the men are larger than average, especially his great uncle Chudd, who was 6 ft 7 in, weighed approximately , never had a pair of manufactured shoes, and was known as the strongest man in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Henry played football in high school until his senior year, when he strained ligaments in his wrist during the first game of the year and scored below 700 on the SAT. Powerlifting career By the time Mark Henry was in the fourth grade, he was and weighed . His mother bought a set of weights for him when he was ten years old. During Henry's freshman year at Silsbee High School, he was already able to squat , which was well over school record. As an 18-year-old high school senior, Henry was called "the world's strongest teenager" by the Los Angeles Times, and made it into the headlines in early 1990 for winning the National High School Powerlifting Championships and setting teenage lifting world records in the squat and total . By the time Henry finished high school, he was a three-time Texas state champion with state and national records in all four powerlifting categories—the squat at , bench press at and deadlift at as well as the total at . At the Texas High School Powerlifting Championships in April 1990, Terry Todd, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Texas at Austin and former weightlifter, spotted Henry and persuaded him to go to Austin after he graduated to train in the Olympic style of weightlifting. In July 1990 at the USPF Senior National Powerlifting Championships, 19-year-old Henry came second only to the legendary six-time World Powerlifting Champion Kirk Karwoski. While powerlifting relies primarily on brute strength and power, which Henry obviously possessed, Olympic weightlifting is considered more sophisticated, involving more agility, timing, flexibility and technique. There have been few lifters in history who have been able to be successful in both lifting disciplines. Mastering the technique of weightlifting usually takes many years of practice, but Henry broke four national junior records in weightlifting after only eight months of training. In April 1991, he won the United States National Junior Championships; 20 days later he placed fourth at the U.S. Senior National Championships, and finished sixth at the Junior World Weightlifting Championships in Germany two months later. Only few weeks afterwards, he became 1991's International Junior Champion in