[quote]Loudog75 wrote:
Interesting topic. What % of your body weight do you rep?
[/quote]
For one rep? Roughly 110% of my bodyweight I guess. Not very much as I am still a lightweight weakling, but when I started lifting I was hard pressed benching 90lbs.
I was thinking about 5-10% could do it for 1 rep, less than 1% for 10 reps.
I think it’s a little unfair as some people may be strong, but just haven’t benched in a while or don’t bench. Give them a couple of weeks and they may surprise you.
Sort of like on Crossfit when some guy says Jerry Rice probably would suck at Fran. He’s bloody Jerry Rice! Also I’m pretty sure you let him do it once, his time may suck. His second time would beat most of the Crossfitters.
I think it’s a little unfair as some people may be strong, but just haven’t benched in a while or don’t bench. Give them a couple of weeks and they may surprise you.
Sort of like on Crossfit when some guy says Jerry Rice probably would suck at Fran. He’s bloody Jerry Rice! Also I’m pretty sure you let him do it once, his time may suck. His second time would beat most of the Crossfitters.
I’ve noticed a lot of guys think they are stronger than they really are and watched them be humbled by half of their bodyweight. There is whole generation at the moment that was minimally physically active as adolescents and everyone received a trophy for participating.
I currently have my 12 yr old daughter and 9 yr old son do bodyweight squats, pushups, planks, inverted rows* and I’m working on their pullups.
*Inverted Row - Performed on horizontal bar. The person lies face up grabs the bar and pulls themself until their chest touches the bar. I’ve heard other names for this exercise.
With no training experience, my guess would be less than 1%.
Have you ever watched someone brand new to lifting bench for the first time? The bar wobbles all over the place. It takes a little bit of practice just to get a smooth bar path. Take a complete newb off the street who’s never been on a bench and load the bar with his bodyweight (whatever that may be) and I would practically guarantee he’ll get pinned. Not necessarily so much from lack of strength as lack of coordination.
Given that many people are overweight or obese, benching one’s bodyweight would be a challenge for most folks!
I remember when I started so you have one subject for your experiment, I weighted about 145-150, and I did 135 for 1. More weight would have pinned me. When I started I wasn’t totally “out of shape”, I just hadn’t trained with weigth. I could do about 50-60 pushups and 8 pullups and run for 20-25 mins before I first hit the gym.
First time I squatted, it was front squat, I don’t remember the weight, but after the front squat, I did sets of back squat with 95 for ~10 reps.
First time I deadlifted, it was 135 for 5. Wasn’t max effort, I wouldn’t blow a disk.
Squat and deadlift increased tremendously in 2-3 week because of neural adaptation. I remember the second week of deadlifting, I added 50 lbs for a total of 185 and it was easy (ofc it’s light!).
When my brother first got me into the gym I was 15 yrs old. I could barely bench 55lbs a few times. Granted I was the most inactive kid you would’ve ever met in your life, but even now looking at the people who “train” in my gym I rarely see even 225lbs on the bar. My last gym was notorious for anabolic users (before someone harps on this I know the source and the people involved) and even 315lbs was considered good there.
So to answer your question, anyone in the general public, excluding kids that play a sport or men that have a job doing manual labor, I say less than 1% will be able to lift their own bodyweight for 1 repetition.
No one can do that. It is physically impossible.
[quote]NoWheyOut wrote:
Just something me and a couple of mates were chatting breeze over a couple of beers on the weekend. Not sure how it came up but it was kind of interesting.
What percentage of men do you think could bench their bodyweight for one rep?
How about for 10 reps?
We’re talking about ALL healthy males aged around 18 to 40 not just gym rats here. Before I started training I certainly couldn’t because I was a weak ass pussy, but I know of some people who could with no weight training.
Discuss…[/quote]
I get a chance to train a lot of college age people. Mostly I find that they
– cannot do a pushup in good form at all due to both poor strength in the primary movers and core issues (look like walruses when they try)
– cannot even remotely do a pullup, even a negative.
– cannot do a bodyweight squat in good form. They are usually very inflexible and have, at best, poor posterior chain activation.
This is for the ones that are roughly normal weight (so less than 30% body fat). The more obese ones wouldn’t be able to do it at all. And strength drops off quickly with age and a sedentary lifestyle, so that’s another large chunk of the population that can’t do it – I’d be surprised if most guys pushing 40 could do a pushup correctly. Since a pushup is roughly 70% bodyweight, I would say less than 10% of the general male population in this age bracket (18 - 40) have the raw strength to do a single bench with their own bodyweight. As a purely practical matter I wouldn’t even put that many under the bar since they are not neurologically organized enough to pull off a single rep without eating it (the bar, that is).
Just my rough SWAG (= Scientific Wild-Assed Guess) for this.
– jj
i sure as hell couldnt do it before i started gymin’. i could probably bench 100 lbs at 220bw back then
[quote]Thunderrage wrote:
No one can do that. It is physically impossible. [/quote]
What is physically impossible?
[quote]Thunderrage wrote:
No one can do that. It is physically impossible. [/quote]
This.
Seriously though, I think some people are just born not to bench. People might pick on me for this later but I remember being like 220 (fat) years ago, and training fairly actively (though pulling oriented with little chest activation) and being pinned by 150, after doing some very slow negative reps to a dead stop, and some pre-exhaustion from flies. I suppose it’s still pathetic.
I’m not telling what I’m doing now but I’m much leaner and strength is up, including the notorious bench.
Training preferences are probably important as well, as my strict curl at the time was not that much worse than my bench (for slow reps) and people are impressed with my grip.
Though this is getting erratic, I would also like to relate an anecdote told to me by my teenaged friend who says there was an older guy in his gym who would step in and go straight to max benching without warm-up, his max being easily over 300 pounds. Then the guy supposedly got a good massage and his bench numbers dropped dramatically. Due to muscles loosening up? I don’t know. Some sources (Fred Hatfield’s forum comes to mind) claim that massage would improve strength by opening up some sort of blockages.
This is getting too long so bye.
Hmmm…I think it’d be tough to get an accurate count unless they were all holding a shoe…you know, for scientific purposes
Bodyweight benching, RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Very few people I know of can lay down on a bench for the first time in their lives, unrack 80 - 100% of their BW, and not have the bar wobble. Doing the weight is one thing, but I feel like all the little massles that make the bar not wiggle (as someone mentioned) just aren’t there almost all the time in newb benchers.
This is really just me tooting my own horn, but the first time I benched I got 135 for 5 at a bodyweight of 130 I believe. Of course, I was “athletic” (gymnast… OBVIOUSLY more evidence that functional bodyweight exercises and ring training like gymnasts is the only way to get strong), so I guess I was special? My bench still sucks though.
[quote]A Ninny Mouse wrote:
This is really just me tooting my own horn, but the first time I benched I got 135 for 5 at a bodyweight of 130 I believe. Of course, I was “athletic” (gymnast… OBVIOUSLY more evidence that functional bodyweight exercises and ring training like gymnasts is the only way to get strong), so I guess I was special? My bench still sucks though. [/quote]
Not uncommon. Gymnasts are pretty darn strong.
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
Which Gen Pop are you talking about?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3349130914020546418#[/quote]
I have mixed feelings on this. Great to know they have a positive outlet, not so great to know the predators among them are far stronger than the average guy on the street. With that said, the guy that first motivated me to lift was absolutely jacked from a two year stint in Leavenworth.
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
Which Gen Pop are you talking about?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3349130914020546418#[/quote]
Is it bad that I was motivated by rapists and murderers? Also, anyone have the link to the deadlift day?