If you’ve been training for some time now, it’s natural to want to get a sense of your strength levels. We all want to quantify our strength progress, and this can lead to wanting to know how much you should be lifting in a given exercise. This is where strength standards come into the picture.
Strength standards are predictions of what weight you should be lifting, typically based on bodyweight and experience. For example, you may have read that high-level athletes should deadlift 2-2.5 times their bodyweight, squat 1.5-2 times their bodyweight, and so on.
I’m always reluctant to set strength benchmarks for my clients. Don’t get me wrong – they can provide something to aim for, and it can feel super-rewarding to hit these numbers, but they’re not always helpful. Here’s why.
1. Bodyweight is Not a Constant
Bodyweight is a flimsy tool to use when setting a strength standard. Bodyweight regularly fluctuates by a significant amount for a variety of reasons. When paired with the fact that strength levels also fluctuate, your performance in relation to bodyweight can be highly variable.
That’s probably one of the reasons why bodyweight is popular for setting strength benchmarks: it encourages a leaner, more muscular body composition to maximise strength-to-weight ratio. Unfortunately, there are two downsides to this mentality:
- If you started strength training as an alternative to training for aesthetics, or you want to avoid engaging in diet culture, then it could be demoralising to have your bodyweight brought back into focus.
- If you’re an athlete using bodyweight benchmarking as a metric for your level of preparedness, then altering body composition may be pretty low on your list of priorities. For example, it might not benefit your sport; if you’re a rugby prop or a strongman, you probably shouldn’t be trying to get lean just to improve your benchmarks. This sounds obvious, but it’s easy for priorities to slip when you focus on the wrong metrics.
2. Bodyweight is Not the Only Factor When Setting Strength Standards
Using bodyweight for benchmarking strength also ignores one of the fundamental laws of physics – that work performed in a lift is a product of the force you produce AND the distance you move the weight (a.k.a. displacement).
If you’re a taller lifter or have different limb proportions, you’ll be moving weight further, and therefore you’ll be doing more work than a shorter athlete lifting the same weight. Longer levers will also diminish your force production abilities.
I’m a tall lifter, so this may come across as me being salty, but think about it: if you have to move a weight 20% further than the average person in your weight group, then you are doing more work to lift the same weight. Therefore, it’s likely your lifts will be below the average. Generalisations based on the average population rarely benefit the outliers.
This doesn’t mean a tall person can’t get strong, but it does mean you’ll have to manage your expectations.
3. Strength Benchmarks Have Limited Impact on Training Plans
Even if there was a perfect method for setting strength standards, whether you’re hitting them or not will only usually have a limited impact on how your sessions are designed. This can vary a little based on your training focus.
- General population/Recreational lifters – chances are there are certain exercises you enjoy more than others, or certain muscle groups you want to develop more. These will be the areas that get the most focus in your programme, and sacrificing session enjoyment to go after arbitrary strength standards can harm motivation. Alternatively, your training programme may have super broad approach in order to match your more general needs. Smashing your bench press benchmark probably won’t improve your quality of life if it’s all you train for 6 months.
- Powerlifters and other Strength athletes – Probably the group for whom strength standards are most relevant, but even so, the amount of time you dedicate to a specific lift is limited by other factors such as exercise recovery, load management, or kit availability (i.e. strongman training).
- Athletes – if an exercise has been identified as beneficial for your sport, it’s unlikely that your coach will entertain the idea of being “strong enough”! Of course, they may well choose to focus on other attributes like speed or endurance, but these decisions are normally dictated by other factors such as competitive season.
So What Can You Use Instead of Strength Standards?
Just record your strength progress over time. You’re still measuring the same thing (strength), but you’re actually basing it on some useful context: your own previous performance. Need more inspiration? Check out this list of fitness goals.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Theodore Roosevelt
In this age of constant comparison, setting strength standards based on a pool of people that share only one or two characteristics with you is an easy way to get disheartened or distracted from your goals. If you’re a strength athlete these might have some limited merit, but almost everyone else should take them with a massive pinch of salt.