What is the Average, healthy Man Between 18 - 40 Potential

[George Christiansen]

Now, lead him to believe that all "real men" can get to 3/4/5 in 18 months, or they weren't really DTFP, so he pushes too fast and hurts himself frequently.
That's what threads like this accomplish.

I think that the wrongheaded idea, and the lack of enough clear instruction to the contrary, that you have to continue to push at the level you pushed an LP bears more guilt than any strength standards per se.

I am fortunate in that I have not suffered much in the way of injuries, other than flare ups of old ones, but I feel like wasted a solid year on a cycle of: push too hard-overtrain-deload-repeat that left me with practically no improvements since my LP.

This seems like a fairly common thing to me.

[Eric K]

I think that the wrongheaded idea, and the lack of enough clear instruction to the contrary, that you have to continue to push at the level you pushed an LP bears more guilt than any strength standards per se.

I am fortunate in that I have not suffered much in the way of injuries, other than flare ups of old ones, but I feel like wasted a solid year on a cycle of: push too hard-overtrain-deload-repeat that left me with practically no improvements since my LP.

This seems like a fairly common thing to me.

Word.

[Marenghi]

Screw this stuff, who cares what we expect from 18 yo 70" 220lb guys who eat out of their parents' fridge and sleep 10 hours per day.

I want to know, what do we expect for a 45 year old lifetime-skinny sedentary guy with a job and kids who takes up barbells for the first time? *Not* a former jock -- a former band nerd.
Let's make him kyphotic and prone to tendonitis. Give him a bad back too. And maybe low T.

Now, lead him to believe that all "real men" can get to 3/4/5 in 18 months, or they weren't really DTFP, so he pushes too fast and hurts himself frequently.
That's what threads like this accomplish.

Not that I'm bitter or anything :-)

Do you really wanna start training? Playing music can be so delightful...

Well, I see the question is intriguing - but has very little value individually: Because the variability is so great.

So for you personally, you dont know where you fall into the normal distribution. Well, you can guess your hypertrophic potential by some traits like bone circumferences/weight and hormone status, but strength is much more complicated. Its pretty easy though once youve started and trained roughly properly: Strength gains follow a logarithmic growth curve - If you aint got those three plates within the first two years, you wont got five in your life.

Even for groups its very hard to determine, because of the variability. Thats why researchers try to magnify effects with all tricks of the trade (to make results significant) because they have to deal with an annoying impact of a large inter-individual variation (in the simplest form, effect strength = (x1-x2)/s ).

The self-selection for that is strong, but heavily underestimated: The fact that strength training is voluntary crushes the estimations of everyone who DOES train and SEES only those, who also DO train. These groups are not a valid sample. They dont see the ones who quit training, they dont see the ones who have never started.

The two most practical scenarios for a valid sample of a population are a) school and b) companies.
a) is restricted in the age group while even
b) is not a completely valid sample, because working at a certain company often implies a certain demand for health. But its nevertheless the best scenario we can get. In Europe, health insurance companies run some work health programs that come very close to feasible study designs with a random population sample.

Anything else what you guys (me included) would derive from personal experiences, observations in the gym - be it seasoned coaches in gyms, sport clubs, colleges, military etc is all heavily biased.

For a taste, this is one of dozens of studies on interindividual variability of responses to resistance training: Variability in muscle size and strength gain after unilateral resistance training. - PubMed - NCBI , others are mentioned in this vid How Much Do Genetics Affect Muscle Growth? - YouTube The patterns are similar in every non-heavily selected training study.

[Charlie Davies]

Now for someone in your situation, I'd be cycling rep ranges almost from the start and trying to aim for hypertrophic change as a primary factor. Display of strength would certainly be secondary for quite a while. A dude who is 45 probably shouldn't be doing strictly 5s at RPE 8-9 as an initial state.

How about doing strictly 5s at RPE 9-10 until injury, repeatedly? Your advice is good.

If I could go back in time and coach my 45-yo self, I'd have him run SS with 2 days off between each session, for about 3 months.
Take squat from 65 to 180, deadlift from 85 to 225, bench from 55 to 125.
Then on to HL upper/lower 4-day split, not going past RPE 9 even for intensity sets.

I'm still figuring out the whole thing about cycling rep-ranges.
What seems to hurt me is too many sets at RPE 9 and up, in any rep range.

[Charlie Davies]

This might be fun to play with. It takes into account aspects of frame to calculate LBM potential.

I have played with that. My skeleton is fine -- nice thick wrists, etc. I suspect that if I'd started lifting in my teens I'd have done well.

[manveer]

Its pretty easy though once youve started and trained roughly properly: Strength gains follow a logarithmic growth curve - If you aint got those three plates within the first two years, you wont got five in your life.

Really depends on what you mean by "roughly properly". So many factors - people not willing to eat, shit form, shit programming, life stresses.

It took me 16 months to get to a 3-plate squat training "roughly properly" (not terrible form, gained 40+ lbs). With coaching and better nutrition I think it could've been done in about 3-4 months. I don't think my early progress was a good indicator of my potential.

Once you are late intermediate/advanced, it can take a lot of trial and error to figure out how to progress. I think even Jordan said he was stuck in the mid-500s on deadlift for a while until he figured out how to move it up, then he went on to 700+ in a relatively short period of time.

[Charlie Davies]

The cycling of rep ranges can be pretty easy. ... details ...

Let's see if I understand this.

I speak a primitive form of RPE: @8 means probably 2 reps left, @9 means one left, @9+ means no reps left but could have done more weight, @10 means I got the rep but it was ugly, or maybe got pinned and had to crawl out from under the safeties.

Pretty sure multiple sets of the same exercise @9 or more in one session is too much for me. I do more damage than I can heal in 3-4 days.

I'm thinking in your example, for the "heavy" sets I'd pick a weight hoping for @9 or @9+ to measure progress, and all other sets (volume) would aim for @8. Maybe for sets-across, aim for @9 on the last set.
Does that make sense?

[marcf]

Even with these conditions, the 300 bench strikes me as a high (mean limit?)

Took me 9 months to hit a 300 bench (touch and go) as a 36yo going from sitting on my ass playing video games to lifting barbells. 3.5 months after that I was able to do it paused.

Edit: But my press will probably never hit 200 because I refuse to train it now. Multiple resets, breaks from the press, form checks, etc. and I still reliably get very bad facet joint pain in my low back from the press.

[Aaron Montgomery]

Took me 9 months to hit a 300 bench (touch and go) as a 36yo going from sitting on my ass playing video games to lifting barbells. 3.5 months after that I was able to do it paused.

Height, weight, arm length, chest size? 300 doesn't count if you have a barrel chest and t-rex arms which limits your ROM to 2". Though, if you were shaped like that your deadlift would be rather interesting...

[marcf]

Height, weight, arm length, chest size? 300 doesn't count if you have a barrel chest and t-rex arms which limits your ROM to 2". Though, if you were shaped like that your deadlift would be rather interesting...

6'1", 76" wingspan, started LP at 220-222 pounds bodyweight, was 235-237 when I finally hit 300. I don't know my chest size.

My LP bench started at 155lbs. In 5 weeks, it was up to 205 and I went and saw Paul Horn to fix my form. I was gripping too wide and my wrists were in too much extension. Once I fixed that, bench felt a million times better. I got injured a few times along the way and had to take breaks (shoulder/AC joint, and bruised rib).