The Sultan of Squat : Dr. Fred Hatfield Focuses on Weighty Matters to Set Power Lifting Records

If somebody invited you over to the private gym of a power lifting champion named Dr. Squat, a man who has lifted more weight under the national sanctioning organization than any human being ever, all sorts of images would pop into your mind.

Maybe you’d visualize being confronted by the Incredible Hulk, or perhaps the blond Russian hunk who went to war with Sly Stallone in “Rocky IV.” You would expect to be ushered into a sophisticated laboratory full of blinking control panels and a row of heavy machinery designed to twist and turn the body in ways never dreamed.

Well forget all the preconceived notions. Dr. Squat looks more like your neighborhood pediatrician. And his gym in Northridge looks more like the two-car garage that would be attached to your neighborhood pediatrician’s house.

Dr. Squat is Fred Hatfield, a 43-year-old editor and publisher of a health and fitness magazine. He’s 5 feet, 7 inches. And that’s standing, not squatting. He weighs 240 pounds and he smokes a lot. If they made a movie of his life, Danny DeVito would be perfect for the part.

But what Hatfield lacks in appearance, he certainly makes up for in confidence.

“Winning is neither everything, nor the only thing,” he says. “It’s a foregone conclusion. Vince Lombardi is a dinosaur. We’ve gone way beyond Vince Lombardi.”

Hatfield became a winner after giving up his first love in sports: weightlifting. That was in 1976 after he had failed for the second time to make the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team.

“I just said, to hell with weightlifting,” he recalls. “I quit on the spot.”

Instead, he became a power lifter. A rising sport in this country, power lifting involves three events: dead lift, squat and bench press. Weightlifters compete in the snatch and clean-and-jerk. Simply put, weightlifters, unlike power lifters, must lift their weights above the head. The closest power lifters come to that is in the bench press where, laying on their backs, they must push the weights away from their chest. In the squat, power lifters balance the weight on their shoulders and back while going down for a deep knee bend. Weightlifters need skill, balance and coordination. Power lifters rely on raw strength and power. They are generally stronger than their weightlifting counterparts.

All this only makes Hatfield’s feat in April all the more amazing. At a power lifting championship event in Honolulu, he successfully picked up 1,008.5 pounds in the squat. That was 7 1/2 pounds more than the previous record. It is nearly double the world record in weightlifting.

Hatfield’s feat is not officially a national record because there were no facilities set up in Honolulu for drug testing. That’s a requirement for recognition of a national mark. Testing is done at all national and world power lifting championship events.

Also, the referees on hand in Honolulu were not current members of the U.S. Powerlifting Federation. That nullified the record.

“We have given the referees a chance to become members of the federation,” says Alan Kirshner, records chairman of the U.S. Powerlifting Federation. “We are still trying in all ways possible to make this a national record. We are going out of our way to do that. This situation with the referees basically screws the power lifter. It’s unfair to Fred.”

Until the situation is resolved, the official record belongs to Lee Moran, a Northern Californian who has lifted 1,001 pounds in the squat.

Earlier this year, a lifter by the name of Matt Dimel lifted 1,010 pounds for the rival American Powerlifting organization, but that is not recognized by Kirshner’s group.

No matter, says Hatfield. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“I would like to go after 1,100 pounds and do it on the Johnny Carson show,” he says. “That’s my goal. There’s no Russian who can lift what I can lift. There’s nobody alive who can.”

Kirshner won’t argue the point.

“I wouldn’t put much credence in Dimel,” he says. “Years ago, weightlifter Paul Anderson was supposed to have lifted something like 1,200 pounds. But Fred’s mark is the most in a formalized organization. And he has the capability over going over 1,100. He has phenomenal technique, great leverage and excellent training techniques.”

The product of a broken home, Hatfield grew up in a Connecticut orphanage. It was at the age of 12 that he got the first glimmer of his future. He saw some kids lifting weights and decided to give it a try. Lifting bales of hay and sacks of grain on a farm where he worked had built up his body and he found he was pretty good at weightlifting. So he went home and made his own barbells out of tin cans and broken broom handles.

Eventually he joined a local YMCA where he started lifting the real thing. By the time he was 17, he was breaking state weightlifting records. He won the Teen-age Mr. Connecticut body building contest.

From there, his course in life took more detours than a drunk trying to find his way home in a blinding snowstorm. Hatfield joined the U.S. Marine Corps, attended colleges all over the country, received a doctorate (and thus his nickname) in sports psychology from Temple University in Philadelphia, was a professor of sports sociology at the University of Wisconsin, ran a fitness gym and sold sports equipment in New Orleans, wrote 23 books on various forms of conditioning and finally came to the San Fernando Valley nearly four years ago to oversee Sports Fitness magazine.

But it is for his prowess in power lifting that Hatfield is best known.

“Some people don’t even know my real name,” he says. “All they know is Dr. Squat.”

That’s understandable. After setting his first world record in 1977, Hatfield has gone on to break nearly 30 world power lifting records by his own account in five separate weight divisions (181 pounds, 198, 220, 242 and 275).

He is now pointing toward the world championships next month in The Hague in the Netherlands by intensifying the workouts in his garage, which has been transformed into a gymnasium like no other. How many gyms, for example, contain an infrared irradiation chamber, which increases the ability to sweat?

“The Russians for years have used long infrared rays to restore the body,” Hatfield says. “They know how to get the most out of the human body. They know so much about the science of restoration, about the restorative process of the body. We try to do some of that here in this garage.”

And not just for power lifting. Hatfield has worked with athletes in other fields to prove his methods have a broader application. His current project is Vince Curto, a veteran super middleweight boxer who has amassed an 83-7-3 record, including 32 knockouts. But Curto has never achieved his goal, a world title. Twice he has fought International Boxing Federation champion Chong-Pal Park of Korea for the title, and twice he has lost.

Enter Hatfield.

Curto is now working for what he hopes will be a shot at the World Boxing Council title in Hatfield’s garage. Hatfield has become Curto’s manager with the financial backing of Weider Health and Fitness, the corporation that owns, among others, the magazine Hatfield produces.

“He had no speed and no strength when I first saw him,” says Hatfield of Curto. “All he had was his ring savvy. He was good at slipping punches, but he did not have knockout power. Now, he can take a man’s head off.”

For four months, the 30-year-old Curto has worked four hours a day, six days a week, in Hatfield’s garage. The results: His 40-yard dash time has been cut from 6 seconds to 4.9. He has gone from 135 pounds to 250 in the bench press, from 100 to 450 in the squat. He has increased from 9 inches to 20 in the vertical jump. His body fat has dropped from 18% to 12%.

Hatfield has also worked on Curto’s heart rate. He originally would get it up to 180 after three minutes of hard work, the equivalent of a round of boxing. The lowest he could get it down after a minute’s rest--the time between rounds--was 153. It’s now dropping to 120.

“That is absolutely phenomenal,” Hatfield says. “I’ve never seen anyone recover like that. Not a marathon runner or anyone.

“Boxing is in the stone age when it comes to training methods. They are so steeped in tradition. They have been a bulwark against science. Vinnie is about to change all that.”

Dr. Squat is not, however, content to just operate on Curto. His own career, he feels, is far from over.

“I have the body of a 20-year-old,” Hatfield says. “I feel the body is capable of improving into the 50s. I’m better know than I ever was and I’m getting better every year. If I wasn’t, I’d quit and go find another mountain to climb.”