USAWA Teeth Lifting
by Sanjiv Gupta
The teeth lift is a USAWA Special Equipment Lift which originated from old-time performing strongmen. Per a USAWA website article, Warren Lincoln Travis performed a 350 pound teeth lift with his hands behind his neck.
The current record list shows 15 USAWA athletes with records on the books. Mary McConnaughey leads the women with a 130-pound lift in 2005, followed by RJ with a 54-pound lift in 2017. The somewhat more crowded men’s field has Steve Schmidt in the lead with a 390-pound lift in 2005, followed by Eric Todd with a 300-pound lift in 2023. The other 11 athletes in the books have records between 13 and 203 pounds dating back to 1999. Art Montini has the most records in the book with 8 records (all 100 pounds or more) set in the 70-90 year old age classes.
The last time it was contested in a meet was the 2022 Dino Gym Challenge, where among the 4 athletes participating only one had a successful teeth lift, Dean Ross at 39 pounds.
The teeth lift is essentially a neck exercise, but you still have to be hold onto the weight with your teeth. Similar to a deadlift, your grip may fail before your posterior chain can no longer lift the weight.
The teeth bit is a very personal device. Not because of the design or the shape of athlete’s choppers, but more because it is difficult to sanitize and kind of familiar to share un-sanitized. Most of the designs I have seen are made from leather. Leather is pliable enough to bite your teeth into, but also sturdy enough to hold 300 pounds.
I fabricated one based on the classic dog-bone template, folding the leather back on itself, gluing the two halves together to secure a D-ring and adding some additional leather and rivets for more security. I did not use any specific medical grade of food safe glue. I just used whatever Tandy Leather had on hand that I could borrow. This seemed to be the traditional design. If I made another one, I would not include the riveted section. On one teeth lift, the bit slipped in my mouth and put a lot of pressure on my front tooth. It would have been better to have the bit just freely escape my mouth.
I have heard horror stories about people having so much pressure on their teeth that they felt the roots of their teeth shifting or worse. Alternatively, the USAWA website claims that Art Montini’s 107-pound lift in 2013 at 85 years of age was successful even though he has false teeth. Personally, I am not the picture of dental health. I have had wisdom teeth removed, teeth removed for braces and three teeth removed and replaced with two implants due to gum disease. That said my oral surgeon could not endorse teeth lifting but did claim my implants were stronger than my natural teeth.
Whether or not you want to set records in the teeth lift, this might be worth playing with just to appreciate the grit it would take to lift over 100 pounds. Here is a youtube video where I used a washcloth as a teeth bit and loaded it to 25 pounds. I feel like the washcloth I was using could hold over 100 pounds, but I have no intention of finding out.
