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Strength Standards and their Usefulness | Mark Rippetoe
We made a mistake a long time ago when we published a table of “strength standards” that were supposed to be used allow you to scale your strength against other trainees doing the same program. There were immediately apparent problems with this, that I should have recognized much sooner than I did.
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Member
I saw a youtube video from the strength club with some of your guys and they made a bell curve that showed people's base line novice levels at the deadlift such as how a standard devation is used for IQ. Would there be anyway you could use that data to show a reference range of what the potential could be for a healthy guy 18 to 40? Of course this would still be difficult due to factors such as weight, anthropology of individuals.
TMPHBITEU
Why would this be important? Did you read the article?
Member
Yes, it's the process of getting stronger and the rate of progession that determines ones level of advancement. Focus on the process not the gross number. I think it would be helpful for a guy who keeps hitting their head on the brick wall trying to force more strength out of a level of progession. For example a advance novice program and a person starting to over training due to the fact they can't squat heavy 2x a week. A reference range for individuals based off their baseline novice strength could give them a clue to if they need to move on to intermediate programing. Of course this isn't a substitute to the grey book stating onces workout to workout progess stops go to weekly program, then things get hairy from there to bi weekly to monthly periodzation. I had a few mental hiccups moving past intermediate programing with my bench. I felt me doing 280 for 5x5 was just crazy low. I kept wanting to force myself to do a heavy light split even though I couldn't handle a week in week out PR of 2 pounds. When I starting going backwards I asked myself the first 3 questions and I was doing all the above correct. I feel having a range of numbers stating hey this is what a normal guy does in this phase vs a ungifted vs a slightly gifted would have helped me make that move sooner. Most people would fall in those 3 areas on the bell curve. So for example if possible it would look like this.
50 percentage group
Weight group
Lift
Novice base
Advanced novice range
Intermediate range
Advanced to peak range.
This of course is probably just wishful thinking on my end and wanting a fast and easy quantifiable analysis of progession when they are more then likely to many variables to make a accurate representation of data, but I guess you don't know unless you ask. Yes I understand the process, you progess work out to workout then weekly then you start a monthly periodzation to the point if you get crazy strong such you may even have alternate the deadlift and squat to heavy workout only 1x a month. You are just extending the stress, recovery, adaption cycle.
Member
I started training using your book about 8 years ago. It took me a long time to really understand how meaningless the standards are. About the only good thing they did for me was to assure me that I could probably get stronger than I thought I could. I still train, have fun with it and
Member
"Gifted" and "ungifted" are not meaningful terms here. It is impossible to characterize a lifter into either of these two groups before they have actually done the training. A lifter who uses this determination to inform any aspect of their training has, definitionally, made the wrong choice. Anyone who told you that you were "ungifted" in the bench would have been pulling that assessment out of thin air. It doesn't MATTER what anyone else is doing to get past 280x5x5. It matters what YOU do. It is very easy to see if 280x5x5 allows you to lift 282x5x5: load the 280, do the 5x5, then next week, load the 282. Did you do it? Congratulations, that's what you need to do. Did you not do it? Alright, then you clearly need to do something ELSE. What else? No one who is not you, or someone being paid to be wholly responsible for your training, can tell you this. They cannot even come CLOSE.
Anyone who actually trains seriously becomes aware of this very quickly. You will feel like you are "gifted" on a certain lift for months at a time, before that lift runs into trouble and another lift suddenly becomes your "gifted" lift. Sometimes ALL your lifts are "gifted" and sometimes NONE of them are. Earlier this year I was making rapid progress on my deadlift, while my squat workouts were becoming difficult to recover from. But over the last two months or so I have had to reset my deadlift while my volume squat has left my previous intensity PRs behind. At no point did how "gifted" I was enter my calculus. At no point did any external consideration of the weight on the bar enter it either: all the decisions were based on the experience of lifting those weights previously.
This board is FULL, and I mean FULL, of people coming in with intermediate programming questions. And almost to a one people asking these questions establish that they have simply not collected enough data for anyone, let alone strangers on a forum, to actually know what to do. "I tried the Texas method but I'm cutting so 5x5 squats are too much volume, what do I do?" I dunno, 3x5? Three is less than five last time I checked "oh but won't that be too little stimulus?" We don't know! No one knows, until you actually TRY it. You don't even know that 5x5 is going to be too much volume, because you didn't try it! Even if someone were to guess RIGHT, they would only be lucky, not smart.
And EVEN THIS mess of an inquiry, which doesn't allow anyone to make any kind of decision, is more data than could be summarized in any kind of table. Unless this table is a six dimensional matrix with axes for "cutting to make weight for a sport" and "last two sets of squats last week felt grindy so I switched to topsets and backoffs and also the air conditioning is busted so I called the workout early but deadlifts on Wednesday moved good so I'm planning on making the scheduled increase to the heavy set". There is no absolute quantitative model of strength training. I know, I wish there were too. Every trainee is an n=1 experiment. Adjustments need to be made based on careful observations of your own training. Experienced coaches occasionally get their guess to be better than a coin flip based on aggregated data. But that's the best you can hope for.
This is not the difference between advanced and intermediate lifters. A lifter who regularly makes biweekly increases is still an intermediate.Originally Posted by Griffin727
A novice stimulus is composed of individual workouts. An intermediate stimulus is composed of multiples of workouts. An advanced stimulus is composed of groups of intermediate progressions
An intermediate lifter who makes a 5 pound increase to their heavy set of five every two or three weeks is still an intermediate, because they are using a set of workouts to drive increases. An advanced lifter is a lifter who might run through a "cycle" of multiple weeks of intermediate training before hitting a PR. The heavy sets are "PRed" or more appropriately "CRed" (cycle record) each week (or other training interval) well in deficit of the actual maximum for that weight. It is at the culmination of several weeks of this "cycle record" that a new PR is set. A HLM where the weights are incremented biweekly is just an "HLMMLM" intermediate program. Read the book.
Member
I tend to over do stress more then under do things, im not afriad to get pined under a bar lol. I tryed to add weight and it didn't work. Where I went wrong was I tryed to force programing to work past it expiration for me. I didn't mean to refer to bi weekly programing as advanced. It just isn't early intermediate anymore. Trilltation is key and the more advanced you get the more it applys. Yes, advanced is monthly PR by appointment where intermediate is weekly organized training. As for the bell curve statement it was just a thought. I mean you know a gifted athlete when you see one. You know, the kind of guy that weights 225 but can still make progess on the novice phase with around 500 on squat for 3x5. Didn't know it was possable to make a bell curve of strength abilty. My (guess) was no due to many variables at play. I'm hopping to pull 725 and bench 405 and squat 655 before 30 years of age.
✓ Member
No, it really couldn't. Weight on the bar has nothing to do with novice/intermediate programming. Only what it takes to put MORE weight on the bar.
There you go, Griff. Now you're starting to understand.
The novice effect is so close to uniform that this is why the NLP, even in its later stages, is about the same across the board, with the only variables being load selection at first, influenced by three other factors (the first three questions). As time goes on, more and more variables enter the mix, which is why post-novice programming becomes more and more complex and individual. Instead of being program-based, it becomes based on principle-based and experience-based.
This is why, as you exit the NLP, you have to start growing up from being a trainee to being student. You move from mere execution to discovery. You have to experiment and learn things, mostly things about yourself. You simply cannot learn about the subject of you without a whole lot of DOING. Change one independent variable, observe the results, and draw conclusions.
I'll hazard a guess that this is also why, if you want to become good at coaching others, you have to get experience coaching multiple disparate people. With my n=1 of programming for myself, I continue to learn how to tweak my own stress, but that doesn't mean I can speak to yours, unless you just happen to have matching factors, of which there are too many to make that likely....
They are indeed good for that.
TMPHBITEU
You don't write very well, Griffin. Work on that, please.
Member
He has tried Rip, give him a break.
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