As a four-time winner of the World’s Strongest Man competition, Brian Shaw’s brute strength never comes into question. This is the guy who deadlifts cars for fun on his YouTube channel, after all. But in a recent video, Shaw decides to put his strength to the test—literally—by undergoing a series of assessments at the UFC Performance Institute, believing that getting a look at the data will help reveal the areas he can still improve on.
After warming up on the assault bike, Shaw begins with an explosive countermovement jump designed to measure the power in his legs. Next, he tests how much force he is capable of generating on a deadlift using a fixed bar which measures his output; more than 1,700 pounds of force. “That’s over 700 kilos,” he says. “Eddie Hall likes to talk about 500 kilos; it would be fun to do this with Edward here, just to see what he could do.”
Shaw also measures his neck strength on a “guillotine,” his most disappointing metric, and then shows off his considerable grip strength, exhibiting 1,573 Newtons (353 pound force) with his right hand and 1,594 (358) with his left.
The final test is the power slap assessment, consisting of three hits on the PowerKube, a device which tracks force, speed and accuracy. (The simple slap is a popular move among MMA fighters for catching an opponent off-guard.)
Prior to testing his own power, Shaw is told that the highest number ever recorded at the institute is a human force measurement of 56,000 Franklins. On his first try, Shaw clears 44,000 on the PowerKube with ease. On his second, he hits 50,796, and finally 52,991, placing him in the top three most powerful slaps on record. Shaw notes that his “slapping needs some work, technique-wise” before he can hope to hit that number one spot.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
