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

[OZ-USF-UFGator]

I know when this subject is brought up, the typical answer is "just worry about your progress, it doesn't matter what other people can lift". But the truth is that strength potential is likely a normal, Gaussian distribution whereby there is a median potential for each lift, ~66% fall within 1 SD of that and 85th percentile is 1 SD above the median. And when measuring progress, benchmarking against a target population DOES matter.

That said, what do you think the average genetic limit and SD is is for

squat
bench
overhead press
deadlift

assuming males between 18 - 40, healthy and no PEDs?

What would be even more interesting, but much harder would be to estimate the genetic limit for

novice
intermediate
advanced

This thread is just to start a discussion for curiosity is all.

[Meshuggah]

There are way too many factors involved to answer this question.

[IcePack]

Well, since there are people who train and people who don't, this will be at least a bimodal distribution. Also, since the lower end is bounded by zero and the mean isn't displaced far enough away from it for any of the lifts (there are a lot of weak people out there), the overall distribution will look more like a Poisson (i.e. not bell shaped and not symmetric).

[Marenghi]

Good thoughts.

I think the OP meant if they all DID train (equally?). Then Id too expect a normal distribution - and thats what has been found in the literature for both strength and hypertrophy albeit not limit ("potential"), but just short-mid term development.

As theres a good deal of (self)selection process and personal bias going on, most estimates of people who strength train (more or less "successfully") turn out to be way too high. Its especially evident in the usual humble brag quotes by high level athletes who think (pretend to think?) that "every healthy young man can [insert state level performance] if he only gives it all".

Most discussions of this topic quickly show these tendencies. Studies who show vastly disillusionary results (well, disillusionary only if you had unrealistically high expectations for EVERYONE) are quickly discarded because They´reNDTP (and "program" ofc is not SS, but the favorite "best" program for the respective study discarder).

[John Hanley]

Without regard to genetic limits, it seems like most men in this age range should be able to achieve 2/3/4/5 on the big four with diligent training to some degree.

For my completely wild-ass guess, I'd knock about 20% off these numbers.

[manveer]

For my completely wild-ass guess, I'd knock about 20% off these numbers.

Whaaa?

[Tom Narvaez]

Overall size does not get nearly enough emphasis in these threads. Seriously.

All our best pontificating doesn't help much if we don't establish how tall/big the people we are talking about are.

I find that 'Muricans forget that "adult males" do not average 5'10"+ across all ethnicities.

[iamsmuts]

May lightening strike me dead, but the old Strength Standards provides a decent SWAG around the middle rows:

http://www.rathburn.net/rowing/train...rength_Std.pdf

[Tim K]

strength potential is likely a normal, Gaussian distribution whereby there is a median potential for each lift, ~66% fall within 1 SD of that and 85th percentile is 1 SD above the median.

Probably... but asking a bunch of dudes on the internet to take a guess isn't going to tell you shit about what that median is.

[John Hanley]

Maybe. I'm thinking in terms of the limit assuming decent programming, nutrition, rest, and adherence. "To some degree" is my hand-wavy way of saying it could be two years or it could be ten.

What really muddies the waters here is that goddamned timeframe. With a constraint of let's say 16-23 years of age, results would vary significantly.

Fuck you.

Pick one:

4SD IQ, 4SD cock, 4SD vert, 4SD press, 4SD net worth