reckoner
Somewhere in the first year of lifting everybody asks the same question. Is this a good squat? Type it into a search box and a table comes back: novice, intermediate, advanced, elite, a number against each one, sorted by body weight. Very few of those tables say where their numbers came from.
There is a real answer, it is more interesting than the tables, and the first thing it tells you is that it is not about you.
What the published data actually is
The largest current set of strength norms was built from 809986 competition entries in drug tested, unequipped powerlifting competitions held around the world between 1968 and 2022, taken from the sport's own public competition records1. It reports relative strength, which is the weight lifted divided by the lifter's own body weight, split by sex, by age band and by competitive weight class.
Its authors are direct about why they had to build it. The normative values in circulation before it were established around thirty years ago, often measured on untrained people in samples of twenty or thirty, and for the deadlift there was no published scientific normative data at all1. That is worth sitting with. The most commonly performed heavy lift in the world had no published population figures until somebody went and counted the competitions.
The table
Relative strength as a multiple of body weight, for the two age bands most readers are in. The middle column is the median, so half of the competitors in that group were above it and half below.
| Group and lift | Bottom tenth | Median | Top tenth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men 18 to 35, squat | 1.75 | 2.28 | 2.83 |
| Men 18 to 35, bench press | 1.19 | 1.56 | 1.96 |
| Men 18 to 35, deadlift | 2.03 | 2.63 | 3.25 |
| Women 18 to 35, squat | 1.23 | 1.72 | 2.26 |
| Women 18 to 35, bench press | 0.67 | 0.96 | 1.35 |
| Women 18 to 35, deadlift | 1.49 | 2.06 | 2.66 |
| Men 36 to 59, squat | 1.48 | 2.03 | 2.58 |
| Men 36 to 59, bench press | 1.13 | 1.51 | 1.92 |
| Men 36 to 59, deadlift | 1.75 | 2.34 | 2.98 |
| Women 36 to 59, squat | 1.01 | 1.51 | 2.05 |
| Women 36 to 59, bench press | 0.62 | 0.90 | 1.28 |
| Women 36 to 59, deadlift | 1.32 | 1.88 | 2.51 |
Those are the tenth, fiftieth and ninetieth percentiles of that population, read off the study's own tables1.
Everybody in that table entered a competition
That is the sentence to read the numbers through, and the study says it plainly: because the data came only from powerlifting competitors, it is unlikely that these values are directly comparable to people who are not strength trained, or to athletes in other sports1. The bottom tenth of that table is somebody who trained for a meet, paid an entry fee, made a weight class and lifted in front of three judges. It is not the bottom tenth of people who lift.
So read it as a horizon rather than as a verdict. It says what these lifts look like at the serious end of persistent training, and it puts real numbers on how far that end reaches: among competitors over eighty, the ninetieth percentile deadlift is still 2.3 times body weight1.
A standard tells you where other people are standing. It says nothing about which way you are moving.
The comparison that has a consequence attached
If the reason for asking is whether your strength is good enough, there is one comparison with an outcome on the other side of it. 8762 men aged 20 to 80 had their leg press and bench press one rep maxes measured, were sorted into age specific thirds, and were followed for close to nineteen years. Set against the weakest third, the middle third's hazard ratio for death from any cause was 0.72 and the strongest third's was 0.77, after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other confounders2.
Read those two numbers next to each other. Nearly all of the difference is in leaving the bottom third and almost none of it is in reaching the top. Two caveats belong in the same breath. It is an observational study, so it shows an association rather than proving that the lifting caused it, and every participant was a man, so it says nothing directly about women.
How fast anybody actually moves
A longitudinal analysis of competitive powerlifters across ages found the largest gains in the earliest phase of training, roughly 7.5 to 12.5 per cent in the first year, reaching about 20 per cent after ten years3.
Hold that against a tier table. If the gap between your bench and the next label on the ladder is a third of your current lift, you have not failed a standard. You are some years away from it, and those numbers are what a few years looks like in people who train for competition.
What to compare against instead
- Your own last four weeks. It is the only comparison where every variable is already matched: same body, same bar, same sleep, same gym, same technique. A population table matches none of them.
- Your lifts against each other. A deadlift that has moved twice as far as your press since spring is telling you something specific about your own training that no table can. That comparison is free and it is the one worth making.
- The bottom third, once. Leaving it is the part with an outcome behind it. After that the table is a horizon, and a horizon is for walking towards rather than for grading yourself against.
Nobody has ever put a plate on a bar because of a percentile. They put it on because the last set moved and the next one looked possible.
What Reckoner does with it
Reckoner draws a band for each of your main lifts and says on the screen, in those words, that the bands are a yardstick to chase rather than a competition. Those bands are approximations of the same kind this guide has been describing, which is exactly why the screen says so rather than dressing them up. The number it actually acts on is a different one: what you lifted last week, and what that says about the step in front of you. How the weight goes up is that half of it.