Are you strong? And how do you determine that? Do you look at the average visitor in your gym or at the strongest guest? And what exercises do you watch?

EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE

Let’s start by saying that strength is a relative matter. How much you bench press or squat, in fact, means nothing without relating it to your gender, body weight and training level. Only in the heaviest weight category and with very experienced strength athletes do weights acquire something of an absolute character.

In this article, we assume that you are male. Sorry, any ladies. But will always refer to Strengthlevel.com for detailed strength standards, including those for women.

WHAT IS ‘STRENGTH’?

Next, we must say that by ‘strength’ we mean pure strength. So the weight with which you cannot complete more than one repetition. Your one-rep max, or 1RM, that is.

Don’t know your 1RM? You can also calculate your 1RM based on two or more reps with a lower, or submaximal weight. For example, five reps with 80 kg translates to a 1RM of 90 kg. You can find plenty of calculators online that will help you calculate your 1RM based on a certain number of reps with a certain weight, such as this one from ExRx.net.

STRENGTH STANDARDS

So you bench press 100 kg? If you are a fly or bantamweight, that is very impressive regardless of your training level. However, if you weigh 100+ kg, we first need to know how long you train in order to make a statement about the magnitude of that achievement. Are you walking into a gym for the first time and pressing 100 kg cold? Okay, then you’re strong. Do you train for one to two years? Then your 1RM of 100 kg is a lot less impressive.

To put your performance in perspective, strength standards have been developed for the bench press, deadlift, squat and millitary/overhead press, among others.

Below we give you the general standards. For details, we always refer you to the website Strengthlevel.com, where you will find the standards per body weight and, if desired, adjusted for age. As you get older, you lose strength and you will be able to lift less and less heavy, regardless of your training experience.

BENCH PRESS

What do those standards say about the bench press? That if you train for about one year, you should be able to bench press your body weight minus 10 kg. Are you training for a year or two? Then you must be able to press your body weight and perhaps a kilo or five more. Have you been training continuously for several years? Then you should be able to bench press about one and a half times your body weight, or 1×120 kg if you weigh 80 kg.

This applies to men with a more or less average body weight (80-100 kg). In principle, a lighter person is relatively stronger than a heavier person. In other words, someone weighing 60 kg will press 120 kg faster than someone weighing 120 kg will press twice their body weight.

If you press (much) more than 1.5 times your body weight, you are literally one out of a hundred and you are probably very serious about strength sports or a competitive powerlifter.

DEADLIFT

Some will, in part rightly, shrug at hearing someone’s bench press. Rightly so, because the bench press only says so much about your overall strength. A good determinant of one’s overall strength is the deadlift. Few things say more about your strength than lifting a “dead” weight off the floor.

Different strength standards apply to the deadlift than to the bench press. Basically it’s the strongest of your three powerlifts, meaning 95% of people, if not more, will deadlift more than squat (or bench press).

Were you still strong in the bench press if you pressed one and a half times your weight, in deadlifts one and a half times your body weight is the standard for someone who trains for a year. If you’ve been training for several years, you’re expected to pull double your body weight off the ground, and you’re strong in every way, if you deadlift two and a half times your body weight.

Again, lighter people are relatively stronger than heavier ones. Light weights in powerlifting can pull up to three times their body weight off the ground and sometimes even more. In other words, with the deadlift, the top of a light lifter and that of a heavy lifter are less far apart than with the bench press.

SQUAT

The squat is also a good indicator of your overall strength. The exercise is, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent than the deadlift, a full body exercise. In other words, you train all your muscle groups or your entire body with it. Well, you don’t have to grab the weight like with the deadlift, but just holding the (heavy) barbell in place already demands a lot from your upper back and arms, to bear the load on your lower back during the performance not to speak.

Different strength standards apply to your squat than your deadlift. Although the squat and deadlift differ less from each other than the deadlift and bench press. Someone who squats as much as deadlifts has probably trained very focused on this exercise or has hopelessly neglected the other.

Have you been training for about a year? Then you must still be able to squat your body weight + 20 kg. If you’ve been training for two years or more, you can make that one and a half times your body weight (versus twice your body weight for the deadlift, for example). If you squat twice your body weight, you can call yourself ‘strong’ and from two and a half times your body weight you belong to the elite category, not to say that you belong to the world top or even national top.

MILITARY PRESS

According to many, not the bench press, but the millitary or strict (overhead) press, is the standard for strength in the upper body. For a long time they also found that in the American army, hence the name ‘millitary press’.

Simply put, your millitary press is about two-thirds of your bench press. So if you can bench press 90 kg, you will be able to lift about 60 kg over your head.

Where with the bench press an advanced strength athlete – someone who has been training for a year or two – presses his body weight, you will have to press a ‘you’ above your head. That puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? An untrained individual will not be able to lift even half of his body weight overhead.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRENGTH IN BODYBUILDING

If you’re a bodybuilder, so building muscle is your main training goal, you’ll probably do most exercises in the range of 6 to 12 reps. In other words, it’s not your 1RM that matters, but your 6-12RM. To convert the strength performance within your rep range to your 1RM and vice versa, you can use this calculator.

As a bodybuilder, you should know that the relationship between strength and muscle growth is not one-to-one, especially in the early stages of your training career. We explain exactly how that works in this article. The strength standards mentioned do, however, give a good indication of how that training career ideally evolves. After three to four years, you’re pretty much running out of your genetic potential in terms of strength and muscle growth. In other words, you can still get a little stronger and more muscular, but only minimally. At the start of your career, you notice lightning-fast increases in both strength and muscle mass. All this with the caveat that your bodybuilding program (training, nutrition and rest) is optimal. In practice, the latter is rarely the case. As a result, many strength athletes will take much longer to approach their genetic potential, if at all.

FINALLY

Standards are a great way to compare yourself to peers. People in your weight category and with about the same training experience. On the other hand, standards, as averages, say very little. Ultimately, there is only one standard that really counts: your own standard, what you lift today and tomorrow in the gym.

After all, strength sports isn’t about getting strong, it’s about getting stronger. And in that you are your only reference.