The 2022 Rogue Invitational is less than two weeks away, but we did get a little sneak peak of one of the events heading the athletes’ way. Last week, Caity Henniger, co-owner of Rogue Fitness, shared a post on Instagram showing CrossFit Games veteran Kristi O’Connell doing a heavy log press.
Check it below…
And while Rogue Fitness has been selling the LB-3 ROGUE 12” LOG BAR on its site for years, this will be the first time it has been programmed in a major CrossFit competition.
Based on the look of it, it would appear the log press will be used as a strength event rather than used as an element within a longer metcon. So with athletes likely having to complete a 1RM log press, we are taking a look at the history and records of the infamous Strongman lift.
The History
The log lift made its first appearance at the 1980 World’s Strongest Man contest. With athletes lifting an actual carved log with handles inserted, Bill Kazmaier and Lars Hedlund tied for the event win with a 157kg, or 346 pound, lift.
You can watch the first log lift competition below.
Since 1980, strongmen have been setting record after record. And on top of that, the rudimentary log has been replaced with smoother carved logs or, in Rogue’s case, powder-coated steel.
The men’s log press world record has gone up significantly over the past 40 years. In 2021, Cheick “Iron Biby” Sanau lifted 229kg, or 504 pounds, at the 2021 Giants live World Tour final in Glasgow, Scotland.
That 229 kg lift beat Zyndrunas Savickas’ world record by 1kg set in 2015.
For the women, the world record is held by Andrea Thompson. Thompson’s current world record was set just this month on October 9, 2022, where she lifted 140kg, or 309 pounds, at the 2022 World Log Lift Championships in Ipswich, United Kingdom. Thompson beat her previous 130kg world record set back in July 2020.
Rogue Invitational
So the question is, if the event is a 1RM log press, how heavy can the top CrossFitters in the world go? While it is unclear if any weight was added to O’Connell’s log press in the Instagram video, but the Rogue Log Bar weighs 61kg, or 134 pounds, without any added weight.
Obviously, we won’t see any log press world records set at the Rogue Invitational. The top clean and jerk, with a barbell, at a CrossFit sponsored event, is 387 pounds by Jake Douglas at the 2019 Down Under Championship in 2019. For the women, Christine Middleton clean and jerked 265 pounds at the 2021 Granite Games semifinal.
The larger, more awkward, log bar will prove much more difficult than the barbell. But similar to the sandbag event at the CrossFit Games, it will be exciting to see how far the top CrossFitters can go with a Strongman implement. The only bummer is that we won’t be able to see Guilherme Malheiros attempt the log press.
Malheiros just withdrew from the Rogue Invitational last week after encountering delays getting his visa approved. Henrik Haapalainen will take Malheiros’ place in the competition.
The Rogue Invitational begins October 28 and will be livestreamed all three days on the Rogue Fitness YouTube page. Stay tuned to The Barbell Spin as we continue to bring you the latest news.
