Dr. Andy Galpin

You may have, say, ankle, knee or back injuries that don't allow that, or it's not realistic or for some other reason.

And so being able to identify and test your power and things like rotation,

and vertical movements that don't require jumping and landing are things that I hopefully am able to share with you in the coming years once those data become available.

Now, technically, the highest power output seen in the literature come from weightlifting or what's more effectively known as Olympic weightlifting.

So both the athletes themselves, as well as the movements, so the snatch, clean, and the jerk, and variations of this, produce extraordinary amounts of power.

The problem is if you're not extremely technically sufficient in these activities, you can't really test your power with them because you'll be limited so much by your technique, we won't get a true expression of your power.

So if you're familiar with those movements, they are a fantastic way to globally test your power.

If not, you might want to opt for something more like that vertical or broad jump test.

So to round us out here, let's talk about strength.

There's a lot of different things I could pull up here, but the most direct, plain measure of absolute strength comes from the sport of powerlifting.

Now, not to be confused with Olympic lifting, this is the sport of a one repetition maximum in the deadlift, bench press, and back squat.

There's a lot of different federations and rules and all that, and so to not bog down in unnecessary information, I'm going to give you the numbers that represent what's called the equipped category, which is to say the highest amount of equipment possible, what's just the most amount somebody's ever lifted.

There are subcategories like raw, which says you can't have certain equipment like belts and wraps and straps and special shirts and things like that.

You could debate whether or not you find one more relevant or interesting than the other one.

I don't really care.

I just wanted to share with you the most amount ever lifted any human without some arbitrary rule that these organizations have set.

Now in powerlifting, you get to find your one repetition maximum among those three exercises.

You can also combine them together to get a total.

So from the men's perspective, there have only been two ever to cross the 3,000-pound barrier, such that between the three exercises, squat, deadlift, and bench, they totaled more than 3,000 pounds.

The two gentlemen, Donnie Thompson and Dave Hoff, Hoff having the current world record at 3,103 pounds.