Zlatan Ibrahimovic Tries Weightlifting and Iryna Dombrovska Squats A LOT

The top three performances of 2025, Zlatan Ibrahimović tries weightlifting and Dr. Eric Helms reveals his favourite weightlifting exercises for muscle growth. All that and more in this week's episode of the Weightlifting House News Show. Now just very quickly I'm going to take up 20 seconds of your time just to let you know that the 90s v2 collection, which now includes a women's range, is coming out next week. So all of the clothes that you've been seeing behind me, this that I'm wearing right now, sleeve singlet and more, all drops next week. If you want to get 24-hour early access to the launch then I'll put a link to that down below. It just means that you get free range of the website before everybody else turns up and things start selling out. Let's get on with the show. So we have videos coming out, they may now be out, they may not be, I'm not sure, of the top 10 performances from the men and from the women in 2025 across all international competitions. I thought some of them were, I was struck actually by the distribution within the men but what I thought I'd do now is just run through the top three performances from the women and then from the men of 2025 and let me know, maybe pause this, make your predictions, who's going to be in them, who's going to be in the top three, what's the order going to be and let me know down below. If anyone gets it right I'll be proud. Okay so we'll start with the women. In number three it's Olivia Reeves, Team USA. So she weighed 73.56 kilos so she was pretty light for the category. She snatched up 123 world record, she cleaned up 155 world record, 278 world record, all new personal bests, looked amazing, kind of no surprise perhaps that she was in the top three. In at number two and losing out on her position is North Korea's Ri Song-geum, the 49 now 48 kilo bombshell, she's absolutely incredible. She snatched 91, clean jerk 122 for a world record cleaner jerk, 213 total. That's from the 2025 world champs. What amazed me about that is that she's actually way down on her best, I mean she snatched like 97 or was it 98 even at the last chance qualifier in 2024. So she's down like 6-7 kilos in the snatch, she's down a few kilos in the clean and jerk, that shows just how good she was and still is. And then number one it's Songka Kyak and it's North Korea 69 and it's not from her incredible performance at the world championships where she went, she took four attempts, she went four for four new world records and smashed it. It's actually when she was a 71 at the last Asian championships she did 121 kilo snatch, 155 clean and jerk for a 276 total. That's two kilos less than what Olivia hit, weighing two and a half kilos less. So it's pretty tight at the top, it's pretty tight at the top. Okay over to the men's top three and also just a shout out to Open Weightlifting for all of this information. So yeah that's a thanks to you and Open Weightlifting, I'll put a link to Open Weightlifting down below. Top three men we have in at number three, this may surprise you, Wirafon Wichuma Thailand, that's from that ridiculous 71 kilo session at the world championships. What's insane is that in the top 10 Sinclairs, this is all ranked by Sinclair so how you rank athletes in different body weights, by Sinclair if you take the top 10 performances from 2025, five of them come from the same session, the men's 71s, where we had five back-to-back world records in the clean and jerk. It was just an unbelievable session and Wirafon Wichuma won it, he's the highest ranking, he comes in third from last year, 152, 194. He has since improved on that world record as well, so yeah amazing stuff from him. Number two, Rahmat Owen Abdullah, not from the Asian championships back in May, you may have forgotten, he clean and jerked 205, there was that big comeback because obviously he'd missed out in the Olympics, he wasn't able to make that 206, then he comes back a year and a bit later, hits 205, looked incredible along with the 155 snatch, so he was in at number two. And then number one, no surprises, it's King Carlos, oh by the way, a full restock of Carlos Sassar t-shirts, shorts, leggings, and I think all the accessories, knee sleeves, other knee sleeves, wrist straps, straps, straps, belt, belt are all available now, and we have more designs coming at some point this year, so stay tuned for that. But he's number one, again weighing in at 93.35 kilos, he snatched 188 to surpass Lesman Paredes' world record in the snatch, 229 clean and jerk, 417 total to surpass the goated Saurabh Maradi from Iran in the total, incredible. So yeah, let me know if you got those right. Moving on, a footballer who is extremely popular, obviously he's been at the top level for like nearly 20 years now, Zlatan Ibrahimović, to those of you who aren't in the world of football, i.e. if you're out of, anywhere outside of the USA you will be, if you're in the USA, I apologise, you might not know who this is, but he was just doing some clean and jerks, I think he retired from weightlifting maybe a year ago, he's 44 years old and he's one of the best strikers in the world, or he was, and he just clean and jerked 120 kilos, and I thought that was actually pretty damn good, I mean for somebody, he's obviously an insane one in a million kind of athlete, remarkable genetics and has always been one of the larger football players out there, but for him to do 120 with, you know, it's not particularly a great technique, shows how much of a novice and how, you know, green he is in this sort of movement, for him to have the strength to put 120 overhead like that, I think is pretty amazing. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that. He's probably the most followed person on earth to ever do a 120 clean and jerk. Is that right? Probably is. How many followers does he have? How many millions? I'm gonna guess that he has 50 million followers on Instagram, 64 million, that's not a bad guess, that's not a bad guess, wow, and he just arm wrestled Khabib Nurmagomedov, I'm sure he won. All right, let's go back to pure weightlifting with the top lifts from the last week. From team Italy, Sergio Massida, I think he's probably now 65, he was of course at 61, he's had some amazing competitions at 61, he has returned from injury, he's returned from surgery and he just snatched 140 kilos in training. Now, to put it into context, the best snatch in the world at that weight class right now is 145 kilos from Mohamed Ozbek from team Turkey, so he's just five kilos below that, which, you know, I mean, it's pretty good, I mean, it's pretty damn good for Massida, it's just that Ozbek is just on a roll right now, he was definitely a top 10 Sinclair, I think he might have even been number five for the year. The best snatch in the 60 kilo category at Worlds was 138, I mean, maybe Massida is going to go down to 60, but I wouldn't have thought so, realistically with the Olympic category 65, 75, 85, 95, 110, super, he's going to go 65, so I think we can assume that's where he is. He also used to sometimes go in at 67 when he didn't want to cut to 61, so I think that's where he is. Speaking of 65s, Hampton Morris USA, I mean, he always does ridiculous things in training, I always think, like particularly in the clean and jerk, he does some he does some doubles and triples that are just mental, but he doubled 180 kilos in the clean and jerk. Now, I mean, what's the, what did Ozbek do? I think it was 179 at Worlds, the world record is, is it 181? Yeah, it is, it's 181 and it belongs to Hampton, so to double 180, you know, you're at like 99.4% or something there, to double 180 is, I mean, that's kind of, we don't know how long the rest was, we don't know what the rest period was and he cuts it, so it could have been 20 seconds and there was a hot take that was sent in recently, which for one of the podcast episodes, which was if your hands come off the bar, it's not a double, I don't know, is it a cluster? Who knows, but it's, I mean, regardless, you know, he did two, as long as you, you have the same sort of parameters for all of your doubles, triples, it really doesn't matter, as long as you are able to then measure PR by the fact that you've got two reps done with the same amount of rest as normal, rather than just extending the rest period, then, you know, it really doesn't matter and also when you're doubling 180 at 65, nothing matters. Moving on, we have Irina Dombrovskaya from Ukraine, she's a 77 kilo weight lifter and, well, she was actually responsible for the most viewed weightlifting house video of 2025 because of her squat jerk, I think it was titled, when an audience sees a squat jerk for the first time and it got like, I think it got over a million views and it's been like two months, it's kind of crazy on YouTube, so she just did 120 kilos in the squat for 14 and then she did 95 kilos for three clean jerks. Now, if you don't know what a clean jerk is, rather than a clean jerk, it's when you stand up out of the front squat and you just push straight into the jerk, so there's no stand pause jerk, you just drive out of the hole into the jerk. I wanted to know why she's training like this, why did she do a set of 14 in the squat, so I messaged my co-commentator, the one and only Dr. Sergey Putsov, also from Ukraine, who knows Irina Dombrovskaya and her husband, who's also a competing international weightlifter and asked and I have the answers right now, so this is Irina's answer to why she did 14 reps at 120 kilos. Right now, our main goal is to maintain my current shape, that means there's no large training volume and no high intensity, we're not going heavy in the snatch and clean and jerk. If during training I feel really good in some accessory strength exercise, like the squat here, the coach allows me to add some weight. Overall, the training is quite light at the moment, which makes sense because, you know, she clean and jerks like 135-ish, so she's at 88-ish percent of her clean and jerk in the squat, which is, I guess, relatively light. She said, I train with the barbell just three times per week and additionally I go to a fitness gym, like a bodybuilding kind of gym, two to three times a week to do accessory work, rehab and cardio. Starting this Monday, I'm going to a training camp and that's where a more serious preparation for the European Championships begins. European Champs, by the way, in Batumi, Georgia this April 19th to 26th, I believe. Regarding those squats, they were planned. The coach wrote 120 kilos for maximum reps. Originally, he thought I would do around seven to eight. The reason I ended up doing 14 is that at the beginning of my preparation for the last Worlds, I squatted 110 for 13 and I wanted to do at least one more rep with 120 kilos and I managed to do it. In general, my legs weren't tired, I just ran out of conditioning. I think that if there had been some competition or a belt with someone, maybe 15 to 16 reps would have been possible. Another thing, in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, we're experiencing a complete energy collapse due to the Russian attacks. There is no electricity, water or heating for several days at a time, so having internet access and a charged phone already feels like a luxury. That is the reality for a lot of the athletes from Ukraine. They're training. I think that I remember the National Training Hall was destroyed a few years ago in the war, so it's been tough for the athletes to even train somewhat remotely, let alone with the mental load of what's going on over there. Anyway, shout-out to Sergey for getting us that information and a thanks to Irina for the answers. Moving on, Sophia Shaft more squats, Team USA, 59 kilo weightlifter. I thought this was kind of mad, 145 front squat for 5. Now, I didn't think that was really in the range for 59 because, you know, what are the top 59s doing? You might be lucky to see the best of the best get to 140. That's like, you know, you'd be looking at like world record-ish territory in the clean and jerk. Front squatting 145 for 5, you know, the old Soviet thing was you have to be able to front squat it for 5 to clean and jerk it, and then some people said you have to be able to front squat it for 3 to clean it. Obviously, some people are outliers here. Yuri Vardanyan, one of the greatest weightlifters of all time from the Soviet Union, he used to say if you can front squat it for 1, you can clean and jerk it. That's not true. He didn't say if you can. He said if I can front squat it for 1, I can clean and jerk it, but that's because he was technically on a different level to anyone else. But 145, I thought it was pretty staggering. Rep 4 was, what, just the same speed as rep 1? Number 5 slowed down, but just absolutely incredible strength from Sophia. Next up, Rakuei Azuma, who I just did some commentary on for a Weightlifting House TV video just earlier today. He is a 79 from Japan. He was in the B session at Worlds, but he just back squatted 280. I mean, yeah, that is, I mean, how many 79s are doing that? There's no way Rapmat can do that. I know he's not a full 70. Well, he is a full 79. Rizky can't do that. There's a chance that, no, no, you know what, Abdo can't do that. Who could do that at 79? Richong Song? I think I saw him do 240 for a double once, 220 for triples. I don't know if there's any 79 who's doing that. So, yeah, again, no proof that it's not always just about the back squat. Next up from France, 94kg Jan Thomasson. He did a 170kg block snatch. He's 23 years old. It's a massive snatch. He's still young, and I think we had Melin on the show last week. She's a French 20, young 20-something year old as well. So, it's kind of cool, two weeks in a row, young French lifters, Team France, the Renaissance. It's literally where the word comes from, and we're seeing one in weightlifting, so that's kind of cool. Next up from Team Ireland, 65kg Harrison McCrogan, 120kg hang snatch. I don't know what his best competition lifts are, or even his international competition history. I've seen him on Instagram a bunch of times being posted, and he's obviously a great lifter, but 120 feels like it's beyond anything that I've seen from him previously in competition. It's like the 110-ish range. Could be wrong, but I think it's around there. So, 120 hang, very solid at 65kg in body weight. I don't know how many, I mean, from this area of the globe, I don't think there are many, if any, 65s doing that. So, yeah, I thought that was very impressive. Next up, Mohab Haini. He's a 71kg weightlifter. He's Egyptian. He lives in Bahrain, and we spoke to Esak Ibrahim about it, and Esak, president of Bahraini Weightlifting Federation, he said that there's a chance that he's going to end up competing for Bahrain because he's been living there and that sort of thing. He just doubled 140kg in the snatch, which, again, it's very solid because the top snatches, well, I mean, the world record is 160kg, kind of an outlier. Most of the top, the best in the world is sneaking into the 150kg, so 140 double is pretty amazing. Speaking of amazing snatches, Adkamjohn Urgachev, Uzbekistan. He's a 65kg. I mean, back in the day, he was like the chosen one. 2019, it was like, okay, junior world records, this guy's going to be the next big thing, and he's just been a good thing rather than the next big thing, but he just block snatched 153kg, and he is a 65kg, like, unless he's going up, but why would he? I mean, he competed at 65kg at the Islamic Games. He took silver behind Uzbek, so he's a 65kg there. 65kg will be the new weight category. It's staying as a weight class, but it's going to be like the Olympic one, so he will stay there. Maybe he's heavy at 68kg, but like 153kg block snatch, unbelievable. Then, and, you know, you can't have a weightlifting house news show without Abdo Younes, so apologies, Abdo once again, the Egyptian 79kg, 205kg cleaner jerk. I mean, that's going to equal Risky's world record, so it's not as good because he did it in training. He might weigh 81kg, we don't know. Also, I'm not convinced that this happened this week. I think it's an old lift that he's just uploaded, but, I mean, that doesn't change how impressive it is, it's just not recent, potentially. But yeah, 205kg Abdo. When he goes up to 85kg, what's he going to do? Because his best, I think, is at 199kg in competition. He's just wobbly, he's full of power, but, you know, what's he going to do? Maybe, can he get over 210kg in competition at 85kg? He might have to, but yeah, very exciting. And then, finally, before we get into the rest of the show, Wakana Nagashima from Team Japan, she made pretty light work of a 141kg cleaner jerk in competition. What weight class is she? Is she 77kg? 81kg, she's 81kg, and she didn't hit, well, my memory of it is that she definitely didn't hit that much at the recent world championships. So, yeah, a big, very solid lift from her. Moving on, we spoke to Dr. Eric Helms, PhD, and he's a natural pro bodybuilder. He's been on the podcast before, I think, at least once. He's been a presenter for us at Coaches Only, and he's been a contributor to the Weightlifting House newsletter, which you can subscribe to at the link down below. You get weekly news sent to you every Friday. You know, the biggest lifts from the week, interviews, it's this sort of stuff, but you get it early, and you can join. How many is it now? It's over 20,000 weightlifters who receive that every Friday. We asked him if he could rank common weightlifting exercises by their hypertrophic potential. He put them into the good, the okay, and the bad. So, this is weightlifting accessory exercises specifically for hypertrophy, for building muscle mass, which is not the goal of all accessory lifts. So, take this with that context in mind. In the good, we have the back and front squat, and this guy carries a huge amount of muscle mass, so, you know, and he's a PhD. You can kind of take his word on this. Romanian deadlift, makes sense. Good mornings. Block high pull below the knee. I'm a little bit surprised about that one. There's not really any eccentric loading, but, you know, we'll put it there. Lou raises and barbell side bends, which you don't see any weightlifters outside of Team China doing, so, maybe we all need to add some of those into our routine. The okay, clean or snatch pull from hang. Okay, so, we're just including, like, all sorts of variations at this point. Muscle cleans or snatch, not muscle snatch, overhead squat, SOTS press, named after Victor SOTS, who supposedly did a SOTS press, so, a press from the front in the bottom of a squat position, so, he sat in a squat. He did 160 kilos, and he wasn't a super, and then the paw. These are the worst exercises for him in terms of hypertrophy. We've got snatch balance. Yeah, fair enough. Drop snatch, fair enough. Jerk balance, press and split. Panda pull. I'm surprised press and split has gone below a block high pull below the knee. Anyway, it is what it is. If you want to get involved in next week's newsletter, by the way, we're doing, like, a Seb and Nick read mean tweets type thing on the podcast, and people are sending in their mean takes about me or Nick or Weightlifting House. If you're not on the newsletter, and so you can't add them there, then just comment them down below. Those are going to get collected, and then they're going to get given to me to read out. So, if you've got some beef with me or Weightlifting House, which you're more than welcome to have, comment down below. I'll take it all with a pinch of salt. Don't worry. Okay, so we should finish this off with the top three lifts from the week. We're going to have to go with 180 double in the clean and jerk by Hampton Morris at 65, Zlatan Ibrahimovic 120 clean and jerk, and now we've got to go between Abdo's 205, Ergachev's 153, and Wakana's 141. The 141 isn't near a world record. The 205 is. The 153 is. You know what? We've had a lot of Abdo. We're going to go Ergachev 153. Let me know down below, and stay tuned, of course, for the release of the 90s V2 collection. It's coming out next week. You can get early access by signing up at the link down below. See you soon.