How Strong Is Strong Enough?
At The BTG, we focus primarily on relative strength rather than raw strength numbers for a couple of reasons.
First, there is the concept of “carrying the engine” – however strong you may be, any extra body mass you carry to attain that strength penalizes you in pretty near every other area of physical performance not only because you have to haul around that extra mass, but because your body has to supply that extra mass with blood flow, oxygen, etc. during any activity. I.E. a 200 pound individual who can deadlift 300 pounds will likely outperform a 300 pound individual who can lift just as much in almost any other physical activity that is not purely strength-based because their higher relative strength implies a greater efficiency overall.
Second, unless you are competing in powerlifting or another strength-specific sport, how strong do you really need to be? Is it worth chasing a more than double bodyweight squat or deadlift if you’re not competing and the only place you can express that strength is in the gym with a barbell? I can say first hand that it’s a pretty cool experience to be able to deadlift over “8 plates” (405 lbs.) or more, but at what cost, and what’s the benefit in real life? At some point the risk of injury vs. the reward just makes going heavier not really worth it in the long run.
I know I’m speaking from an N=1 perspective, and plenty of folks can be stronger than me (both in relative and absolute terms) while still maintaining a higher level of overall fitness, but I have chased the bigger numbers in the gym and found that pursuit to have only one endpoint – the gym. Since backing off my strength training a bit, my joints and my back are consistently happier and healthier and my performance in other areas has improved, while there has been literally ZERO negative impact on my real world functionality – I.E. my ability to perform work outside the gym, whether that be moving furniture, yard work, or whatever. If anything, I’ve gotten better at the stuff that matters, and have been able to broaden my performance horizons as well.
This thinking has influenced both how we structure our group strength training workouts, and what we use as tests of strength to gauge our members’ progress.
Take Things Slowly For The Best, Lasting Results
With all training, it is important to ramp up your efforts slowly to minimize the chance of injury. It is far better to go a little bit easier on any given day and be able to come back and train for your next session a few days later, than to try and be a hero in the gym, mess yourself up, and be out of commission (or at least unable to push hard at all) for weeks or more.
Our Strength Tests
Reading through the tests we use in the following sections, I know there will be some disagreement with what we do, the standards we’ve set, and the omission of certain movements.
Let’s deal with that last concern right now, because I know there are two lifts missing that most who strength train regularly will see as glaring holes in our testing – squats and bench press. I would note that just because we don’t include them in our testing, it doesn’t mean we don’t ever use squat or horizontal pressing movement patterns in our workouts. Where I have issues with using the movements are mostly with the barbell variations of them, for specific reasons.
Why We Rarely Use Back Squats or Front Squats Anymore
I used to LOVE squats (AKA “back squats”). I built up to a double-bodyweight squat long before I got anywhere close with deadlifts because I thought of them as a “leg” exercise, and I had a dodgy back, so I steered clear of the “dangerous” deadlifts…until squatting heavy f-ed up my back, big time. I was attempting a max effort, heavy single with a 405 pound barbell, and as I pushed back up out of the hole, something felt just a *little* bit off, and bam – back pain that lasted for MONTHS.
After my own injury, I started to pay a bit more attention to HOW my training clients and training partners failed on back squats, and it seemed that the majority also failed to SUPPORT the load with their backs, rather than failing to move the load with their legs. This might have been a bit of confirmation bias on my part, but it seemed clear to me that the risk vs. reward of very heavy squat loads just wasn’t worth it.
When I got back to squatting, I switched to barbell front squats because EMG research showed equal or better activation of the quads with only 75% of the load of a comparable back squat. It worked great for a while, and I worked up to very nearly the equivalent load of my heavy back squat (I think my max was a set of 280 lbs. for 3 reps, which calculates out to around 300 lbs. for a single, which is nearly 75% of my 405 lbs. back squat). When I put it into practice with my clients, however, some other issues became apparent.
First, for some people, the front squat, whether using the “clean” or the bodybuilding style crossed-arms setup just was too uncomfortable to push the load on because of the pressure of the bar on the fronts of the shoulders. I had a number of female clients flat-out refuse to do barbell front squats again because of the bruising the bar caused on their shoulders making it so they couldn’t wear sleeveless tops / dresses.
Second, we had lots of people experience difficulty controlling the load when it got heavy because either they “pancaked” forward too much or couldn’t keep their elbows high enough, or a combination of both, so the barbell tried to roll forward on their arms. Some folks just aren’t mechanically built to squat with an upright torso, so a barbell front squat doesn’t work well for them.
These days, if we want to train squats with a lot of load, we use the trap bar / hex bar instead because it eliminates the issues we have with the barbell front squat, and also has much more favourable leverages than a barbell back squat, so the back is at much less risk of injury.
The trouble with the trap bar / hex bar is getting a consistent squat depth because the height of the handles makes it easy to kind of “half-squat” the load unless you’re really tall. We work around this by placing the lifter on a step or box, but even then, it’s tough to get it just right, and too easy to inadvertently cheat the hips higher. Not a super big deal with using the lift in a workout, but it is problematic to use as a test because it’s not consistent from one lift to the next with the same person, never mind from one person to the next.
That inconsistency is also why we’ve moved away from using the trap bar deadlift as a test. It varies from the trap bar squat in technique only - keeping the hips high and using minimal knee bend, rather than full knee flexion - which then adds another possible element of technical inconsistency.
We’ve also found greater benefit in training single-leg strength with variations of split-squats, lunges and single-leg squats because of the balance required, because they demand much greater discrete control of the knees and hips, and because we can work on evening out side-to-side imbalances.
Why We Rarely Do Barbell Bench Press
The answer to this one is simple – we don’t barbell bench press regularly because the bar restricts the movement of the shoulders, elbows and wrists too much vs. a dumbbell press, and doesn’t transfer to real-world function as well as a push-up or other types of upper body pressing.
While the bench press is useful for de-loading the upper-body press component of a push-up for those who can’t do push-ups from the floor (which require, on average, pressing 60% of one’s bodyweight), it eliminates a crucial piece of the equation: core stabilization.
While you could also use the bench press to overload the upper body press component for those who can already perform push-ups, there is some argument that doing so doesn’t make sense because outside of the gym, pushing usually occurs while standing, involves the entire body, and is actually limited by leverage, leg/core strength, and traction, not upper body pressing strength. The most you can press horizontally while standing upright is around 40% of bodyweight before the load just tips you over backward. You can gain a small leverage advantage by splitting your feet, but beyond that you have to tilt your torso forward to handle more load, and then it is no longer a horizontal press.
Given that latter limitation and the fact that a proper push-up on the floor requires pressing about 60% of your bodyweight, the ability to perform a push-up equates to sufficient strength to handle pushing a load while standing. Since the push-up also requires core stabilization, it just makes more sense to focus on push-ups instead of bench press, though we do 1-arm dumbbell bench press and standing cable presses with a forward lean (effectively an incline press) in training as well.
How We Set Our Testing Standards
Our testing standards are a composite of several things, including standards I’ve found that are used by other organizations or trainers, the results of our testing with members at The BTG, and my own testing on the various movements. You may disagree with our standards, and that’s OK.
Some, you might think are too easy, but in those cases, I’ve usually backed those numbers down a bit from “what I think would be cool” to where I feel they are “what is difficult, but not impossible, for a general-fitness client to achieve” and “what is probably strong enough to be useful in the real world”.
Some, you might think are too high for the average person. In those cases, our results with our members usually say otherwise, and the numbers, while high, are genuinely achievable with hard work over time.
With most of the standards, we have a Base level, which is where we feel everyone should be able to get as long as they are pushing reasonably hard when we train the movements in the cycle of our regular workouts at the gym, barring any specific injuries or movement restrictions that make the movement inadvisable.
After the Base level, we have our Good level. This, again, we feel is achievable for pretty much everyone, but will take a bit more focused effort, and really pushing the limits overall with strength in the gym, not just on those specific movements.
At the top, we have our Advanced level. To achieve this level will require a longer period of focused effort on general strength and/or specific, focused effort on the movement itself as an adjunct to our regular training. We’ve had members working on these “project” movements during what would otherwise be rest periods during the regular strength program, or putting in additional work outside the gym.
All that said, on to the actual tests! We hope to record video of proper form on each of the movements in the near future, and will link them below when they’re ready…
Deadlift / Hinge Lift
For many who strength train, the deadlift is really the king of lifts because it uses EVERYTHING from your neck to your toes. Proper form is that the barbell starts from a dead rest and, using a hip-hinge movement and keeping a neutral spine throughout, lift the barbell until you are standing fully upright. Due to different arm, leg and torso lengths, as well as hip mobility and core / torso control, however, not everyone can hinge all the way to/from the floor.
Ideally, we train everyone to hinge to where their torso is at least parallel to the floor (some of our members with more hamstring flexibility actually reach a downward-tilted torso angle - as you can imagine, this demands a LOT of hamstring involvement in the lift!), and then as they work with heavier load, we either have them lift out from the rack and perform the hinge from the top down, or we raise the barbell by placing it on blocks/boxes.
The deadlift is surprisingly taxing when performed for multiple reps. I’ve had many people comment how blown away they were how high their heart rate went during and just after a set. For that reason, we use deadlifts both as a strength test (using max loads for a certain number of reps), and a power-endurance test (testing max reps at a prescribed load for 2 minutes). The standards for the strength test are below.
Base
1RM – 150% / 100% BW
3RM – 140% / 93% BW
6RM – 125% / 85% BW
Good
1RM – 161% / 107% BW
3RM – 150% / 100% BW
6RM – 137% / 91% BW
Advanced
1RM – 176% / 133% BW
3RM – 164% / 109% BW
6RM – 150% / 100% BW
1-Arm Dumbbell Overhead Press
We prefer to use dumbbells for our overhead press, and test it one arm at a time to allow our athletes to be successful in executing despite perhaps not having perfect overhead mobility, and to allow more freedom of movement through the shoulders, elbows and wrists vs. a barbell. It also limits their test result to the strength of their weaker side, so it encourages working on evening out any side-to-side strength imbalances.
That said, there are many people for whom overhead pressing, period, is not a great idea due to shoulder or thoracic spine mobility issues. For those people, we simply skip this test. If someone has an injury or movement limitation in one arm but not the other, we allow them to only test the one side.
Base
1RM – 34% / 23% BW
3RM – 31% / 21% BW
6RM – 28% / 19% BW
Good
1RM – 37% / 25% BW
3RM – 34% / 23% BW
6RM – 31% / 21% BW
Advanced
1RM – 40% / 27% BW
3RM – 37% / 25% BW
6RM – 34% / 23% BW
Dumbbell Turkish Get-Up
The Turkish Get-Up (TGU) is not simply a strength exercise, it requires a high degree of body control and coordination to perform the movement smoothly and efficiently. It is a particularly useful movement for shoulder strength and stability, as well as demanding a strong, stable torso and mobile hips.
We use dumbbells rather than kettlebells for this test so that we can increment the load by as little as 2.5 pounds if need be. Dumbbells also require a bit more wrist stability in all directions, where a kettlebell generally rests on the back of the forearm during the movement.
We don’t test with it, but for a challenging alternative, feel free to try the TGU with a “bottoms-up” kettlebell, where the weight is suspended vertically above your hand while you grip the heck out of the handle below. It requires a strong grip and stable wrists in addition to all the other demands of the lift. :)
NOTE: At the “Advanced” level, the weight is equal to that for the overhead press test because athletes who can press that percentage of their bodyweight overhead usually have great stability in the shoulders as well.
Base
1RM – 24% / 16% BW
3RM – 22% / 14% BW
6RM – 20% / 13% BW
Good
1RM – 32% / 21% BW
3RM – 29% / 19% BW
6RM – 27% / 17% BW
Advanced
1RM – 40% / 27% BW
3RM – 37% / 25% BW
6RM – 34% / 23% BW
Push-Up
The push-up test is a bit unique in that as you become stronger and more proficient in the movement, it quickly transitions from a test of strength to a test of power-endurance. For this reason, there is only a “Base” and a “Good” standard for the push-up as a strength test.
To perform a single rep of a proper push-up from the floor requires pressing approximately 60% of your bodyweight with your hands while stabilizing your core. Hands should be around shoulder-width apart, and elbows should not flare any wider than 45 degrees or so from your body.
If a member is unable to perform a push-up from the floor, we either elevate their hands (thereby shifting the load more into the feet), or have them perform dumbbell presses and other horizontal pressing movements until they have sufficient strength. The elevated push-up is our preference, however, because it more directly translates into proper push-up performance.
NOTE: We do not ever perform push-ups from the knees (AKA “girl push-ups”), because they change the leverages so drastically and virtually eliminate the core stability demands - they really are not the same movement at all.
Base
Ladies – 1 rep
Guys – 6 reps
Good
Ladies – 6 reps
Guys – 12 reps
Chin-Up
The chin-up is a movement that really emphasizes strength-to-weight ratio more than any other because you are literally lifting the weight of your body. While there are some very large athletes able to crank out some impressive chin-ups on YouTube, carrying less bodyweight and getting a little stronger is generally a faster way to success on this movement than getting freakishly strong!
I should also note that we require chin-ups to be performed on rings, from a dead-hang, with arms fully extended at the bottom and arms fully flexed at the top. At the very top, we used to require everyone to get their chin to the crossbar, but when we switched to doing these on the rings, the crossbar disappeared…LOL! That’s why now it’s to “arms fully flexed” at the top.
We have had some success with our female athletes over the years getting their first-ever chin-ups, but this is definitely one where the ladies tend to struggle a bit more, and usually takes some pretty focused effort to achieve.
We also used to run this test as both a “max consecutive reps” test and a more power endurance related “max reps in 2 minutes” test, but we have consolidated it to max consecutive reps with a 2-minute cap. If you drop from the bar, you’re done. We’ve never had anyone run out of time yet… ;)
Base
Ladies – NA
Guys – 1 rep
Good
Ladies – 1 rep
Guys – 6+ reps
Advanced
Ladies – 3+ reps
Guys – 15+ reps