The power lifts consist of the Back Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlift, which are the lifts tested in Powerlifting as a sport. This is considered a sufficiently well-rounded combination of movements that by simply adding up the maximum weight you can successfully lift one time with each of them, boom, that is your measure of overall strength, your “Total.”
A 1000 lb total for an average-sized young man is considered “good,” and one could achieve this by, for example, Squatting 350 lb + Benching 250 lb + Deadlifting 400 lb.
For reference, the American Record for a man in the 183 lb bodyweight class is a whopping 2016.66 lb set by Knute Douglas in 2019. Just over 11X bodyweight total there. My own lifetime bests yield about 7X.
I don’t mean to get into the weeds too much on the competitive aspect of the sport, as that’s not our coaching focus or audience. Health and Longevity is. But it is sometimes helpful to have an awareness of what the human body is capable of as we embark on our more modest goals. A 1-2X bodyweight total is probably enough to sustain basic health over years.
The short story is that Powerlifting is a proven and tested system for developing real strength, which over time is tightly linked to improved outcomes in all-cause mortality. You may think that lifting weights is unsafe, or that you are too old, too weak, too busy, too broken, too tall, too short, too injury-prone, too nerdy, too overweight, too skinny, too uncoordinated, too awkward, etc. Fear is a powerful emotion.
But those fears are rooted in unfortunate myths that are part or our unhealthy culture, and keep people down and dependent on dysfunctional systems, like fad diets, 3-minute abs & shake weights, pharmaceuticals, and caregivers. Everything that doesn’t work is easy to do in the present, you just get charged for it now and with interest on your health when it still doesn’t work years down the road.
But the beauty of the lifting community is that there are so many real examples of people who prove that it can be done safely and for a long time.
Take Fred Archambault, who at the tender age of 80 performed a 330 pound squat, 215 pound bench press, and 407 pound deadlift. He passed in 2018 at 95 years old, and lifted competitively until he was 87. That’s the definition of longevity: strength, fitness, and function maintained for a long, long time.
Already your mind will get to work on explanations for why he is exceptional and this could no way be an everyday accomplishment. And you may be right that he is at least somewhat of an outlier. Outliers make great news stories, so we hear about them first. Except in a sport with millions of people, statistically there are thousands of Freds to varying degrees. Look up the results for a local powerlifting meet and scroll to the bottom to see those that finished last. Those people are strong too, because they were brave enough to try.
The things that prevent you from writing your own story this way… are fear, and perhaps not knowing where to start — which I think is also just fear is disguise, because the internet has leveled the knowledge playing field. “Powerlifting coach near me” is just a couple clicks away from you right now.
The Power Lifts work so well because they are compound (multi-joint) movements that stress the body in predictable and balanced ways, and can be incrementally built up week by week for years. They also provide a potent enough stimulus at all levels that body composition (fat loss, muscle gain) can be consistently improved and controlled with smart programming. This may be what makes them so unique and important for most people.
I prefer them as a foundation for teaching strength even over Gymnastics, because they are so simple to implement with minimal equipment, and clients have very predictable progress when they follow a well-designed progression. This is especially true as we fight through the pandemic. What can you do at home or outside with minimal equipment, and still achieve measurable, predictable results? Simplicity is king.
I think Powerlifting as a method of developing individual health and fitness is a shock to so many people still because it is so simple. Like, “how could I have missed this?” In a marketing culture where newness is constantly being promoted as *the* thing, simplicity is either received as a rude awakening and ignored, or as a welcome antidote — if you’re willing to leave your ego at the door and accept that the process is going to take years of steady, smart work, and perhaps that you started later than you might have. There will be no magic pills, and your personal health revolution will probably not be streamed live on Instagram. But it will work, and it will be worth it.
In the next article I will dive into Weightlifting and contrast it with Powerlifting to paint a more clear picture of which is more appropriate for different audiences and goals.
TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read for you non-millennials): start lifting ASAP, find a coach, ignore the past narrative that says you can’t and write a new chapter where you can.
Coach Mauricio