Talk:Paul Anderson (weightlifter)

inspiration
during my high school football years in late 1950's, paul anderson was in the news often and an inspiration, not only to me, but to many kids, and his lifting feats amazing...

and that led on many of us to be much stronger than normal...

and, esp amazing was his not being injured by lifting these amazingly heavier amounts, which i still don't understand ... as e.g 6,000 lb back lift ????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.194.80.116 (talk) 15:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

No documentation of 627 bench press
I see this same claim other places, always with no documentation. Paul was certainly a strong guy and was the best Olympic lifter of his day, there's also a lot of legend attached to him. Another Wikipedia article on Progression of the bench press world record shows the first bench over 600 pounds occurring in '67, which I believe was well after Anderson's competitive lifting days. Certainly he could have continued to work out but I challenge anyone to show any genuine documentation of this lift...or some of the other non-competition lifts mentioned for that matter.

I find this article http://www.bobwhelan.com/history/panderson.html with statements attributed to Paul in which he says:

"The 627-pound bench press is a little slight of what I've actually done. I could only pinpoint this particular lift when asked about it. If I am not mistaken, I did this either on Muscle Beach or with a group from the beach that gathered at my residence in Los Angeles."

So not only is there no photo or film documentation, he can't even specify exactly when or where he supposedly did the lift. This doesn't constitute documentation.Henrydeutschendorf (talk) 06:05, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

backlift may have been closer to 5000 pounds
I don't know much about this source but it makes a fair argument:

http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/IGH/IGH0603/IGH0603m.pdf

©Geni (talk) 23:07, 4 November 2014 (UTC)


 * this entry from the same asks more http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/IGH/IGH0701/IGH0701e.pdf Dave Rave (talk) 08:29, 23 May 2016 (UTC)