From Sports Illustrated:
There were no weights at Johnson County High in Wrightsville until the beginning of Herschel's senior year. Coach Phillips recalls, "We finally scraped together enough money to get a few weights, and naturally I was curious to see how much Herschel could lift. I'd hoped to use 250 pounds as a sort of goal for all the bigger players on the team, but I remember watching in amazement that first day as Herschel took that 250-pound barbell and pumped it up and down, up and down, like it was made of Styrofoam. After he was finished he looked over at me, genuinely puzzled, and said, 'Coach, 250 ain't heavy.' "
Phillips estimates that Walker spent no more than six or eight hours in the weight room that fall. That's all, folks. Since going to Athens and bursting upon the consciousness of Bulldog football fans, Walker hasn't trained with weights at all. But he has been strength-tested with the rest of the football team, and his natural strength, augmented by those hundreds of thousands of push-ups, have allowed him to bench-press 375 pounds once and 225 pounds—his approximate body weight on his last test day—for 24 repetitions. Only a seasoned lifter can appreciate how astonishing those figures are, and how much training it would normally take for a 225-pound man to be able to match Herschel's ability to chin himself with either hand. Or, for that matter, how unlikely it is for anyone to have a percentage of bodyfat estimated at under 5%, especially in a body fueled almost exclusively by hamburgers.