us from legends, but maybe earlier people really were much stronger. From a scientific point of view, is it even possible for a person to lift such weight? I quickly googled it and found out that there was one person who lifted a fantastic 2800 kg.

Don't believe me? Let's cut to the chase...

To begin with, let’s determine that the photo in the photo is not Baluan Sholak, but some kind of Mongol.

The photograph is quite modern, and the bull in the photo weighs approximately 100-120 kg. But Baluan Sholak lived back in the 19th century. Here is what information about him has been preserved.

In 1864, a son was born into the Baymurza family from the Sambet clan. The baby was named Nurmagambet. It so happened that in childhood the child injured his hand, disfiguring his fingers. Since then they called him Sholak - the fingerless one. Sholak spent his childhood and youth in Kokchetav, where his father made a living by making wooden crafts. The father worked tirelessly, and the family did not need anything. Young Sholak even then had a daring disposition, was in no way inferior to the older boys, fought and fought selflessly, and was a leader in everything. Possessing extraordinary strength and agility, he had no equal in any competition.

Already in his young years, Sholak became famous as an invincible wrestler and was awarded the honorary title of Baluan. Baluan Sholak was not inferior to anyone in horse riding, demonstrating real circus tricks: he stood on a horse at full gallop, spun in the saddle, and could sit on the horse’s belly while running without reins... But the horseman’s main hobby was singing and playing the dombra. He sang the songs of Birzhan and Akhan-Sere, so much so that they talked about it all over the steppe. Baluan Sholak easily held a log with twenty horsemen on his shoulders, at the age of 35 at fairs he lifted weights weighing 51 pounds (816 kg) and, of course, fought excellently, justifying his nickname Baluan - a wrestler.

Already at the age of 14, the future strongman defeated 20-year-old boys. At a competition in Omsk on the occasion of the arrival of the Tsar's heir, Baluan Sholak put the famous wrestler Sevres on his shoulder blades. At the age of 49, our hero accepted the challenge of the famous strongman Karon at the Koyanda fair and during the fight broke his rib. They say that Haji Mukan himself wanted to measure his strength with Baluan Sholak, but, having gotten to know him better, he abandoned this idea. His songs brought even greater fame to the hero. Having lived only 55 years, he left behind dozens of songs: “Galia”, “September”, “Taldy-Kul”, “Saryn” and others. And this despite the fact that the akyn’s creativity has not yet been sufficiently studied. Baluan Sholak traveled around the villages, gathered gifted youth around him, and even organized an “ensemble.” For the first time, steppe residents hear familiar songs performed in choirs and are surprised at the coordinated playing of several dombras.

At the age of twenty-six, Sholak already had a real troupe, which included dombra players, singers, storytellers, riders and wrestlers. Sholak himself performed songs and demonstrated his colossal strength - he broke horseshoes, fought with several horsemen at once, and lifted incredible weights. Baluan Sholak had a special relationship with women: he was always carried away by beauties and, as befits a poet, was amorous. Bright appearance, prowess, incredible power, strong voice made the akyn the most desirable man in the steppe. But only one woman left an indelible mark on his life. Her name was Galia. And she was the daughter of a wealthy Argyn merchant Tleu. The tall, fair-faced beauty, while still a child, was betrothed to the wealthy but unloved Birzhan. She married him. And then Baluan Sholak met her. The lovers met secretly. Until the deceived husband found out about it. Brutally beaten, wearing only a shirt, Galia returns to her parents' house. Baluan Sholak was ready to marry his beloved. But the offended husband, through the court of the biys, demanded the return of the dowry.

Monument to Baluan Sholak in the village of Tole Bi, Shui district, Zhambyl region.

Not believing the judges, the batyr went to Kokchetav to collect the required amount of livestock. In Kokchetav he was accused of stealing cattle and ended up in prison, while Galia won the court case. Now she was free, but nothing was known about her beloved. Steppe rumors bring different things to her: Baluan Sholak has fled, he is a polygamist, and now a convict, driven to Siberia forever... Galia, in despair, at the behest of her father, marries again. Now she is the second wife of a famous man in the city. And Baluan’s friends agreed to transfer him to the prison of the city where Galia lived. Akin is not himself while waiting to meet his beloved. It was then that Baluan Sholak’s most famous song, “Galia,” was born. But Sholak and Galia never found family happiness. Baluan Sholak remained a favorite of his fellow countrymen until the end of his life. He fought against injustice, and his every noble deed aroused admiration among the people. On the eve of the October Revolution, the batyr helped the Bolsheviks hide in the villages, supplied them with horses, and helped them in every possible way.

Until the end of his life, Baluan Sholak was not afraid of anyone and always helped the weak and disadvantaged. His songs are often heard today in concerts and on the radio. Sabit Mukanov wrote a story about Baluan Sholak, singer, composer, famous wrestler, and now the Sports Palace built in 1967 in Almaty is named after him.

Is it possible to lift that much weight?

People who are seriously interested in bodybuilding most likely know what the heaviest weight a person has ever lifted and who did it. We are talking about the famous strongman Paul Anderson, who in the middle of the last century was considered the strongest man in the world and was called in the press a “crane.”

Paul Anderson was born in 1932 and began training with weights when he was 20 years old. The largest one raised by a person was recorded in 1957. It was a barbell with “pancakes” total weight which amounted to 2,844 kg. (during one of the performances he tore his shoulders off the racks). And Anderson’s record has not yet been broken by any weightlifter.

In the early 50s. last century, the athlete began to perform in the professional arena. Moreover, there is a known case when in one of the nightclubs in Las Vegas he squatted three times with a barbell whose weight was 526 kg. And for Anderson there was nothing unusual about this - after all, squats with weights were his favorite exercise.

But the athlete didn’t like the bench press too much. However, this did not prevent him from achieving excellent results here. In particular, Paul could squeeze 11 times right hand 136 kg, and do the same 7 times with the left.

In professional demonstrations of strength, Anderson managed to lift 1,600 kg from the platform and lift it to his knees. In addition, he performs an incomplete squat - a “short squat” with a weight of 952.5 kg, walks with 700 kg on his chest and squats according to all the rules with 590 kg.

After the Olympics, Anderson announced that he was leaving amateur sports, believing that tournaments were too physically and mentally exhausting. He began to give performances with demonstrations of strength in various cities in the United States. In powerlifting, he showed the following results: squats with a weight of 544.5 kg, bench press - 284 kg and deadlift- 371 kg (with straps - 453.5 kg), (without equipment and doping). Anderson also performed a partial squat with a weight of 952.5 kg, and during one of his performances he lifted a weight of 2,844 kg from the racks with his shoulders. He could hold weights of 127 kg each with his little fingers on his outstretched arms. I pressed a dumbbell weighing 172.5 kg with one hand while standing.

There was also this famous person:

Let us then remember another famous strongman:

So how much can a person lift maximum? Answer: 266 kilograms. This is the record of Olympic champion Leonid Taranenko in the clean and jerk (one of the two main techniques for lifting a barbell), listed in the Guinness Book of Records. It was installed almost 30 years ago, but has not yet been broken by anyone.

But such an unusual topic, what do you think? Well then

The human body has been studied by doctors, scientists, anthropologists, biologists and other specialists for many centuries. It is therefore not surprising that people today know a lot about how the human body actually works and what it is capable of. Even though the human body is limited in many ways in terms of physical capabilities, sometimes incredible cases occur where people demonstrate something far beyond what is considered possible.

25. Lifting a car with bare hands

24. Staying in Ice

Dutch stuntman Wim Hof, known as "The Iceman", holds 20 world records, including the world record for longest stay on ice. In 2011, he broke his previous record by remaining chin-deep in ice for 1 hour, 52 minutes and 42 seconds.

23. Fifty marathons in fifty days

Calling his achievement "50/50/50", American ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes completed 50 marathons in 50 US states over 50 consecutive days. After completing his feat, Karnazes decided to run home from San Francisco to New York.

22. Car balancing

John Evans, known as the "professional head balancer", managed to balance a 159 kg Mini Cooper on his head for 33 seconds in 1999. The holder of another 32 world records also somehow balanced 101 bricks and 235 pints of beer on his head.

21. Longest insomnia ever

In 1964, Randy Gardner, a high school student in San Diego, California, stayed awake for 264.4 hours (11 days and 24 minutes), setting the world record for insomnia. Gardner subsequently managed to fully recover from this loss of sleep, as he did not experience any long-term psychological or physical after-effects.

20. Holding your breath underwater

On February 28, 2016, Alex Segura Vendrell, a professional diver from Catalonia, set a new world record for the most long delay breathing underwater. Having previously purged his lungs with pure oxygen, he managed to hold his breath for 24 minutes and 3.45 seconds.

19. Helicopter that is pulled by the ear

Georgian Lasha Pataraia earned himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records by pulling a 7,734kg military helicopter down the runway using only his left ear. He set a world record by dragging an MI8 helicopter 26 meters and 30 centimeters.

18. Spider-Man

Also known as "Spider-Man", French climber Alain Robert is famous for climbing skyscrapers without any equipment or safety net. Robert has managed to climb landmarks such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur and the Sears Tower in Chicago.

17. Lightning Rod Man

American park ranger Roy Cleveland Sullivan, who works in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, is famous for being struck by lightning... as many as 7 times (between 1942 and 1977). Each time he survived.

16. Tightrope walker over Niaga Falls

Holder of 9 Guinness World Records, American acrobat, trapeze artist, stuntman and skater Nicholas Wallenda is best known for being the first person to walk on a tightrope directly over Niagara Falls. It took him 2 years to get approval from Canada and the US to perform this incredible feat.

15. Highest water jump

In August 2015, 27-year-old Lazaro "Lazo" Schaller entered the Guinness Book of Records for making the most high jump in water. He jumped from a 58.8-meter cliff in Switzerland.

14. Ride the biggest wave

Garrett McNamara, an American professional surfer and extreme sports enthusiast, is famous for setting a world record among surfers. In January 2013, McNamara broke his own previous world record by boarding a 30-meter wave off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal.

13. Survive without food and water

In April 1979, 18-year-old Andreas Mihavech from Austria survived an incredible 18 days without food or water in a holding cell. The young man, who was driving a car involved in an accident, was placed in a cell by the police, who then completely forgot about him.

Shavarsh Karapetyan, a former Armenian Soviet swimmer and world and European champion, saved the lives of 20 people in 1976 during a trolleybus accident in Yerevan, Armenia. An overcrowded trolleybus with 92 passengers fell from a dam, plunging to a depth of 10 meters. Karapetyan jumped off the dam, dived, broke a window underwater and began to pull passengers out of the trolleybus. He managed to save 20 people before he himself lost consciousness in the murky water.

11. The greatest weight lifted by a person

American weightlifter and powerlifter Paul Anderson was included in the Guinness Book of Records as “the man who lifted the most heavy weight"During one of his performances, he managed to lift a weight of 2844.02 kg from the racks with his shoulders.

10. The Man Who Pulled the Plane

Kevin Fast from Canada managed to drag a CC-177 Globemaster III military transport aircraft weighing 188.83 tons over a distance of 8.8 meters. The record was set at the Canadian Air Force Base in Trenton, Canada on September 17, 2009.

9. Buried Alive for Ten Days

In 2004, Czech fakir and magician Zdenek Zahradka spent ten days buried alive in a wooden coffin. He was without food or water all this time, but could breathe through the ventilation pipe.

Vesna Vulović is a former Serbian flight attendant who staged unusual record, falling from a height of 10,160 meters without a parachute and surviving. Vulovic fell from the plane, which exploded in the air. She “escaped” with multiple fractures and lay in a coma for 27 days, but after that she fully recovered from her injuries and even continued to fly.

The nickname "The Deepest Man on Earth" is given to Austrian freediver Herbert Nitsch, who set world records in all 8 freediving disciplines. He currently holds 69 official world records (usually breaking his own previous records). In June 2012, he dived to a depth of 253.2 meters.

In 2009, Wim Hof ​​(the same man who spent almost 2 hours in the ice) climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro (5895 meters above sea level) wearing only shorts. And two years earlier, he climbed to a height of 6.7 km on Everest, also in only shorts and shoes, but was unable to reach the summit due to a leg injury.

5. Catching cannonballs with bare hands

Danish stuntman John Holtum was nicknamed "The King" cannonballs", since he was able to catch a cannonball fired from a cannon by his assistant with his bare farts. Unfortunately, Holtum's first attempt to catch the cannonball ended with him losing three fingers.

4. Super mathematician

Daniel Tammet is an English writer, essayist, translator and autistic savant who is endowed with the gift of mathematical calculations in memory (and using numbers of 100 characters), and also knows 11 languages ​​and invented his own language. He broke the European record for reproducing the number of decimal places of pi from memory. In 5 hours and 9 minutes, he reproduced 22,514 characters.

Daniel Browning Smith, also known as "Rubber Man", is an American acrobat, actor, television host, comedian, showman and stuntman who holds the title of the most flexible man in history. During one of his exploits, he dislocated his arms while slipping through tennis racket(without strings).

2. Metal Eater

Michel Lotito is a French entertainer known for eating indigestible objects. During his performances, he swallows metal, glass, rubber and other materials. He dismantled, cut into small pieces and ate bicycles, carts, televisions and even a Cessna 150 airplane. Between 1959 and 1997, Lotito is estimated to have eaten almost nine tons of metal.

1. King of Torture

Tim Cridland is an American performer who performs extremely painful stunts for entertainment. His tricks include fire swallowing, sword swallowing, skewering his body, and even electrocuting himself.

Continuing the theme of the incredible.