Strongman legend turned arm-wrestler Brian Shaw has spent a lifetime breaking records — but his latest number might be his most staggering yet.
In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel, Shaw and fellow arm-wrestler Devon Larratt, both underwent a full-body DEXA (Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry) scan — a test designed to precisely measure body composition by separating bone mineral, fat mass, and lean muscle mass.
Both men started by recording their baseline stats. Larratt stood at 6ft 6″ and weighed 293 pounds, while Shaw measured 6ft 7″ and 373 pounds.
After the scans, the results painted a picture that most physiologists would consider nearly impossible.
Larratt registered around 18% body fat, while Shaw came in leaner at 15% – despite being a full 80 pounds heavier. Larratt’s lean mass — the combination of muscle, organs, and bone — came in at 230 pounds. Shaw’s? 305 pounds.
“I just want to say, that’s more than your entire bodyweight,” Shaw joked to Larratt. It’s a stat that even the technician couldn’t quite believe.
And then came the outlier — bone density. Larratt’s reading was already exceptional at 5.1, but Shaw’s clocked in at 5.9, placing him at a level considered biologically “off the charts.”
“If we want to go down to the BMD-specific number, we have Devon with 1.718 and then Brian with 1.798,” the female technician added.
Explaining those numbers in more detail, the technician explained: “We take those numbers and then we compare you nationwide to give you a standard deviation. So, if we have a zero, you’re right on the average. You guys are five and six standard deviations above the norm. It’s ridiculous!”
Of course, if you’re anything like me, all these numbers are just… numbers. But shedding some light on what they actually mean, a male technician explained: “Five standard deviations [Devon] is rarer than one in a million.
“And six standard deviations [Brian] is like one in 500 million people have your bone density. So that’s like—that’s not very many people. That’s like 10 to 20 on the planet. So that’s extremely high.”
Put simply, Shaw’s skeleton doesn’t just belong to the top one percent of athletes — it sits in a category all by itself.
For Shaw, these numbers only confirm what years of strongman dominance had already shown. His success wasn’t built solely on brute muscle or mass — it was supported by a skeletal structure capable of handling forces most humans can’t comprehend. Remember, strength doesn’t just come from muscles. Muscles pull on bones, and tendons anchor into them. The denser and stronger the skeleton, the more force the entire system can withstand and produce.
The Importance Of Bone Density In Strength Sports
Bone density might not grab headlines like muscle size or lifting records, but in strength sports, it’s the silent foundation that holds everything together.
Bone is living tissue — it responds to the stress of training by becoming denser and stronger. That’s what allows elite athletes like Shaw to handle monstrous loads that would crush ordinary bodies.
But bone health isn’t just for world-class strongmen. Everyone begins to lose bone density after their early 30s, which means the same principles that help Shaw build a record-breaking frame can also help the average person protect against osteopenia, osteoporosis, and fractures later in life.
The key is impact. As shared by The Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Institute, weight-bearing exercises — movements that make the body work against gravity while staying upright — stimulate bones to remodel and grow stronger.
Activities like squats, running, jumping, and even brisk walking send tiny shocks through the skeleton that trigger new bone formation. The combination of strain magnitude (the force of the exercise), strain rate (the speed of impact), and strain frequency (how often it occurs) all determine how effectively bones adapt. That’s why sports involving multi-directional movement, such as tennis, basketball, or plyometrics, tend to build more bone mass than static lifting alone. Strength training remains essential, but adding dynamic, high-impact work creates the ideal environment for dense, resilient bone tissue.
And while Shaw’s “one in 500 million” bone density reading is an extreme outlier, it proves what consistent loading and long-term training can do to the human skeleton. Research shows that even short, regular bouts of impact-based movement — 15 to 20 minutes, three days a week — can meaningfully increase bone density. Whether through weights, jumping drills, or mixed-directional movement, bones respond to challenge just like muscles do. The takeaway is simple: build it, or lose it.
Decades of strongman competition — yoke carries, atlas stones, log presses, deadlifts, and frame carries — have all placed monumental loads through Shaw’s joints and bones. And instead of breaking him down, it appears as if that stimulus made his body adapt beyond normal human capacity. Now he’s focused on his next goal: Dominating the arm wrestling scene.
So, there you have it. Brian Shaw isn’t built to look impressive — he’s built to endure and absorb forces most humans will never experience. And now, there’s a number to prove it.
Featured image credit: Instagram/@shawstrength/YouTube/ShawStrength (screenshots)
