How strong?

 

Source. You can change gender and age bracket with the dashboard on the site.

I used to work with a power-lifter named Wes. We car-pooled for about a year on an hour-and-forty minute, one-way commute. I learned a little bit about weight lifting during that year.

Wes was of the opinion that dead-lifts, squats and bench-pressing could provide more than 90% of the strength training any reasonable person could ask for.

There are three kinds of people. There are "lifters" who lift to compete or push their own, personal records or who are into body-building. There are people who simply want to reach or maintain a nominal level of fitness. There are couch potatoes. I consider myself to be in the middle group.

What is a nominal level of fitness?

In the case of a 60-to-69 year-old man, one is considered a "Novice" power-lifter if you can dead-lift your body-weight.

I consider that pretty darned good from the standpoint of somebody trying to be "fit".

The risk of trying to assess your fitness is that you might walk up to a set of barbells and try to yank it off the ground. That is NOT the way to do it.

The right way to do it is to start with a weight level that you can perform several repetitions on and to get some coaching so you can learn how to lift with proper form and safety.

Then work up to sets of ten reps. Then add a little bit of weight after a week. Then work up to ten reps.

A question I have for the lifters among my readers, is there a rule-of-thumb to estimate a likely person best, single lift from the weight one can dead-lift ten reps?