Freak Power!

Is Akim William's the World's Strongest Bodybuilder?

Big Is Good, Big and Strong Is Better!

If you want to get technical about it, being particularly strong means nothing in competitive bodybuilding. The weights a bodybuilder uses are merely tools, a means to an end to build his physique. The sport is judged by the appearance of the physique in terms of factors such as mass, shape, proportion, symmetry and condition. It doesn’t matter who can squat, bench press or deadlift more weight, or who is stronger in general. Those factors are everything in powerlifting and Olympic lifting, as well as Strongman competition— sports that focus on numbers in pounds, and where the way a man is built is irrelevant. Yet still, bodybuilding fans have always reserved an extra level of respect for those champions who had shocking strength to go along with their extreme muscle mass: men like Franco Columbu, Casey Viator, Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, Johnnie Jackson and Branch Warren, to name a few. Conversely, some bodybuilding stars have been held in disdain for not being as strong as they looked, or for not training as heavy as those fans felt they should. Phil Heath has seven Mr. Olympia titles and counting, but some fans complain about his workouts because he avoids free-weight power movements like the bench press, squat and deadlift. I have always theorized that this is partly because more fans happen to be able to develop greater strength than they can muscle mass, as the genetics for being able to grow truly enormous muscles are rare indeed. Whatever the reason, fans embrace bodybuilders who can display elite strength to go along with their elite development. Akim Williams definitely fits into this category. At 300 pounds in the off-season at 5 foot 10 and 260 pounds on stage, the new pro packs some of the thickest, most dense muscle in the IFBB today, with 23½-inch arms and monster legs that are especially ridiculous. Many have compared his physique to ‘80s mass monster Victor Richards.

A Foreshadow of Great Power to Come

You can’t always spot exceptional bodybuilding potential in untrained men. Sometimes you would never guess it was there, dormant, as the person displays nothing special physique-wise until they start training. Strength is different, as it seems to be based more on neurological efficiency and tendon strength, both of which are present before a person starts to train. Many people who go on to display incredible strength are typically naturally strong to begin with. So it was with Akim Williams. While earning his degree in computer science at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University, a friend asked him to accompany him to the school gym, mainly to spot him. He’d never touched a weight yet, and was a mere 147 pounds at the time. That very first day, he trained chest with his friend, and shocked both of them when he actually was able to lift more on the bench press. “I got 225 for six,” Akim recalls. His legs turned out to be even stronger. “I was afraid to even try squats, because I had heard they were really bad for your knees,” he says. “Honestly, the first few months in that weight room, all I did was bench press because it was all I cared about.”

Eventually Akim decided he might as well try training his legs, and got under a squat rack. “I started out light. But the lighter weights felt like nothing for me, and my knees didn’t hurt, so within a month I was doing 315 for 10 reps.” This was when Williams was 21 years old, and at the time he had zero interest in bodybuilding, or even trying to get bigger, for that matter. “My thing was that I wanted to have a big bench press,” he tells us. “My goal was to be able to bench four plates, or 405.” He benched three times a week, but those four plates still took time to reach. One consolation was that within a year, he was doing 315 for reps at 170 pounds, the same as a guy there nicknamed “Hercules” who was the strongest man in the gym, and who weighed 270. “It took me longer than I expected to get that 405, about a year and a half of lifting.” He relates this with disappointment, oblivious to the fact that most men never bench 405 no matter how many years they train!

Low Reps Can’t Build Size? Uh, OK …

You’ve read it in bodybuilding magazines a thousand times: very low reps only develop strength. They don’t cause muscle growth. For that, you need slightly higher reps, and more time under tension. That may be true for most men, but there are exceptions. Akim may never have discovered he was one of those rare cases had it not been for a man in the weight room named Ken but called “Coach T,” who had played professional hockey in his younger years and set a record for the bench press in the over-65 division in the state of Florida.

“Coach T told me lower reps are what builds thick, dense muscle mass, and it made sense to me,” Akim says. “Look at guys like Ronnie, Dorian and Kai— they all trained very heavy and they had a different look because of it.” How low do his reps go? For most of the basic free-weight exercises, he sticks to the rep range of three to six. Only on arms will he use higher reps for a better pump, but that might be beside the point as his arms grow so easily he often goes weeks without training them.

You would be astute to wonder if more standard rep ranges might actually give Akim even better results. In the off-season after turning pro at the 2013 North American and all the way up until his pro debut in May of 2014 at the New York Pro, Williams trained with his good friend Juan Morel and gave Diesel’s higher rep scheme a solid go. “For me, going a little lighter and doing more reps actually made me look worse,” he states. “I lost that dense, hard look my muscles had, and I got 11^th place.” Immediately, Akim decided to return to his usual tendon-straining poundage and lower reps. Just a couple of months later, he cracked the top five at the Chicago Pro, and he scored two top-three finishes in the 2015 season. “I went from 150 to over 300 pounds in about seven years by training very heavy,” he says. “It might not work for everyone, but it definitely works for me.”

No Supportive Gear for This Mutant

These days, you hardly ever see a guy doing 30-pound dumbbell curls without a weight belt on. You sure don’t see anyone squatting without a belt, and most guys piling on the plates over at the squat rack will also wrap their knees up tightly before getting under the bar. It almost boggles the mind to learn that Akim uses neither, in light of the insane weights he moves in the gym.

“For one thing, I feel they restrict your body’s movement,” he notes. “And when you rely on all that supportive gear, your own tendons and ligaments never get any stronger. I honestly feel you are in more danger of injury in the long run using those things.” The only accessory item Akim will utilize is wrist straps to reinforce his grip on his heaviest sets on back day. “I don’t have a problem with that because I’m not trying to have the strongest grip in the world, I’m trying to improve my back.”

Is Akim the World’s Strongest Bodybuilder?

Akim himself has never claimed to be the world’s strongest bodybuilder, and we at MD aren’t claiming he is, either. A good case for that title would be Stan “Rhino” Efferding, who is now the greatest raw powerlifter of all time after having broken the record set by powerlifter Jon Cole that had stood since 1972. But although Stan has already earned his place in powerlifting history, he never did set the world of pro bodybuilding on fire. In four outings as a pro, he only managed to crack the top 10 once.

Perhaps another argument could be made for Johnnie Jackson, who pulled an 832-pound deadlift in a raw powerlifting meet, has won five pro bodybuilding contests, and has landed in the top five on 30 other occasions. If you want to talk pound-for-pound strength, you might have to go with two-time Mr. Olympia Franco Columbu back in the 1970s. At 185 pounds, he could deadlift 750 pounds, squat 665, bench press 525 and clean and jerk 400 pounds. But as far as Akim is concerned, King Ronnie gets the nod. “Ronnie was not only incredibly strong with those 800-pound deadlifts and squats and so many other lifts, but he won eight Mr. Olympia titles and more pro shows than any other man in the history of our sport.”

Williams does give himself a little credit, though. “Ronnie did that 800-pound squat with a squat suit, a belt and knee wraps, but I did 765 with none of those,” he points out. “But I still bow down to Ronnie— he’s the man!”

It should be clear by now that this point could be debated and argued ad infinitum. Is Akim Williams the strongest bodybuilder competing today? Maybe. Probably. Regardless, you would be hard pressed to find another human being today who had the combination of freaky muscular development and inhuman strength as Akim Williams. Not only is he a unique specimen in a sport that’s already comprised of the genetic elite, but he has also defied standard and widely held beliefs about how to build extreme muscle mass. There is no doubt his best is yet to come as he keeps on pushing tons of cold iron and works hard to improve. Mutant power got him this far, and it will be his ticket to climbing higher up the pro ranks in the years to come.

Facebook: IFBB Pro Akim Williams

Instagram: IFBBProAkimWilliams

Training Split

Monday:          Chest, shoulders and triceps*

Tuesday:          Back and biceps

Wednesday:     Legs

Thursday:        Chest, shoulders and triceps

Friday:             Back and biceps

Saturday:         Legs

Sunday:           OFF

*Up until 2014, Akim did no direct work for his shoulders, feeling they responded well enough from assisting on chest and back days. Only once he began competing as a pro did he realize his delts needed to be rounder and more “capped” and started working them.

Leg Routine

Lying Leg Curls                         5 x 20

Leg Extensions (as warm-up)   4-5 x 20 each leg

                                                 Sets: 405 x 10-20, 495 x 10-12, 585 x 7-8

Leg Press                                 3-4 x 30-40

One-Leg Vertical Leg Press      5 x 10-12 per leg

One-Leg Leg Extensions          5 x 15-20 per leg

Chest Routine

Incline Barbell Press                      6 x 15, 12, 10, 10, 8, 6, 3

Flat Barbell Press                          4-5 x 10-12

Hammer Strength Decline Press   4 x 10-12

Seated Bench Press Machine        4 x 10-12

Pec Flye Machine                           4 x 15-20

Arm Routine

Biceps

Preacher Curl Machine                         6 x 8-20

“Opposite” Preacher Curl Machine       6 x 8-20*

“Front Double Biceps” Cable Curls      4-5 x 15-20

Triceps

Rope Pushdowns                                 4-5 x 8-20

V-Bar Pushdowns                                4-5 x 8-20

Seated Triceps Extension Machine      4-5 x 8-20

*After doing his sets the standard way on the preacher curl machine, Akim gets up and out of the machine, positioning himself as if he were giving someone else forced reps on it. There, he does several sets of partial reps.

Akim’s Best Gym Lifts

Barbell Bench Press                 495 x 5

Incline Barbell Press                495 x 5

Barbell Row                             495 x 6

Dumbbell Row                         200 x 6

Leg Press                                2,300 x 5

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