Mark

Mark has always been exceptionally big and strong. By the time he was in the fourth grade, he was 5'5" and weighed 225 pounds.^[32] So his mother bought a set of weights when Mark was 10.^[32] During Mark's freshman year at Silsbee Highschool, he was already able to squat 600 lb (270 kg) for repetitions, which was well over school record.^[32] As an 18-year-old high school senior, Mark was called "the world's strongest teen-ager" by the Los Angeles Times, as he made it into the sidelines in eary 1990 for winning the National High School Powerlifting Championships and setting teen-age lifting world records in the squat 832 lb (377 kg) and total 2,033 lb (922 kg).^[27] By the time Mark finished high school he was a three-time Texas state champion with state and national records in all fourpowerlifting categories - the squat at 832 lb (377 kg), bench press at 525 lb (238 kg) and deadlift at 815 lb (370 kg) as well as the total at 2,033 lb (922 kg).^[27][32]

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.^[32] In July 1990 at the USPF Senior National Powerlifting Championships, the 19 years young Mark came second only to the legendary 6 time World Powerlifting Champion Kirk Karwoski.^[33] While powerlifting relies primarily on brute strength and power, which Mark obviously possessed, Olympic weightlifting is considered more sophisticated, involving more agility, timing, flexibility and technique.^[34] There have been few lifters in history, who have been able to be succssful in both lifting disciplines. Mastering the technique of weightlifting usually takes many years of practicing. But Henry broke four national junior records in weightlifting after only eight months of training.^[35] He attempted to compete in powerlifting and weightlifting at the same time, and quite successful at that: 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.^[35] Only few weeks afterwards, he became 1991's International Junior Champion in Powerlifiting as well.^[3][10] In Henry's first year of competing in weightlifting, he broke all three junior (20 and under) American records 12 times, and became the United States' top superheavyweight, surpassing Mario Martinez.^[15]

At the age of 19, Henry had already managed to qualify for the weightlifting competition at the 1992 Summer Olympics, where he finished tenth in the super heavyweight class.^[7][15] Ten months before the 1992 Olympics, Henry had begun training with Dragomir Cioroslan, a bronze medalist at the 1984 Summer Olympics, who said that he had "never seen anyone with Mark's raw talent".^[15] After the Olympics Mark became more determined than ever to focuse on weightlifting and began competing in earnest all over the world. In late 1992 he took the win at the USA Weightlifting American Open^[14] and further proved his dominance on the American soil by winning not only the U.S. National Weightlifting Championships, but also the U.S. Olympic Festival Championships in 1993 and 1994.^[3][11] At the 1995 Pan American Games Henry won a gold, silver and bronze medal.^[