Or: Why I’m always talking about how many “Siobhans” I’m lifting
Relative strength can have a few different meanings, but in this case I am talking about strength relative to bodyweight. And you won’t just see strength normalised for bodyweight either; you’ll also see power outputs (like wattage in cycling) normalised too, which is why I usually present that data to athletes WITH their watts/kg result – that’s what I’m more interested in seeing. Because of course your FTP is gonna go up if you’ve put on mass. Has it also increased relative to that mass? That’s what we want to know.
Why is strength relative to bodyweight a consideration for athletes (and non-athletes alike)?
In general, heavier humans are going to have an ability to move more absolute weight.
For example; A 95kg man (210lbs) can very likely lift more than a 70kg man (154lbs).
This means that in sport, we cannot make blanket statements like “you need to be able to squat 100kg.”
That is, we can’t set absolute weight benchmarks.
The example below is not a great one*;
For who would these targets be good?
What sport? What weight?
Below: A terrible example of strength benchmarks, that contradicts itself, is not based in evidence or experience, and likely AI-generated
If you are a coach who has worked with people (seriously, anyone), take a look at what that blog post above has said are “achievable” weights in standard gym settings.
If you are not someone who has coached, please do not be dissuaded by these ridiculous claims in this example above – they look primarily AI-generated, as they contradict themselves several times, and a 3 times bodyweight deadlift is powerlifting territory, NOT easily achievable for a standard gym-goer who is NOT an athlete, as they claim.
What do we mean when we say “relative” strength?
The following quote comes from Supertraining 6th Ed. (Verkhoshansky, 2009; if you’re a performance practitioner based in Europe, I bought my copies of Supertraining and Shock Method online directly through the Verkhoshansky website):
“Strength is a relative phenomenon depending on numerous factors, so it is essential that these conditions are accurately described when strength is being assessed… The term relative strength is introduced to compare the strength of subjects of different body mass. In this context, relative strength is defined as the strength per unit body mass produced by a given individual under specific conditions…”
So how about relative strength benchmarks (instead of absolute strength goals)?
An absolute strength goal (or benchmark) would be aiming for an absolute weight, with no reference to your own bodyweight; like saying “I want to squat 100kg.” A relative strength benchmark would be aiming for something like a 1.5 times bodyweight squat (which could be 100kg if you weigh 67kg).
We have data suggesting that relative strength benchmarks (benchmarks of weight that you can lift relative to your own body mass) can correlate with better performance and robustness to injury.
Relative strength standards differ between sport, and a lot of the examples you’ll see used are informed by practice – they’re not necessarily gospel. But you probably need to be stronger than you think.
The table below is an example of relative strength standards used by Pat Basil.
I think it’s worth adding – I don’t necessarily agree with all of the strength standards posited above. A good colleague and friend of mine, Lars Kemperman, and I discussed these and he pointed out that some are quite unbalanced, saying “A 2x bodyweight squat is so much harder to achieve then 10 pull-ups.”
I also think some of the “exceptional,” are quite high, but that also probably just points more to our tendency to always reach for “exceptional” in high performance sport. The “goal” standards are a goal – that doesn’t mean we *have* to reach for exceptional, especially if it’s not actually going to improve our performance further.
But again; context is important. I’ve spent the last few years working primarily with elite Olympic beach volleyballers – they do not need the same kind of strength that an NFL player in a contact sport needs.
But I do want to repeat; you probably need to be stronger than you think. Working with Olympians and talent athletes for over 5 years, I have probably only encountered a few athletes who really reached the point of “strong enough.”
Sport cultures play into this; I have spoken extensively with Strength & Conditioning coaches in New Zealand about how rugby can be quite behind, and there is (currently unpublished) data showing that after a certain point higher squat 1RMs correlate to slower sprint times, but that is in the context of a sport that’s always pushing towards powerlifting strength, like 2-3x bodyweight squats (and in case you haven’t noticed; rugby players are required to be a lot more athletic and explosive than powerlifters).
Tommy Gingras and I have spoken about benchmarking previously on the podcast, if you’d like to dive into it further.
Taking the bodyweight advantage into account
The bodyweight advantage is also why weight classes exists in many sports, like Olympic Lifting – it wouldn’t be fair to put a woman in the -49kg category against a woman in the +86kg category in a weightlifting competition.
Here’s an example of adjusting for bodyweight in a novice weightlifting competition, by giving athletes a Sinclair Score for their result:
Sinclair Scores have been used in the sport of Weightlifting to help normalise performance for bodyweight.
You won’t just see this for strength testing or weightlifting; you’ll also see power outputs (like in cycling or force plate tests) expressed in watts per kilogram, because again, we expect weight advantages.
The takeaway message for athletes: we shouldn’t be chasing absolute power or weight goals in the gym (unless that is our performance measure, like in powerlifting and weightlifting). And when the athlete next to us is 30kg heavier, we should expect them to move more weight than we do (if they are trained comparatively).