Dr. Andy Galpin

And it made me realize if I wanted to make it as a strength conditioning coach, I was going to have to do a lot more than to just show up with my exercise science degree.

The third and final exercise to deadlift was set by the famous Andy Bolton, who I believe is the only person still to this day to ever deadlift more than a thousand pounds at a thousand and eight.

Now, from the female side of the equation, you have some equally impressive, if not more impressive numbers.

The world record total, there's only been two women ever to cross the 2,000-pound barrier.

That would be Becca Swanson and Leah Reichman.

Swanson currently owns that record at 2,050 pounds.

The individual records, the squat, Leah holds that record at 925 pounds.

I don't know when she's going to cross 1,000, but I keep watching to see when it's going to happen.

That would be just absolutely insane to see, and good luck to you, Leah, on that one.

The bench press, Rheanne Miller currently holds that record at 650 pounds, and then the deadlift is currently set by Becca Swanson at 694 pounds.

So now that you know what that gold standard really is for strength, what are some more realistic numbers for the average person?

For men, I like to see about a one-to-one ratio for the bench press such that you should be able to bench press your body weight.

So a 200-pound person should be aiming for something like 200-pound bench press.

For women, it's about 0.6.

Upper body strength is significantly less in women in general, and so you're going to have to scale that down a little bit more.

Now, for the back squat, it's hard to give you numbers because it is so technically demanding.

I think it's easier to give you something more like a leg press value.

For men, you want to shoot for something like double body weight.

And for women, something like one and a half times or so.

So that hopefully gives you a little bit of context of the numbers to go after.