Strength Standards

[Guest guest]

This sounds similar to a thread that was up a week or so ago.

ly I don't think you can set a strength standard because there

are too many things that enter into it. Everyone would agree that

Fred Hatfield is a very strong man. Yet on an ISSA training video,

in talking about how a personal trainer could identify what type of

muscle a person had a preponderance of (if this was the case), he

made the remark that he could go down and come back up ONCE with a

huge amount of weight, but he would never in his life be able to run

a marathon. On the opposite end of the scale you have those people,

like triathletes or those who compete in the Tour de France. One

would have to say they are also very strong, but I don't think Dr.

Squat has anything to worry about as far as them being competition

at a powerlifting meet or vice versa.

Stuart Mc set a strength standard of 300-400-500, which means

the amount of poundage a male weight trainer should strive for in

the bench-squat-deadlift. If you have a tall, long-limbed person,

he may be able to deadlift well over 500 pounds, but have a terrible

time benching 300. The opposite may be true for the shorter

limbed-longer bodied person. Louie once wrote in PLUSA that

it is rare that a person is a good bencher/squatter AND deadlifter

due to anatomical structure. And then there is Ed Coan (among

others, of course). Louie stated that as a person with a longer

torso and wanting to bring his meet totals up as high as possible,

he had to really strengthen his lower back so he could pull a decent

deadlift.

Granted people can develop kinds of strength that they may not have

naturally, but just because someone can't do some exercise with a

certain amount of weight or run a certain distance in a given amount

of time has nothing to do with whether or not they are strong. I

realize this poses a dilemma in a structured school setting.

However, disregarding elite athletes who are on scholarship or are

getting paid huge sums of money or people who compete at something

for personal satisfaction, the best way to judge a person is by

effort expended. In other words, how much have they improved as an

individual over a certain period of time. Certainly a big fat kid

who can't walk 5 steps without wheezing but by the end of the year

has slimmed down and can run a 10 minute mile has improved much more

than the natural 16 year old jock who puts 50# on his bench press.

Rosemary