JULY 2019 /MUSCLE & FITNESS 25IN MOTION
IN MOTION
WHEELS
IN MOTION
> LARRY “WHEELS” WILLIAMS made his name as a powerlifting
prodigy, performingmind-blowing feats of strength on
Instagram. Now he’s hoping to become something far bigger.
BY MICHAEL WEINREB /// PHOTOGRAPHS BY PER BERNALT
HE STORY OF HOW LARRY WILLIAMS BECAME “LARRY
Wheels”—24-year-old powerlifting prodigy, social media
sensation, fast-rising bodybuilder, and aspiring strongman—
begins on a Caribbean island, with a skinny teenager hoisting
a pair of breeze blocks attached to a broomstick. Williams, the
only son of a single mother, had bounced from one temporary
home to another before he moved to the island of St. Martin from New York
City at the age of 12 to reunite with the mum who had temporarily lost
custody of him. Two factors, Williams says now, led him to craft that first
handmade barbell: The first was boredom, and the second was bullying.Williams was a tall and impossibly
skinny kid, with “my Adam’s apple
popping through my neck,” he admits.
He also had no place to attend
school. The only options were a
French-language institution, where
he would have been utterly lost, or a
private school that his mother
couldn’t afford. He spent his days
bored out of his mind and struggled
to find friends among the native
teenagers, who treated him roughly.
To combat both problems, Williams
turned to exercise. The gyms in St.
Martin didn’t allow anyone under 16,
Williams says, so he’d do sit-ups,push-ups, and pull-ups and
lift those homemade weights until
he’d exhausted himself. Then he’d
ride his bike around until he was
exhausted again.
After a while, he couldn’t go a day
without working out. When he
returned to New York with his mother,
he joined a gym immediately,
swapping those homemade barbells
for heavier and heavier iron weights.
And here, he found his calling. “I
realised at age 17 I was already the
strongest guy in the gym,” Williams
says. “I didn’t want to let this talent go
to waste. I started asking myself,‘What am I here on earth for?’
I wasn’t good at academics, I hated
school, I hated studying, I hated
doing homework. My heart always
lay in getting strong at the gym. That
was all I was passionate about.”
Seven years later, Williams is still the
strongest guy in nearly every gym he
walks into. He has more than a
half-million Instagram followers, and if
it feels as if he’s setting new personal
records—and some world records—
every other week, that’s probably
because he has been for the past
few years. His feats of strength on
Instagram—like a 265kg one-arm
deadlift, a 102kg one-arm bench
press, and a 200kg overhead strict
press—have become the stuff
of legend and a way for Williams to
continually challenge himself while
also growing his online audience.
Though he knows how to put on a
show for social media, he’s also done
it in competition: In November 2018,
Williams eclipsed the combined
world record for the 125kg weight