Barrel-chested Lucas Helmke, 33, from Brisbane, Australia, has tested his strength and stamina to break the world record for the most push-ups in one hour.
Lucas performed 3,206 press-ups within one hour—that’s an average of over 53 per minute.
Another Aussie, Daniel Scali, set the previous record in April 2022 with 3,182.
Lucas attempted this record to “provide inspiration” for his one-year-old son and “show him nothing is impossible.”
Lucas trained for two to three years to break this record.
The official attempt took place in his old powerlifting gym, Iron Underground, in Brisbane.
Lucas broke the pushups down into 30-second sets, aiming to complete 26 push-ups in each one. Lucas slightly exceeded this target, achieving an average rate of 26.7 push-ups every 30 seconds.
Lucas was required to maintain perfect form for each press-up; otherwise, they wouldn’t count towards the record total.
The body must remain straight throughout, meaning no bending at the knees or waist. The body must be lowered until at least a 90-degree angle is attained at the elbow, then raised until the arms are straight.
Only 34 (1%) of Lucas’ push-ups were discounted due to improper form, which is an impressively low number considering he was going as fast as possible to break the record.
After achieving this Guinness World Records title, Lucas is not resting on his laurels; he plans to break at least one record every year from now on.
“This will be the first record I wish to set off several other push-up records,” Lucas said.
“Then onto other physical records.”
The record for the most press-ups in one hour has been broken repeatedly over the past decade.
Before Lucas and Daniel, the record was held by Jarrad Young from—you guessed it—Australia, who broke it three times from 2018 (with 2,806 push-ups) to 2021 (3,054 push-ups).
And before Jarrad, in 2017, the record belonged to Carlton Williams (UK; 2,682 push-ups).
Carlton first broke the record in 2014 (1,874 push-ups) and then again in 2015 (2,220 push-ups).
Amazingly, Lucas managed to perform almost 1,000 more push-ups than Carlton’s 2015 record!
As the number of press-ups to beat gets higher and higher, the record is being broken by smaller and smaller margins.
Are we approaching the limits of human capabilities? Will someone have extended the record by another 1,000 in eight more years?
