Strength Standards by Bodyweight: Squat, Bench, Deadlift, OHP

A 100 kg squat means very different things for a 60 kg lifter and a 110 kg lifter. That is why strength standards by bodyweight exist. They turn raw numbers into a ratio you can compare across body sizes, so you can see whether your lifts are balanced, where you are lagging, and what a sensible next goal looks like. This guide gives you beginner-to-elite tables for the squat, bench press, deadlift and overhead press for men and women. It also explains where these numbers come from, where they mislead, and how to turn your level into a target you can hit this training block.

TL;DR: Divide your one-rep max by your bodyweight and find your row in the tables below. For example, an intermediate man squats about 1.5x bodyweight and an intermediate woman about 1.25x. The standards favour lighter lifters and assume a decent technique baseline, so use them to find your weakest lift and set the next step, not to judge yourself.

How to Read Strength Standards by Bodyweight

Every table here uses a bodyweight multiple: your one-rep max (1RM) divided by your bodyweight. A 70 kg woman who deadlifts 105 kg has a 1.5x deadlift. Find that multiple in the right column and you have your level.

The five levels mean roughly this:

• Beginner: you have just learned the movement and can lift it with acceptable form.
• Novice: a few months of consistent training. Most lifters still add weight session to session or week to week.
• Intermediate: usually one to two years of structured training. Progress now comes weekly or monthly, not every session.
• Advanced: several years of serious, well-programmed training. Gains are slow and hard-won.
• Elite: competitive-level strength. Many dedicated lifters never get here, and that is fine.

Where the numbers come from

There is no single official set of standards. The common versions, from older coaching tables to modern online calculators built on user-submitted lifts and powerlifting meet results, roughly agree with each other. The tables below are a consensus of those ranges, rounded so you can read them quickly.

The biases you should know about

Three biases matter:

1. Lighter lifters look stronger. Strength does not scale one-to-one with bodyweight. A 120 kg lifter usually lifts more absolute weight but a lower multiple than a 65 kg lifter. If you are heavy, you can treat one level lower as equivalent. If you are very light, read the tables a little stricter.
2. Self-reported data skews high. Calculators built on user entries attract people proud of their numbers, and some of those numbers are optimistic.
3. Competition rules differ from gym lifting. A belted, paused, judged lift is not the same as a gym squat of uncertain depth. Squat to below parallel and bench with a touch on the chest before you compare.

With those caveats in mind, here are the tables.

Strength Standards by Bodyweight for Men and Women

All values are 1RM as a multiple of bodyweight.

Men

Lift	Beginner	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Elite
Back squat	0.75x	1.25x	1.5x	2.0x	2.5x
Bench press	0.5x	0.75x	1.0x	1.5x	1.9x
Deadlift	1.0x	1.5x	2.0x	2.5x	3.0x
Overhead press	0.4x	0.55x	0.75x	1.0x	1.25x

Women

Lift	Beginner	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Elite
Back squat	0.5x	0.75x	1.25x	1.5x	2.0x
Bench press	0.25x	0.5x	0.75x	1.0x	1.25x
Deadlift	0.5x	1.0x	1.25x	1.75x	2.25x
Overhead press	0.2x	0.35x	0.5x	0.65x	0.85x

What intermediate looks like in kilos

Multiples are easy to compare and hard to picture, so here is the intermediate column at a few common bodyweights:

Lifter	Squat	Bench	Deadlift	OHP
Man, 70 kg	105 kg	70 kg	140 kg	52.5 kg
Man, 90 kg	135 kg	90 kg	180 kg	67.5 kg
Woman, 60 kg	75 kg	45 kg	75 kg	30 kg
Woman, 75 kg	95 kg	55 kg	95 kg	37.5 kg

The ratios between lifts matter as much as the levels. In most balanced lifters the deadlift is the heaviest lift, the squat is roughly 80-90% of it, the bench is about two-thirds of the squat, and the overhead press is about 60-65% of the bench. If one lift sits a full level below the others, that is the lift your next block should prioritise.

Of course, all of this depends on knowing your 1RM. You do not need to test a true max to get one.

Estimating Your 1RM Without Maxing Out

Testing a genuine one-rep max is a skill. It needs a good warm-up, a spotter or safety pins, and technique that holds under maximal load. Beginners and novices rarely have all three, and grinding a sloppy single teaches bad habits. An estimate from a hard set of reps is safer and accurate enough to place you in a table.

Two common formulas:

• Epley: 1RM = weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30)
• Brzycki: 1RM = weight × 36 ÷ (37 − reps)

Say you squat 100 kg for 5 reps. Epley gives about 117 kg and Brzycki about 113 kg. Use the average, or the lower number if you want to be conservative.

To get a useful estimate:

1. Use sets of 3-6 reps. Accuracy falls off quickly above about 10 reps, because muscular endurance starts to dominate.
2. Stop with one or two reps in reserve. A set taken to technical failure gives a good estimate. A set taken to grinding, form-breaking failure gives a misleading one.
3. Use a recent set. Pull it from the last two weeks of training, not your best day six months ago.
4. Keep the standard strict. Count only reps at full depth on the squat, with a chest touch on the bench and lockout on the deadlift and press.

If you log your sets, you already have the data. A progressive overload tracker that calculates estimated 1RM from your logged sets saves you the arithmetic and shows the trend over weeks, which tells you more than any single number.

Once you know your level, the useful question is what gets you to the next one.

What Actually Moves You Up a Level

The jump from beginner to novice is mostly practice. You learn the lift, your nervous system gets more efficient, and the bar goes up almost every session. From novice onwards, it takes deliberate work.

Set a target one level up, on one lift

Pick your weakest lift relative to the tables and aim for the next level on that lift over 8-12 weeks. If you are a man benching 0.85x bodyweight, the target is 1.0x. That is concrete and reachable. "Get stronger" is neither.

Progressive overload, applied patiently

Add load or reps in small steps. Novices can often add 2.5 kg to lower-body lifts each session, or each week. Intermediates usually need weekly or monthly progression schemes, such as adding a rep per set until they reach the top of a rep range and then raising the weight. The overhead press and bench move slowest, so use 1-1.25 kg plates if your gym has them.

Frequency and volume

Training each main lift twice a week beats once a week for most lifters below advanced. A 4 day workout split with two lower and two upper days fits this neatly, and it leaves room for accessory work on your weak points.

Bodyweight is part of the ratio

The multiple has two sides. Gaining lean mass usually raises absolute strength faster than it raises bodyweight, especially for underweight lifters. Cutting fat can also improve your ratio even if the bar weight stays flat. Decide which side you are working on.

Recovery and plateaus

Sleep, enough protein and planned deload weeks do more for the next level than an extra set does. If a lift has stalled for a month or more, check the usual suspects before adding volume. Why you're not making gym progress walks through them.

That leaves the last piece: checking your lifts against the standards often enough to notice when you have moved up.

Tracking Your Lifts Against Strength Standards

Comparing yourself to a table once is a curiosity. Doing it every month is a feedback loop. The simplest version is a spreadsheet with your bodyweight and an estimated 1RM per lift, updated every few weeks, with the multiple calculated next to it. Any decent workout log that shows estimated maxes over time works too.

The catch is that strength gains at intermediate level are slow, and slow progress is easy to miss. That is where many lifters lose interest. Progress is not absent; it just becomes invisible between checks.

If that sounds familiar, Ascend, a fitness RPG, was built around this problem. Its Strength stat scores your main compound lifts relative to bodyweight, the same logic as the tables above. A better squat-to-bodyweight ratio shows up as real progression on your character instead of a number in a spreadsheet. Logging workouts, routines and your history is free forever. The character progression (stat EXP, the E-to-S rank and quests) is part of Ascension Mode, and every new user gets 14 days free to try it. Your workouts keep counting toward your character either way. Ascend is one option among several; the habit of checking your ratio against a standard matters more than the tool you use.

Use the Standards as a Map, Not a Verdict

Strength standards by bodyweight are most useful as a map. They show where you are, which lift is lagging and what the next realistic step looks like. Read them with the biases in mind: lighter lifters score higher, self-reported data runs optimistic, and depth standards matter. Estimate your 1RM from a hard set of 3-6 reps rather than grinding out a risky single. Pick one lift and target one level up over the next 8-12 weeks. Then train it with progressive overload, twice-weekly frequency and enough recovery to absorb the work. Check your multiples every month. Moving from novice to intermediate on even one lift is a real, measurable sign that the training is working.