Barrel-chested Lucas Helmke, 33, from Brisbane, Australia, has pushed his strength and stamina to their limits to break the most push ups in one hour world record.
Lucas performed 3,206 push ups within one hour – that’s an average of over 53 per minute.
The previous record of 3,182 was set by another Aussie, Daniel Scali, in April 2022.
Lucas attempted this record to “provide inspiration” for his one-year-old son and “show him nothing is impossible.”
Lucas trained for two to three years to break this record.
The official attempt took place in his old powerlifting gym, Iron Underground in Brisbane.
Lucas broke the push ups down into 30-second sets, aiming to complete 26 push ups in each one. Lucas slightly exceeded this target, achieving an average rate of 26.7 push ups every 30 seconds.
Lucas was required to maintain perfect form for each push up, otherwise they wouldn’t count towards the record total.
The body must remain straight throughout, meaning there can be no bending at the knees or waist. The body must be lowered until at least a 90-degree angle is attained at the elbow, then raised until the arms are straight.
Only 34 (1%) of Lucas’ push ups were discounted due to improper form, which is an impressively low number considering he was going as fast as possible in order to break the record.
After achieving this Guinness World Records title, Lucas is not resting on his laurels – he plans to break at least one record every year from now on.
“This will be the first record I wish to set of a number of other push up records,” Lucas said.
“Then onto other physical records.”
The record for the most push ups in one hour has been broken repeatedly over the past decade.
Before Lucas and Daniel, the record was held by Jarrad Young from – you guessed it – Australia, who broke it three times from 2018 (with 2,806 push ups) to 2021 (3,054 push ups).
And before Jarrad, in 2017, the record belonged to Carlton Williams (UK; 2,682 push ups).
Carlton first broke the record in 2014 (1,874 push ups) and then again in 2015 (2,220 push ups).
Amazingly, Lucas managed to perform almost 1,000 more push ups than Carlton's 2015 record!
As the number of push ups to beat gets higher and higher, the record is being broken by smaller and smaller margins.
Are we getting close to reaching the limits of human capabilities? Or, in eight more years’ time, will someone have extended the record by another 1,000?
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