A Powerlifting Timeline
Powerlifting's
firsts
The first man to total 1,000 kilos without a suit. The first woman to deadlift 250. Each entry below is the earliest performance in the OpenPowerlifting dataset to cross a mythologized number. Ordered strictly by date, every one a chapter the sport built on.
Chapter I
The Wraps Era
Up to 1979
Before "raw" had a name, every great lift was wrapped, untested, and contested in basement gyms.
September 4, 1965
First man to squat 300 kg raw
90+ kg class · 151.6 kg bodyweight
The first time someone got 300 kilos out of the rack and back up without a squat suit — wraps allowed in the earlier era, sleeves in the modern one.
September 3, 1966
First man to squat 350 kg raw
90+ kg class
Halfway between the mythical 300 and the superhuman 400 — the first 350 raw squat marked the point where sleeves-only lifting caught the old suited record books.
August 29, 1969
First man to total 900 kg raw
333 squat · 222 bench · 363 deadlift
For decades this looked like a hard ceiling for un-suited lifters. Suited and multi-ply lifters cleared it routinely, but in a no-suit configuration (Raw or Wraps) it stayed out of reach until this meet.
August 29, 1969
First man to bench 250 kg raw
110+ kg class · 153.8 kg bodyweight
Bench is the slowest lift to scale. 250 in a no-shirt configuration stayed elite long after squats and deadlifts blew past their analogs.
September 16, 1972
First man to total 1000 kg raw
394 squat · 259 bench · 372 deadlift
The first time anyone added a squat, bench, and deadlift to a four-digit total without a suit or briefs. Made the impossible ordinary.
November 10, 1972
First man to total 1050 kg raw
411 squat · 272 bench · 383 deadlift
Just two months after Jon Cole made 1000 ordinary, John Kuc cleared the next fifty. A super-heavyweight from Pennsylvania, Kuc went on to a powerlifting Hall-of-Fame career. The 1000 club barely had time to feel exclusive.
November 10, 1972
First man to squat 400 kg raw
110+ kg class · 146.1 kg bodyweight
Four hundred kilos out of the rack and back up, no suit. The cleanest single-lift threshold of the modern raw era.
November 10, 1972
First man to bench 300 kg raw
110+ kg class · 155.6 kg bodyweight
The slowest lift to scale finally cracked three hundred without a shirt — a number that lived only in bench-shirt record books for decades.
April 17, 1977
First woman to total 400 kg raw
175 squat · 77 bench · 188 deadlift
Marks the moment women's powerlifting started producing globally elite numbers in the no-suit configuration.
Chapter II
The Equipped Decades
1980 to 2007
The suit era took over the record books. The names below cleared raw thresholds in spite of it.
July 15, 1995
First man to deadlift 400 kg raw
145+ kg class · 184.1 kg bodyweight
The Hall-of-Fame number. 400 kg off the floor without a deadlift suit puts you in a tiny club of all-time pullers.
April 26, 1998
First woman to squat 200 kg raw
82.5 kg class · 82.5 kg bodyweight
The 200 squat is roughly the female counterpart to a 300 squat for men — a strength-Dots equivalent that has its own mythology.
April 26, 1998
First woman to total 500 kg raw
215 squat · 143 bench · 233 deadlift
The 500 club opened the door between "nationally strong" and "globally elite" for women lifting without a suit.
Chapter III
The Raw Revolution
2008 to present
IPF rules formally embraced raw competition in 2012. The ceilings fell across every weight class.
December 5, 2009
First woman to total 600 kg raw
238 squat · 165 bench · 235 deadlift
A modern phenomenon. The first 600 was crossed within a generation of women being widely admitted to competitive powerlifting.
December 5, 2009
First woman to bench 150 kg raw
90+ kg class
Raw bench is the hardest lift for women to scale. One hundred and fifty kilos with no shirt is the female analog to a man's 250 — elite for any bodyweight.
January 30, 2010
First woman to deadlift 250 kg raw
90+ kg class · 117.5 kg bodyweight
For most of recorded powerlifting history, a 250 deadlift was elite for ANY un-suited woman regardless of class.
June 5, 2010
First woman to total 700 kg raw
272 squat · 175 bench · 259 deadlift
The 700 club opened for women a generation after Jan Todd cracked 400 — a one-hundred-kilo jump per decade once the sport welcomed serious depth.
June 5, 2010
First woman to squat 250 kg raw
90+ kg class · 113.4 kg bodyweight
A quarter-tonne back squat, no suit — the number that pushed the women's raw squat into territory that would have won most open meets a generation ago.
August 4, 2012
First woman to score 600 Dots raw
90+ kg class · 119.7 kg bodyweight
Women's Dots ceilings have climbed dramatically over the past decade — the first 600 marked the moment the sport got globally competitive across weight classes.
December 5, 2013
First man to total 1100 kg raw
435 squat · 260 bench · 405 deadlift
The next hundred beyond the four-digit barrier. A raw total once reserved for multi-ply gear, now posted in sleeves.
February 7, 2014
First man to score 600 Dots raw
140+ kg class · 145.4 kg bodyweight
Dots normalizes for bodyweight — so this is the first time any man, anywhere in the weight-class ladder, scored 600 in the modern coefficient without a suit.
July 8, 2016
First woman to squat 300 kg raw
90+ kg class · 163.6 kg bodyweight
The women's counterpart to a man's 400 — three hundred kilos out of the rack without a suit, the outer edge of what the sport has recorded.
May 12, 2018
First woman to score 650 Dots raw
82.5 kg class · 78.7 kg bodyweight
Half a century after Jan Todd entered the historical record, women's coefficient ceilings cracked numbers that would have outscored most male lifters of the 70s and 80s.
May 12, 2018
First woman to deadlift 275 kg raw
82.5 kg class · 78.7 kg bodyweight
The deadlift is the most democratic lift in powerlifting — anyone can train it anywhere. 275 raw for a woman is the modern benchmark of all-time-pull territory.
April 27, 2019
First woman to score 700 Dots raw
56 kg class · 56.0 kg bodyweight
The pound-for-pound ceiling for women's raw lifting — a coefficient that outscores the vast majority of male competitors in history.
August 30, 2019
First man to score 650 Dots raw
100 kg class · 100.0 kg bodyweight
Dots normalizes for bodyweight — so a man scoring 650 in a no-suit configuration meant the sport had finally produced lifters who looked elite at every class, not just the heaviest.
March 26, 2022
First man to deadlift 450 kg raw
140 kg class · 125.9 kg bodyweight
A number that lived only in deadlift suits and bench shirts for decades. Crossing it raw meant the equipped era no longer owned the deadlift record book.
More firsts are coming.
As today's lifters become tomorrow's pioneers, and as new thresholds get drawn in chalk on the platform, this page updates itself.