Does anyone know anything about Valentin Dikul? He has been breifly mentioned in Pavels books, I belive he’s a Chiropractor in Russia who recoved from a severe back injury as a circus acrobat and now runs his own rehabilitation centre.
I’ve heard of him doing somthing like a 1000Lb squat, 1000Lb deadlift and 1000Lb wrestlers bridge (not in competition as far as I know) I also found a picture of him ages ago holding 170Lb kb’s overhead.I just wondered what you guys know about him as he seems quite low profile!
That video is rediculous. I have yet to see this guy’s name in powerlifting USA in the top 100 deadlifts or squat. Shit, I hope someone tells Andy about him… LOL Laughable shit man. Anyone who believes he is actually doing that weight in the video is off their friggin rocker! If I had a 1000 lb deadlift, I would do it in some crazy soundproof Russian dungeon. Keep it a secret eh?
[quote]dead_lifter5000 wrote:
That video is rediculous. I have yet to see this guy’s name in powerlifting USA in the top 100 deadlifts or squat. Shit, I hope someone tells Andy about him… LOL Laughable shit man. Anyone who believes he is actually doing that weight in the video is off their friggin rocker! If I had a 1000 lb deadlift, I would do it in some crazy soundproof Russian dungeon. Keep it a secret eh? [/quote]
He is/was a circus performer and is pretty well known by Russian strongmen (or so I’ve read). I think Bolton has heard of him. The lifts shown in that video were recorded by the Guiness Book of World Records (not that it makes it official for PL or anything else). I think it was in 1999.
He broke his back when he was 16 falling 15meters and was paralyzed. He trained hard and came back to walk after 6 years of work and kept going. He used to (don’t know if he still does) run a rehabilitation clinic to help people that are paralyzed through strength training. You can find articles about him online if you google his name.
He can bend coins with his finger and thumb, juggles kettle bells, etc., classic circus strongman feats.
So there is a chance that his lifts in the video are real, though the only thing known for certain is that he is a very strong man that can do things that most other strength athletes can not.
One thing to consider is that it is pretty likely that the strongest people in the world have nothing to do with competitive strength athletes.
I’ve seen his videos before and I suppose it’s plausible. There are a lot of insanely strong guys who fly under the radar, but usually that’s because they don’t know the first thing about powerlifting or live somewhere where they don’t have a convenient way to enter contests. They also don’t post videos on the internet claiming what would surely be world record level lifts.
This is obviously not the case with valentin. He clearly knows the ins and outs of competitive powerlifting and in one of the videos there appears to a judge or observer of some sort in suit in the background. So that just adds to me being skeptical of someone like him not going to a public contest to prove his lifts. Especially when he would pretty much rewrite the record books. There’s just something about those videos that just don’t add up.
He’s using a crappy aluminium bar that bends easily for effect. Watch him re-rack the bench press, it quivers for several seconds, a real bar doesn’t do that.
He’s overacting the shaking on the squat, a 1000lb squatter doesn’t have a core that weak.
He doesn’t use spotters. No top class powerlifters would be attempting weights anywhere near their max without spotters. Are we expected to believe that not only is he lifting these weights but he considers them easy enough to have no need for spotters?!
Finally, he’s 60 years old, well past his peak of strength. So he’s still the best raw lifter in the world after his body has been going downhill for years? Don’t think so.
To start off, don’t you think we’d know more about this guy? I mean, the guy has a 2500 lbs total, raw at that, and at 60+ years. That’s pretty damn impressive, and I’d think someone PLing USA would have done a piece on him.
Secondly, I’ve seen the vids, and there’s zero way that someone can squat 1000+ lbs raw, and on top of that, walk the bar out of stands, squat, then walk backwards are re-rack the weight!
His DL is even more unbelievable! Again, Bolton just did 1000, and it was huge news, yet this guy did like 1023, yet nobody has ever talked about it! I’d think somebody would have covered it at least.
His bench is the most believeable thing that he did, but even that, the guy has is elbows totally flared out that I’m doubting the credability of the lift!
Bottom line, I’m willing to bet the weight he did was all in lbs, and for his age, I’d say that’s still impressive, but there’s no chance that the total he claims is raw!
[quote]Calis wrote:
He’s using a crappy aluminium bar that bends easily for effect. Watch him re-rack the bench press, it quivers for several seconds, a real bar doesn’t do that.[/quote]
Actually, the bar appears to be an Eleiko, so it should bend that way, but if it had that amount of weight that he claims, the bar would be moving way more. Even another example this whole thing is BS!
No matter how good you think you are at something there’s always someone somewhere that nobody knows about and doesn’t care that they aren’t known. I’m not saying this is real nor am I saying it’s fake but it’s an awfully big world and crazy shit does go unknown.
[quote]Dominator wrote:
Calis wrote:
He’s using a crappy aluminium bar that bends easily for effect. Watch him re-rack the bench press, it quivers for several seconds, a real bar doesn’t do that.
Actually, the bar appears to be an Eleiko, so it should bend that way, but if it had that amount of weight that he claims, the bar would be moving way more. Even another example this whole thing is BS!
[/quote]
It looks like one but I’m pretty sure it’s not an eleiko. The bar is still vibrating until it moves out of shot on the bench press. An eleiko is springier of course but it doesn’t move like that. The bar in the vid also appears to have 2 rings on one side during the squat, an eleiko doesn’t (though it could be a shadow, I’m not too sure).
Dikul is amaxing. There is a bunch of stuff oyou can find via sandow strength.
Ok, if it was an ali bar, it would bend with anything close to that weight, and would bot flex as it does not have the tensile strength, and would likely snap.
Also, if you have only eat and trained for all of your life (every day), well, i am sure you can get “that strong”. I cant do 1 arm pull ups, but there are people who do, so i can believe that it is real weights there.
It is somewhere in guiness, but would have been timed out at PL meet.
Also, he juggles these huge kettlebells and uses a brass ball to do a "football flick " off the back of his head and catch it on his neck. There was a documentary about him on UK tv aout 10 years ago.
He bent an old 50p (thick coin) in half with his thumb and forefinger.
I love this forum. Someone makes a claim about their abilities, and people scream “Prove it! I don’t believe it without a video!” Now, having seen the video, they still cry bullshit. A-fucking-mazing.
There are more shit talking faggots in this forum, per capita, than any place on Earth.
I own a copy of “Sons of Sampson” volume 1 by David Webster. In it their is a small paragraph about Dikul. They also show a picture of him standing with a huge bar on his back that is attached to a makeshift ramp, and a Mercedes sitting in it. He claimed to have semi squated the front end of cars.
