A Brisbane accountant’s name will go down in history after beating the world record for the most push-ups in one hour.
Lucas Helmke, 33, managed an insane 3,206 push-ups during his successful world record attempt in a Brisbane gym, which has now been officially recognized by Guinness World Records.
For those having trouble wrapping your head around that figure, that’s an average of 53 per minute.
The previous record of 3,182 was set by another Aussie, Adelaide mechanic Daniel Scali, in April 2022.
Helmke attempted this record to “provide inspiration” for his one-year-old son in a bid to “show him nothing is impossible”.
The Queensland man trained for three years to break the record, with the official attempt taking place at powerlifting gym Iron Underground, Brisbane.
He did the push-ups in 30-second sets, aiming for 26 push-ups in each set, though he actually exceeded his own target, averaging 26.7 push-ups in every 30-second set.
To qualify for the world record, Helmke had to maintain perfect form for each push-up, or they didn’t count towards the total. In all, 34 – around 1 per cent – of his push-ups were disallowed.
For each push-up, he had to keep his body straight, there could not be any bending at the knees or waist visible, and the body had to be lowered until his elbow was at least at 90-degrees then lifted until straight.
But this is only the start of the Brisbane dad’s quest for world records. He now plans to break at least one record every year from now on.
“This will be the first record I wish to set of a number of other push-up records,” Helmke said.
“Then on to other physical records.”
However he may have some stiff competition – media in Florida reported recently that a man had already surpassed Helmke’s record by another 58 push-ups. That effort, however, is yet to be officially recognized.
