I'm not trying to boast here but the average person in developed countries, is i think, is not sufficiently fit and as a result they don't really have a good reality check on the physical differences between men and women. yes on average, men are something like only 40% stronger.. but the average person doesn't work out at all. once you do, the physical strength differences take off.. then level off again because lets face it, all the records are set by genetically gifted people these days.
so back in highschool in 2005, i walked into the gym having never worked out before other than shoveling dirt and building damns as a kid.
weighed 155 pounds but could have met the 150 pound weight class if i tried. i think the next weight class was 165 and the records were significantly higher.
I dead lifted 385 pounds.. something like 12 times, without a weight belt. never tried to actually see what I could do once, was afraid i would hurt myself.. the record was, i think 405 pounds for the 150 weight class.
I could clean 175 pounds.. with no form at all, just bend over like a dead lift, and lift the bar to my shoulders. (due to bad posture, i could never lift much over my head, as those muscles were not developed, and still arent). the record was 185 pounds, set by the same person as the 405 deadlift.
I could hold a 60 pound barbell out at arms length, for like 20 seconds. 50 in my left arm.
I had broke my left tibia in 2001, so when i put 1200 pounds on the leg press, i felt my right tibia bending under the load but not my left. i didn't even feel sore the next day, but i only lifted the 1200 pounds off the stops (which are about half way). 1200 pounds was all i could put on the machine as we only had something like 6x100 pound weights and i had to fill it up with 45's
now take a look at this person in the 190 pound weight class
The OpenPowerlifting project aims to create a permanent, accurate, convenient, accessible, open archive of the world's powerlifting data.
www.openpowerlifting.org
and then read all the records in here
again, I did that with no prior intentional exercise.
i'm not actually genetically gifted. i later found out that i was under immense cortisol stress in my childhood and turns out it suppresses unnecessary metabolism (i was cold all the time, i wore sweat pants under my jeans nearly year round) and promotes muscle growth.
