Plague of Strength

When it comes to little-known powerlifters about whom you should know and don’t few names spring more to mind than Hideaki Inaba, a chihuahua-sized powerlifter from Japan who hit huge numbers consistently for three decades even though he didn’t touch a weight until he was 33. Tiny, squeaky, smiley, and deceptively strong, powerlifting’s Pikachu pulled off an unreal 4.6x bodyweight squat in an old Marathon suit, which is essentially like doing it in briefs now, and two years after he started lifting he hit a 4.25x bodyweight squat with Ace bandages for knee wraps, which still stands as heaviest squat in that class by 45 pounds. In fact, once you remove the midgets from the equation (they hold the two highest raw squats in history) no one is really even in the conversation about squatting period at that weight class- there is just one little old Japanese man standing atop a pile of broken, vanquished foes, and that’s Hide.

Inaba competed at 27 consecutive world championships and won the world championships 17 years in row. His personal bests are butt fucking bananas, and the dude is so natty that he probably has his water drug tested before drinking it.  Competing at 114, he’s squatted a wrapped 485 and a single ply 535 at 123.  He’s benched 264.5 raw at 114, and he’s pulled 534 in a suit and 496 raw.  And the craziest shit?  The dude put up consistently sick totals until he was 60- raw, natty as a human being has ever been, and small enough that he had to lift weights to keep leprechauns from fucking him up for his lunch money.

When I say this man had every excuse possible to name and he still wrecked shop consistently over 25 years, even into old age, I mean every goddamned excuse you could name. Manlet? Shit, he’d have to put on 40lbs and grow six inches to reach that fucking size, yet he squatted four times his fucking bodyweight in every meet in which he lifted after 1977 (he was 33 in his fourth meet at that point)… and he competed until 2003. Age? Shit, he was 33 when he fucking started competing, in a country known for having a bizarrely high number of asexual and hyperstressed men with bizarre psychoses that have them jerking limp dicks to tentacle rape hentai and never, ever leaving the fucking house.

By the time he was done competing, most motherfuckers have given up on life and just park their asses in front of a television, watching shitbox daytime television, eating catfood, and waiting to die. Not only that, but even competing single ply early on, his Marathon squat suits gave him less pop than the newest breed of knee wraps- the dude was moving weight, and no matter how many excuses Redditors, those pussies on Bodybuilding.com, Facebook, or any of the other shitpile social media excuse-making generators popular among the Low T/Pride-free populations could put forth to excuse shitty performance, this tiny little motherfucker still totaled between 1100 and 1300 every time he touched a platform, competing on every continent with a human population for 26 years.

Hide’s Year-Long Training Schedule

Inaba’s training schedule basically revolved around competing, which, frankly, is a novel concept to me, though it makes sense if you view powerlifting as a sport in the same way football is a sport, and the training as simply practice. Frankly, this might account for both the stagnation of his lifts and the consistency of them over the course of 25 years- though he never made massive gains in strength, he also never backslid, even as he approached the age at which he could draw social security and most of his peers were prepping themselves for the Japanese salaryman’s inevitable series of heart attacks. Food for thought when you’re constructing a program, I guess, if that’s what you’re inclined to do. Though a year or two of hyper-intense training for powerlifting is certainly possible, and the easiest way to make quick, huge jumps in the weight you’re moving, you’ll need a more measured approach to training if you plan on moving big weights for longer than most of you have been on this planet.

Dec-Jan-Feb– Long Layoff

Mar- April– Power Training

May– Japanese Nationals

June-Jul-Aug– Bodybuilding

Sept-Oct– Power Training

Nov– World Championships

Hide’s Powerlifting Training Schedule

Hide’s training during his powerlifting cycles was pretty straightforward. He’d train two hours a day on his heavy days and an hour or so on Sunday doing accessories. At the beginning of a heavy cycle he would focus on rep work with lower volume to build a base, then gradually increase the volume as the meet drew closer.

Sunday– Assistance Work

Monday– Heavy Bench / Light Squat / Light Deadlift (10-15 sets of bench, then 5 sets of light squats and deads)

Wednesday– Heavy Squat / Light Bench / Light Deadlift

Friday– Heavy Deadlift / Light Bench / Light Squat

For the first seven years of his training, Hide trained outdoors in his backyard. Using a ricket-ass stand, rusty plates, and some plywood, Hide built the basis of a physique that moved the biggest weights ever at 114. Around 1980 or 1981, he started training at an actual gym in the Kadaira district of Tokyo. At that point he developed the system listed here- no accessory work on main lifting days and one day of accessories in his backyard.

Inaba’s rep schemes are reminiscent of the type of programs you’d see in the magazines in the 90s- pyramiding up and then back down. Using these, you get a decent amount of volume and build conditioning without neglecting the heavy shit, and though they have since fallen out of vogue, plenty of lifters have had success with these (including myself and Tara Chaos).

Monday: Heavy Bench

Beginning of Cycle– 135 x 2 x 10; 175 x 2 x 8; 200 x 2 x 6; 155 x 2 x 6; 135 x 2 x 10

Midcycle– 135 x 2 x 10; 175 x 2 x 8; 220 x 2 x 4; 245 x 2 x 1; 200 x 1 x 6; 175 x 1 x 8; 155 x 1 x 10; 135 x 1 x 10

Pre-Competition– 135 x 2 x 10; 175 x 2 x 8; 220 x 1 x 3; 245 x 1 x 1; 255 x 1 x 1; 260-265 x 1 x 1; 220 x 1 x 5; 200 x 1 x 8; 175 x 1 x 10; 155 x 1 x 10; 135 x 1 x 10

Wednesday: Heavy Squat

Beginning of Cycle– 265 x 2 x 8; 310 x 2 x 6; 350 x 2 x 4; 395 x 2 x 3; 330 x 2 x 5; 290 x 2 x 7

Midcycle– 310 x 2 x 6; 350 x 2 x 4; 395 x 2 x 3; 440 x 2 x 1; 460 x 2 x 1; 374 x 1 x 4; 330 x 1 x 4; 285 x 1 x 8

Pre-Competition– 265 x 2 x 8310 x 1 x 6350 x 1 x 4395 x 1 x 3440 x 1 x 1465 x 1 x 1485 x 1 x 1505-540 x 1 x 1285 x 1 x 8

Friday: Heavy Deadlift

Beginning of Cycle– 330 x 5 x 4
Midcycle– 330 x 2 x 4; 400 x 2 x 3; 440 x 2 x 2; 375 x 2 x 4; 305 x 1 x 4

Pre-Competition– 330 x 1 x 4; 375 x 1 x 3; 420 x 1 x 2; 460 x 1 x 1; 475-505 x 1 x 1; 415 x 1 x 3; 375 x 1 x 4; 330 x 1 x 4

Of note: Inaba definitely incorporated sumo deficit deadlifts. Not only are there photos of him doing so, but the speed of his pull from the floor to knee height would seem to indicate he worked pretty hard on them.

Inaba’s Ridiculous Bird Diet

As you would expect from a grown man the size and weight of Australopithecine, Inaba barely fucking ate anything at all, and he certainly didn’t eat like an Westerner. In fact, he hated American food, presumably out of some belief that it would sap the power bestowed upon him by Shinto spirits or because it would upset the sleep of Unit 731’s corpses. Maybe he thought eating American food would rouse Godzilla from his slumber. Whatever his beliefs, Hide just stuck to traditional Japanese food.

Inaba’s diet consisted almost exclusively of soy and raw fish. For breakfast, he would eat soybean paste soup, Japanese style cabbage pickle, and rice. At lunch, he’d chow down with his coworkers in the cafeteria, really sticking to the Japanese ethic of conformism the Japanese hold so dear. In the evening, he would go full basic bitch and eat sashimi and sushi, though I highly doubt he chugged a Starbucks coffee while he did so. What he did not do was take any sort of protein or eat pork, chicken, or beef, though his reasoning for this is remains a complete mystery.

So, there you have it- the Pikachu of powerlifting. Though he likely looked about as dangerous as a small yellow stuffed animal and refused to eat any of the food one might think necessary to build superlative strength, Hideaki Inaba was one of the most powerful pound-for-pound powerlifters that the world will ever see. Perhaps the most decorated powerlifter to ever live, Inaba set 43 world records and still holds the world record in the wrapped squat 40 years after setting the record (in addition to having the highest wrapped + raw non-midget Wilks in his weight class).

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