We’ve often spoken about brutal workouts here at DMARGE, whether it be one to grow your shoulders or an assault bike workout to help shed body fat, but they now seem like a walk in the park compared to this ridiculously heavy workout performed by Bud Jefferies.
Whilst researching Bud and his career, we discovered via Barbend he actually passed away on January 22 2022 at the tragically young age of 48.
His wife posted on his Instagram page an image of the two of them together, along with the caption, “I have been trying to find the right words to post to all of you. I am heartbroken and overwhelmed to have to say that yesterday afternoon, Friday, January 21, around 3:30, while doing a light training session outside, Bud collapsed. I performed CPR until medics arrived, but after lengthy efforts to resuscitate him, he never recovered,”
A former self-proclaimed “professional performing old-time strongman”, Bud was able to prove his crazy levels of strength by squatting a 265lb/120kg stone. Yes, we have seen gym junkies squat much higher weights than this, but Bud performs his squat while also having a 150lb/68kg dumbbell tied around his waist, bringing his total weight up to nearly 190kg.
Not only is this a serious amount of weight to attempt to lift, but the way in which you need to hold a stone and perform a squat increases the difficulty way beyond that of a barbell back squat. If anything, it’s similar to a barbell front squat, which are also more difficult than a back squat.
This is because the weight isn’t loaded onto your shoulders, which would allow your entire body to take the load. Instead, you have the weight held in front of you, which will naturally cause you to want to fall forward. To help counterbalance this, you need to employ all your body muscles to help maintain a much stricter upright stance. Your legs and quad muscles especially are targeted much more, making front squats – and Bud’s brutal stone lift – a serious leg workout.
In general, most fitness professionals suggest you’re able to front squat around 60 – 70 per cent of the weight you would be able to back squat.
Bud Jeffries’ Instagram feed is littered with his feats of crazy superhuman strength, such as carrying a fridge over his head (his last video posted before his unfortunate passing) and deadlifting 505lbs/230kg. We’ve spoken before about how the differences between size vs strength, but in Bud’s case, he had both.
Barbend further comments on Bud’s incredible powerlifting career, saying he “took up strength training at the age of 14.” Some of his other insane feats of true strength have included squatting 1,000lbs/450kg from the bottom position of a squat rack, walking one mile while wearing a 300lb/136kg weighted vested and “swung a 24-kilogram kettlebell 2,350 times in an hour.”
Of course, it should go without saying that we recommend you don’t try Bud’s workouts at home for yourself (good luck sourcing a stone that big in the first place) but the injury potential here if you don’t know what you’re doing, or if you’re not strong enough, isn’t even worth thinking about.
For now, let’s leave it to the professionals.
Read Next