Philip Pape 0:00

Do you think you're strong, are you not sure? And let's put that strength into perspective. And today we're going to dive into relative strength standards. We're going to look at some of the numbers and what exactly they mean for you. On today's quick wits, welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, phillip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome back to another quick wits. And today's episode is dedicated to my man, my brother, carl Berryman, who sent me a message and he was asking about the relative strength standards.

Philip Pape 0:58

Some of you may have heard of these, some may have no idea what I'm talking about, but it tries to answer a question that kind of gnaws at many of us in the gym is how strong am I really? Not just in absolute terms, which is what a lot of people think, and that's where we get into trouble comparing our numbers between each other but relative terms, particularly to your body weight. It could also be to your age and gender, but body weight is the big one, because that's how the different scores, like the Wilkscore, are based. That's when you look at weight classes. It's based on body weight, and so we're going to talk about relative strength. Now, this isn't just production of force in isolation, this isn't just the number right. It's how much you lift and proportion your body weight. And there are things that could change this in the short term. For example, when you're in fat loss and you're losing weight, if you're able to maintain your numbers, but you're getting lighter, in a way, you're getting stronger even if your numbers aren't going up. Or let's say, you're starting to learn how to chin up and you are gaining weight while you're learning the chin up because you're trying to get stronger and you get three reps. And then the next time you only get three reps but you're five pounds heavier. Well, that could still mean that you're stronger relative to your body weight. So it's pretty complex in that sense. Now, does it matter? It only matters in the terms of like, I guess, bragging rights. But also if you're competing or you simply want to compare apples to apples, when you're a 130 pound female comparing against, you know a 225 pound male, let's say.

Philip Pape 2:35

Now, as to the actual numbers, there are a lot of different standards, so I would just recommend googling it and browsing around. There are some good articles online that will try to aggregate them, and I'm just going to refer to one here. It's at simplyfastercom, where he talks about how he combined his personal experience along with the evidence, along with a bunch of scores that are online, and I'm going to give you a minimum and kind of a goal strength and I'm not going to go to the extreme like super strong level here. This is for most people. What would be a minimum to say that, yeah, I'm strong, and then a number to say like I'm pretty strong or very strong, right, and I'm just going to stick with the big lifts. So back squat this is for men. Back squat would be one and a half your body weight to two times your body weight. So I'm 180, that would mean 270 to 360, right, bench press one and a quarter to one point, around 1.4 times your body weight. A deadlift would be one and a half to two and see, like for me personally, I'm definitely much stronger with my deadlift than my squat, so it can vary lift to lift. And then I'm just gonna stick to the big three For women back squat a little over one like 1.2 to 1.5 times your body weight, a bench press about half your body weight to three quarters of your body weight, and then a deadlift would be one and a quarter to one and a half times your body weight.

Philip Pape 4:09

So I don't want to bore you with all these numbers, but anyway, these are benchmarks that if you do the math on your own, you might say, hey, my relative strength is in the ball park, where I expected, or that's a weak spot for me. Let me work on that and you work on that with a balanced approach. Focus on progressive overload, proximity to failure, good technique, all of those things, but also your body composition, because losing a bunch of weight is gonna affect it. Gaining a bunch of weight is gonna affect it. And in fact, some people have heard the idea that mass moves mass. When you get bigger and bigger and bigger, you get stronger, but it's in absolute terms, beyond a point, meaning if you gain too much weight too quickly, your lifts will go up. But it is not relative strength that's going up, it's only absolute strength.

Philip Pape 4:55

So hope I didn't confuse you. I hope that was a good overview of what we mean by relative strength, as well as some numbers to shoot for. Go back and listen to that where I talked about the numbers and, before you load your next barbell, ask yourself am I just getting stronger or am I getting heavier, or am I getting lighter without the weight going up? But I'm still getting stronger, and that can transform your mindset with your training right. And also let you focus on the right sort of progression, given your phase, your periodization and your body composition. All right, that's it for today's Quick Quits. Talk to you next time. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.