The other day at the gym, my training p and I are doing deadlifts. As he is about to finish his last set at 405, the old man walks up next to us and just stands there. My friend attempts and fails. Meanwhile the old dude, I’m talking near 70 years old is just standing there, like 5 feet from the bar on the ground. My friend regains his focus and goes again and pulls it clean. Then we started stripping it to do Power Cleans. We leave 135 on and proceed to do our sets.
The old guy asks my friend if he can work in. Only he doesn’t speak English, sounded Russian. So he grabs the weight and does what could be called a partial deadlift. Here’s the funny part of the story. Later in the workout, my friend and I are supersetting db stiff-leg deads w/ bent presses. Sputnik walks up, the old man, and sees us. We’re using 90 lb. db’s for the deads. He grabs 95’s and does a set. Finally, I decided this old man was just trying to be the strongest in the gym and found the biggest guys in the gym to outlift. We finish up and my friend, as a joke, grabs 120 lb. db’s and does a quick set of shrugs and deadlifts. As we’re leaving, we see the old man struggling to grip the 125 pair. I hope we didn’t kill him.