Strength standards by bodyweight, per lift

What counts as an advanced lift for your bodyweight?

A common way to set a strength standard is as a multiple of bodyweight for each lift. Liftor’s table, which the Strength Score judges every lift against, puts “advanced” at these multiples of bodyweight, estimated as a one-rep max:

An 80 kg man squatting 152 kg for one is at the advanced mark for the squat; the same man benching 152 kg is well past it, because the bench standard is lower. The table is a yardstick, not a ceiling, and where sex is not given the app uses the average of the two columns rather than the higher bar. Read down the table and the columns differ most on the pressing lifts and least on the deadlift and squat — the gap between the sexes is a property of the lift, not a constant.

Why is strength scaled by bodyweight to the 0.67 power?

Because a plain ratio of load to bodyweight quietly favours lighter people. Strength grows with the cross-section of muscle, and cross-section grows with the square of a body’s dimensions while mass grows with the cube — so strength scales with mass to roughly the two-thirds power, not the first. Dividing by bodyweight punishes a 100 kg lifter twice; dividing by bodyweight^0.67 puts a 60 kg lifter and a 100 kg lifter on one axis. Slobodan Jaric set out the case for this allometric normalisation in Sports Medicine in 2002.

Liftor’s version writes it as load ÷ bodyweight × (bodyweight ÷ 80)^0.33, which is the same thing anchored at 80 kg so the numbers stay readable. Sex enters only through the standards table. The whole formula, term by term, is on the Strength Score formula page.

How do you use the standards without being misled by them?

Judge one lift against its own column, not against another lift’s. A 70 kg bench and a 70 kg squat at the same bodyweight are two different answers — the site’s free tool says the yardstick out loud for the lift you pick, for that reason. And treat the multiples as marks on a road rather than a finish: the app’s next target is always about ten percent above wherever you are, and there is no top.

What is an advanced squat, bench and deadlift at your bodyweight?

Not quite the multiple in the table, because the multiple is anchored at 80 kg and the allometric term moves it. A lighter lifter has to beat a slightly higher multiple of bodyweight, a heavier lifter a slightly lower one — that is the two-thirds power doing its job. Worked through the app’s arithmetic, the advanced mark as a one-rep max, in kilograms:

Read across and the multiples drift: an advanced squat is 2.09 × bodyweight at 60 kg and 1.66 × at 120 kg, on the same standard. A plain ratio would have asked the 120 kg lifter for 228 kg, which is why plain ratios flatter the light and punish the heavy. Between the rows, the free tool does the arithmetic for your exact weight and says the yardstick out loud.

How do strength standards differ for women?

Most on the pressing lifts and least on the pulls. Divide the women’s column by the men’s in the table above and the bench standard is 64% of the men’s, the overhead press 65%, the row 73%, and the squat and deadlift each 79%. The pattern is a property of the lifts rather than a rule about the sexes: the gap tracks how much upper-body muscle a lift depends on, and it narrows the more the hips and legs are involved.

The practical consequence is that comparing a woman’s bench to a man’s squat, or either to a percentage-of-bodyweight rule of thumb from a forum, produces nonsense. Judge each lift against its own column. In the app, sex enters the score through this table and nowhere else, and where it is not given the average of the two columns is used, so an unknown never deflates the number.

What do novice, intermediate and advanced actually mean?

Stretches of a road, named for how progress feels on them. A novice adds weight most weeks; the first year or so of consistent training is usually spent here, and it is the fastest strength anyone ever gains. An intermediate adds weight most months: progression has moved from the session to the block, and the numbers in this guide — reps in reserve, deloads, periodisation — start to matter. An advanced lifter is at or past the table’s multiple, and adds weight over a training year; the difference between a good block and a bad one is now the difference between 2.5 kg and nothing.

Liftor names the band in words and gives the band above as a count of its rungs, each rung about ten percent up from wherever you stand. Past advanced the app names one more band and then stops naming them, because the rungs do not stop. Somebody is always further along the road; that is what a road is for. If the somebody is the person you train with, the partner guide covers sharing a session when your numbers differ.

Sources

• Jaric S. Muscle strength testing: use of normalisation for body size. Sports Medicine, 2002; 32(10): 615–631
• Liftor’s standards table and allometric term: STANDARD_REL, ALLO_EXP 0.33, BW_REF 80 kg (utils/strengthScore.ts in the app’s source); the bodyweight tables below are that arithmetic, worked