Eddie Hall believes strongman could be heading towards another once-unthinkable milestone after Raul Flores smashed the world deadlift record with a colossal 511kg pull.
Flores made history at Giants Live inside Birmingham’s Utilita Arena, successfully deadlifting 511kg (1,126.5lbs) to move beyond the previous record held by Hafthor Björnsson.
Thor had set the benchmark at 510kg in September 2025, but Flores added another kilogram to the record in front of a Birmingham crowd that went wild when the lift was completed.
Björnsson himself was there to witness his record fall.
But as well as a well-deserved congratulations, Eddie Hall’s reaction to the new record contained an intriguing prediction about just how far deadlifting could eventually go.
Hall, who famously became the first man to deadlift 500kg, congratulated the 26-year-old Flores on Instagram before suggesting another enormous milestone could be on the horizon.
He wrote: “Well done @tayzonstrongman on your 511kg deadlift WR’ at @giantslivestrongman so great to see the world record getting smashed by a 26yr old […] fair play brother and look forward to watching you add more and more weight to the bar over the coming years. 550kg barrier going next I reckon […] Watch the rest of the show over at @officialstrongman_ livestream. Big Love, The Beast™️”
The suggestion that the 550kg barrier could eventually fall is particularly interesting given Hall’s previous comments about where the limits of human strength might actually lie.
During a Q&A on his YouTube channel, the former World’s Strongest Man was asked an even more extreme question: could somebody one day deadlift 600kg?
Hall, now 38, wasn’t prepared to rule it out.
Having experienced first-hand what happens when a supposedly impossible number becomes reality, he pointed towards the progression of the deadlift record while explaining why he refuses to place a definitive ceiling on human strength.
“Wow. Well, you know what, I mean people said the 500kg deadlift was impossible. Bear in mind, the world record is 37kg off the world record, from when people were saying that. This is 100kg on top of that,” Hall began. “Now I’m not going to sit here and say it’s going to be impossible. I’m not going to say that. Because we don’t know what advances in technologies and whatever else is going to come out of the woodwork in the future.
“Who knows? An absolute freak may be born — another Andre The Giant may be born, 10-foot tall with a 1000lbs of bodyweight and it’ll just come and lift it with one arm. You just never know. Never put a limit on what the human body can do.”
Those comments take on another dimension following the events in Birmingham.
Hall once stood at the centre of one of strength sport’s defining moments when he became the first human to pull 500kg from the floor. Since then, the record has continued to move.
Björnsson pushed the benchmark to 510kg in September 2025, and Flores has now gone one better with 511kg – 1kg more.
Hall’s latest prediction would require another significant jump.
A 550kg deadlift would add 39kg to Flores’ newly established world record and take the sport through a barrier which, for the moment, remains untouched.
Only time will tell.
Featured image credit: Instagram/goodbadbeast/giantslivestrongman (screenshots)
