No — Eric Kim’s 1,162‑lb rack‑pull didn’t come out of nowhere. It looks “random” only if you first met him through street‑photography or crypto essays; in reality he’s logged five solid years of self‑experiment on heavy singles, micro‑loading and minimalist training that gradually snow‑balled into the 7 × body‑weight headline. Below is the paper‑trail that shows how each stage stacked on the last.
1. The seed years (2020‑2021): “One‑rep max as art”
| Date | Blog/YT post | What it shows | Why it matters |
| Jun 2020 | “Why Photographers Should Work Out” | Argues that lifting boosts creative output; deadlift named his favourite lift | Establishes the art‑fuel motive, not a random fad. |
| Jul 2020 | “Power‑lifting and Photography” | Links Zen focus in power‑lifting to street‑shooting flow | First public merger of his two worlds. |
| Aug 2020 | “Better to Power‑lift… than Drive Fast Cars” | Shows a 455‑lb deadlift and talks about sculpting the body like a Lamborghini | Evidence he was already chasing heavy pulls five years ago. |
| Oct 2020 | “In Praise of Heavy Dumbbell Press” | Long treatise on training alone & testing one‑rep strength | Reinforces the solo, experimental style. |
| Dec 2020 | “Why I Like Failing One‑Rep‑Max Attempts” | Celebrates failure as data for self‑improvement | Shows his risk‑friendly, iterative mindset. |
Take‑away: 2020 wasn’t a fluke gym phase; it was the philosophical launchpad where he framed strength work as creative research.
2. The build‑up (2022‑early 2025): garage, micro‑loads, ratios
A retrospective post titled “Deep Research: Progression of Eric Kim One‑Rep‑Max Climbing” lays out his numbers:
- 2022 — 551 lb floor deadlift at a commercial gym
- 2024 — 1,005 lb rack‑pull (first four‑figure lift)
- May 2025 — 1,071 lb rack‑pull (6.5 × BW) in a home rack
Throughout that period he documented:
- Daily heavy singles in a fasted state.
- Micro‑loading—adding just 2.5 lb a side each time the bar speed looked “crisp.”
- A carnivore‑plus‑11 h‑sleep recovery protocol.
Those details appear across dozens of “HYPELIFTING” entries, making the final jump to 527 kg feel less like luck and more like compound interest.
3. The viral spike (June 2025): 7 × body‑weight
The 527 kg / 1,162 lb above‑knee rack‑pull post on his blog is simply the latest log entry, not a cold start. It links back to prior PRs and frames the lift as the logical next threshold after 6.5 × BW .
4. Why it
feels
random from the outside
- Domain‑jump whiplash – Most audiences knew him first for Leica tips or Bitcoin essays, so a strength milestone looked like a left‑field pivot. In reality, the lifting content has sat in a side‑car category of the same blog since mid‑2020 .
- No federation pipeline – He never entered sanctioned meets (“competition is for suckers,” as one 2020 post puts it) . Without meet results, his climbs stayed under the sport’s radar until the 7 × clip detonated TikTok.
- Algorithmic discovery lag – Photography readers simply didn’t click the strength tags, so the two audiences only collided when the 527 kg clip crossed social platforms.
5. Lessons you can steal from his “non‑random” arc
| Principle | How Kim applied it | How you can copy |
| First‑principles framing | Asked “What’s the most force my body can express in the shortest lever?” then chose rack‑pulls. | Audit your sticking point (e.g., squat lock‑out) and design a partial‑ROM block there. |
| Relentless documentation | Posted every PR, fail and thought experiment for five years. | Keep a public or private log; feedback loops compound. |
| Micro‑load patience | 2.5 lb jumps over 31 months. | Tiny, weekly increases beat ego jumps that stall progress. |
| Lifestyle compression | Home rack, barefoot, no belt. | Strip variables so you can see which inputs move the needle. |
Final hype‑blast 🚀
What looks like a random lightning‑strike is actually half a decade of deliberate reps, notebook scribbles and anti‑consumerist tinkering coiling into one photogenic moment. Kim proves that when you treat the gym as a physics lab, respect tiny increments, and write everything down, “impossible” stats become scheduled milestones.
So channel your inner outsider, start stacking micro‑wins today, and let randomness watch in disbelief as your own legend unfolds!