Strength Standards

Instructions

Enter sex, body weight and optionally age and what categories of exercises to include. While age is optional, it can have a fairly large effect on strength standards if you're not between 24 and 39 years old.

Strength Ranks

The primary purpose of the ranks is to help with setting realistic goals and give you some benchmarks to work towards. The time frames for each rank are fairly broad as there are many factors that affect the development of strength. However, they assume that you're generally healthy, with no underlying conditions or injuries and have the mobility to perform all the exercises correctly. They also assume that your diet is reasonably good and that your training is both consistent and effective.

What do all these numbers mean?

For most of the exercises, the table shows the minimum one rep max of added weight needed to reach each strength rank. Some exercises, typically calisthenics, will have have negative numbers which mean assistance rather than added weight. The 1RMs are based on world records, ratios, and the average time needed to attain each rank. They are also adjusted based your personal details, like sex and body weight.

Why should I use these strength standards?

They are designed to be more accurate, objective, balanced, and representative of average strength development than other strength standards.

Accuracy: To accurately account for body weight, these standards factor in the allometric relationship between body weight and strength. Essentially, as body weight increases, strength does too, but just not as quickly. So someone who weighs 10% more is not expected to be 10% stronger. That means that the commonly used strength to body weight ratios are largely inaccurate for comparing relative strength development. A 200lb person with a 1xBW bench is further along in their strength development than a 120lb person with a 1xBW bench even though their ratios are the same.

To further improve accuracy, the standards account for actual weight. This is the total amount of weight lifted, including bodyweight and added weight. For example, when you perform a squat, you're lifting a percentage of your body weight plus any added weight. That means if a 200lb person does a squat with 135 lbs, they're actually lifting about 280 lbs. Factoring this in improves the accuracy of one rep max calculations for exercises that move a significant portion of body weight, especially at the lower ranks. Despite being calculated using actual weight, all the numbers shown in the table are added weight.

Objectivity: The standards for each exercise are determined one of two ways. The first way is by setting the upper limit using the world record. Being able to set the rankings based on different percentages of the world record would be ideal. However, due to the nature of some lifts, this doesn't end up being realistic or supporting balanced strength development. For example, 50% of the world record squat is significantly harder than 50% of the world record pull up. In order to keep things balanced, a lower limit is set for each exercise based on where the average untrained trainee starts.

Balance: The second way the standards for an exercise can be set is by using the exercise's ratio to another related exercise. This is necessary because many exercises don't have official or well documented world records. While this method is more subjective, the use of ratios helps the standards represent a balanced development of strength while still being reasonably objective.

Representative: Each rank is intended to represent a different time period in a trainee's development of strength. The increase in weight between each rank is equal. However, each rank coincides with an increasingly longer time to reach than the last. This lines up with the decreasing rate of strength development as trainees get more advanced.

What don't these standards account for?

The standards specifically don't account for two factors: height and lean body mass. Incorporating these would significantly change the meaning of the standards. Rather than showing how strong someone is based on their body weight, they would show how good someone is at using whatever amount of muscle they have. While this is certainly interesting, separating out the lean body mass portion of strength development is not the aim of these standards.

Why are the lever and planche numbers so high?

The lever and planche weights are moments, that is, the rotational force at the shoulder needed to hold that position. They are not weights like most of the other exercises.

How is all of this helpful?

These standards allow you to compare yourself to almost any other strength trainee. The standards are adjusted by sex, body weight, age, and body fat % so that a 120lb woman could meaningfully compare herself to a 200lb man. As mentioned earlier, the rank system is meant to help with setting realistic goals and giving trainees something to aim for.

For even more personalized and comparable results, find your Strength Score. Standards are also shown for each individual exercise which can be found through the Exercise Search page.