he Superhuman strand continues its fascinating insight into some of the world’s most extraordinary people.
Superhuman: Super Strong meets some of the strongest people on the planet and reveals the extreme lengths they will go to in order to possess their amazing raw power.
The documentary features the three-year-old girl whose parents have already got her lifting weights, the man who is so muscular his thigh is almost as big as his waist and the man who can smash his hand through nine layers of solid concrete.
The film examines the relationship between the power of the mind and the power of the body and reveals how far human power is down to nature or nurture.
Welsh bodybuilder Flex Lewis tells the programme how he lives on a diet of fish five times a day and devotes his whole life to developing the most incredible bulging muscles. He has 80 per cent more muscle than the average British man, a quarter of the body fat and the circumference of his thigh is almost the same as his waist.
He says: “If you want to stand out you’ve got to make yourself look like a peacock. I don’t want to be a blackbird; I want to show my feathers off.”
The film also meets circus strongman Uri Akulova from the Ukraine who has trained his teenage daughter, Varya, to become a power-lifting record breaker and has already got her three-year-old sister, Barbi, lifting weights.
He says: “I started to train my children even before they were born - I was working with their mother. Their mother was training until the last day of pregnancy”.
His wife, Larisa, adds: “At the beginning it was a bit hard, but that passed, up until I was nine months pregnant I moved, ran, skipped and boxed with my husband.”
British black belt karate king Ed Byrne describes to the programme how he mentally transforms himself into an alter ego he calls ‘Thug’ before smashing his hand through nine layers of solid concrete.
Ed says: “Concrete deserves respect, especially when you want to break it with the human hand.”
The programme also features the world’s strongest couple, Brit Gemma Taylor and her Icelandic powerhouse husband Benedikt Magnusson, as they eagerly await the birth of their son and wonder if he will turn out to be an extraordinarily strong baby.
Gemma says: “Aged nine or ten, working with the horses, I was able to lift a bale of hay and throw it in the stable. That’s when knew I was different - everyone else had to use wheelbarrows.”
And the film meets Travis ‘The Beast’ Bagent, a champion arm wrestler from West Virginia, USA, who psyches out his opponents and attempts to beat them with mind games before he’s even touched their hands.
Travis says: “I’m known as the coolest guy in the world, by far the best arm wrestler that ever lived. People say I’m too cocky, I’m too confident. Well they’re right – I do think I’m superior.”
The film follows Travis as he travels to an arm wrestling championship in Manchester where he takes on Canadian champion Devon Larratt, who appears to have arms of steel.
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