There is a lot of interest in being strong out there. More people are engaging in weight training, be it in the barbell vein like Crossfit, or free weight exercises in the gym, or group fitness. The growing popularity is a good thing because strength is a hugely important part of being healthy, but what actually counts as strong?1 As with many fitness questions there isn’t necessarily a straightforward answer. However, we can make a pretty convincing argument that most people are not even close to where they could, and maybe even should, be.
The Strength To Weight Ratio (SWR)
Before we start talking about strength, we need to define what we mean. In a very simple sense, all we are talking about is how much force someone can produce.2 In this case, we are going to measure that by looking at how much weight someone can move in a back squat. (There are reasons why a back squat is a good measuring device, but we’ll not go through them here. Suffice it so say, it’s well recognized as a good gauge of strength.) Obviously though, we don’t expect different people to be able to lift the same amount of weight. We expect bigger people to be able to lift more than smaller, generally speaking. That being the case we can’t just look at how much weight, we also have to consider who lifted it, and that is what something called the strength to weight ratio does. To get a strength to weight ratio we take the amount of weight lifted divided by the weight of the lifter. For example, a 100 pound woman who squats 200 pounds has a strength to weight ratio of 2 (200/100=2). Another way to put it is that this lifter can squat twice her body weight.
Related: How To Tell The Difference Between Strength And Endurance
So to sum up, we are defining strength as how much you can lift in a back squat divided by how much you weigh. (It would also be reasonable to consider age and sex, but let’s not get too complicated for the time being.) With the definition set, what strength to weight ratio counts as strong? Can we even put a definite marker on it?
Putting A Number On Strength
When it comes to health and fitness there are some broad components that everyone can agree upon, but once you get down to the individual level, there is a lot of variation. For that reason, it’s often hard to draw lines in the sand about questions like strong and not strong. However, in this case there are a few things that we can look to to get a general idea.
Let’s start with a staple of the fitness scene: running. These days we’ve got regular people doing everything from park jogs to marathons to ultra-marathons. Through much of its rise in popularity, strength training was not considered a big part of running culture. Many argued that the running itself was your lower body training. Others claimed that strength training would slow you down. Recently though, that mindset has started to change, and for good reason. Resistance training has been shown to improve performance 3 and has been broadly associated with a decreased risk for sports related injury.4 Team USA, the United States Olympic committee, endorses strength training for their runners for both of these reasons.5
If we agree that strength is good, the next step is to determine how strong a runner should be? Can we do a few air-squats and call it a day? That’s a little tricky, because although there is plenty of research on the positive effects of strength training in athletes, and on runners in particular, that same research does not set out specific numbers. Be that as it may, if you spend enough time in the strength training world—and/or scouring the web for comments from strength coaches—you’ll find that a particular range does keep coming up. Strength coaches will commonly say that runners should be able to squat somewhere between 1.5 to 2.5 times their body weight, i.e. have a strength to weight ratio of 1.5 to 2.5. For perspective, that means that if you are a 165 pound runner, you should be squatting at least 247 pounds for a single repetition maximum.
If that sounds like a lot to you, that’s because it is. Your average Joe or Jane is usually nowhere near that kind of weight on the bar. But that is not because it is a crazy or unreasonable number. How did we get to 1.5 to 2.5 for a strength to weight ratio with runners? It didn’t come out of nowhere. There’s a precedent for it.
The difference between walking and running is that in running gait there is a moment in which both feet are off the ground, whereas mere walking always has one foot solidly connected to terra firma. Running, thus, is actually a series of jumps and the jumping part is the key. In strength training, there is a modality that deals with jumping, which is plyometrics. Plyometrics, it turns out, has a set of guidelines which say that if you wish to engage in it, you should be able to squat 1.5 to 2.5 times your body weight.6, 7 This is because jumping and landing produces ground reaction forces several times that of your body weight so, the reasoning goes, if you are going to be subjecting yourself to that kind of force you should make sure that you have at least a certain minimum on strength to absorb it.8 Hence, coming back around to the running, since running is essentially a series of jumps, it is not totally out of nowhere to say that a strength minimum of 1.5 to 2.5 times body weight in the back squat is a good idea. It is based on the plyometric protocol.
Athletes Are Often Even Stronger
This 1.5 to 2.5 times body weight marker has certainly become common. Interestingly though, it hasn’t stopped there. As more and more evidence has mounted about the benefits of strength, athletes across a variety of sports have been getting even stronger still, and some of the elite ones go even higher than the 1.5 to 2.5 times ratio.
James Marshall, a UK based strength and conditioning coach with experience training olympians, noted in an article on strength training for runners that Jenny Meadows, who won Bronze in the 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships, could back squat 297 pounds at a body weight of 99 pounds. That’s three times her body weight! Tyler Dabrowski, a strength and conditioning coach who works with the United States Speedskating olympic team said in an interview that his male skaters aim for a strength to weight ratio of 2.7 and his females 2.5. Other, non-running/speed related sports have also stepped up their strength. Tiger Woods is credited with having brought real strength training to the sport of golf, and now many top players have followed his example. In a tweet from 2016, Rory Mcllroy reported back squatting 265 for sets of three at a body weight of 165. That’s a strength to weight ratio of 1.6, but for reps of three of course. In a one rep max, he’d come in higher—not bad for a golfer.
And finally, let’s just take a moment to marvel at the competitive weightlifters. The current squat record holder for United States powerlifting, Lenny Wicks, squatted 711lbs at a weight of around 198lbs. That’s a strength to weight ratio of 3.59. Then there’s these guys—U.S. Olympic Weightlifters—who will put 1.5 times their body weight all the way up overhead!
Those Are Athletes, I Don’t Have To Be THAT Strong
We have a habit in this society of comparing ourselves to the absolute best, a topic we’ve covered before. That’s always problematic, so the take home message is not that you should be as strong as the Olympic Champion. However, there is something to be said for using these athletes not as a personal goal, but as a point of reference. Firstly, they show us what is possible. If Jenny Meadows can squat 3 times her body weight, if Rory Mcllroy can squat 1.6 times his body weight, and if those numbers help them excel at their sports, is it crazy to think that the average person might be well served by building enough strength to squat, say, at least equal to their body weight? If powerlifters can take their strength up to 3.5 times body weight, should anyone be afraid of striving for 1.5 times theirs?
More than that—in fact, MUCH more than that—there’s another societal factor at work here that, perhaps, is an even stronger case for why we should be paying attention to these reference points. We regularly base our aesthetic goals off of these people. We want to look like some of the top athletes out there and we read articles all the time about how to get abs, or arms, or butts like this or that famous athlete. We develop workout regimens that supposedly emulate them. We try to copy their nutrition plans. Maybe we even take up the sport itself. What we rarely discuss are some of the less visible facts, such as that our idols routinely squat a couple of times their body weight. How much of what we see in the physiques that we hope to emulate are shaped by what is happening behind the scenes?
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So where does this leave us? Can we settle on a definite number for everyone? In the end, the real answer is no, because how strong a person is or needs to be is always going to be very individual. People will be influenced by their age, sex, history, needs, physical abilities, even their interest. On the other hand, we also know that most strength coaches are looking at strength to weight ratios somewhere between 1.5 and 3 for their athletes, and that their athletes achieve them seemingly to their benefit. We also know that the reason for this is because it improves performance and it decreases the risk of injury. Perhaps the question that we should be asking ourselves is, if we are demonstrating strength to weight ratios that are below 1 (we squat with a weight on the bar less than our own body weight), can we expect high performance and beautiful physiques, or should we expect lower results and more injuries?
References:
- The Importance Of Muscular Strength In Athletic Performance
- NSCA – Strength And Power: A Definition Of Terms
- The Impact Of Resistance Training On Distance Running Performance
- Value Of Resistance Training For The Reduction Of Sports Injuries
- Team USA – Weightlifting Training For Distance Runners
- Current Concepts Of Plyometric Exercise
- NCSF – Plyometric Training
- Ground Reaction Forces At Different Speeds Of Human Walking And Running