The Story
The 500 kg Lift
The story that matters is what came after.
The leg press at 73 — more than 500 kg, on an ordinary training morning.
What Happened
A number, and everything around it
Chris was 73 years old when he pressed more than 500 kg on the leg press. It is a striking figure, and it is the thing most people hear first. It is also, on its own, the least interesting part of the story.
A single lift is a snapshot. What produced it was fifty years of turning up: the sessions that felt strong, the ones that didn't, the injuries worked around, the weights taken off the bar as often as they were added. Nothing about it was sudden.
The achievement matters. But continuing to train matters more.
The Build-Up
It wasn't a stunt. The leg press had been in Chris's programme for years, creeping upward a plate at a time. The 500 kg attempt was simply the next reasonable step in a very long line of reasonable steps.
The Lift
A Tuesday morning, an ordinary gym, two training partners loading plates and counting. Set up, brace, press, control it back down. It took a few seconds and six decades.
Afterwards
The number travelled further than Chris ever expected — messages arrived from people in their sixties and seventies asking not about the weight, but about how to begin.
Ten Years On
Chris no longer chases that number, and doesn't need to. He is 83 and still training, which he considers by far the more useful headline.
“The weight was never the point. The years of ordinary mornings that made it possible — that was the point.”
Chris Jones
Footage of the lift and the training that led to it will be published on the videos page as it becomes available.
Watch the story