Dear Andrew. I work out with weights twice a week doing full body workouts (I also do a martial art/combative sport twice a week). I feel great and love the way I look. During my weights workout, which is by myself, I do the following:

push ups
crunches
bench press
front squat
overhead press
lunges
curls
dips

with some variations. I am not lifting very heavy. Should I be? I get a lot of my info on lifts from EXRX and such - should I be trying to meet the strength standards described there?

Sincerely, Middle Aged Garage Lifter

 

Hey MAGL: Thanks for writing! First, let me congratulate you on being one of two or perhaps three people on the continent who actually says "I feel great and love the way I look" without qualification. Rather than dive immediately into responding to your question, I'm going to focus on that statement for a moment and point a couple of things out to everyone else--myself included--who spend all our time bemoaning our physical shortcomings.

As everyone who reads MPF knows, I'm obsessed with fitness: how to get stronger, build bigger muscles, and get leaner, yes, but also to feel better, move easier and better and more fluidly. And as such, I frankly spend most of my time focusing on the ways my own 38-year-old body doesn't work well. What are my shortcomings and how can I overcomes them? How can this or that workout protocol make it better? This probably makes for good problem-solving in the gym, but not such a great personal self-image.

I complain about being sore, not being able to recover from injuries or workouts as I did in my 20's, about lacking mobility here or there, and lacking beast-like strength and athletic grace pretty much everywhere, but I also have to admit that for a guy with a multiple jobs, kids, and responsibilities, for a non-pro and a guy who can't dedicate 20 hours a week to exercise and diet-planning, I look and feel...pretty good.

I use myself as an example here because a lot of us who aren't obese, who don't have major limitations or health issues, still seem to talk about ourselves and our bodies as if we do. "I'm fat," says the woman who wears a size 8. "I'm weak," says the guy who squats 350. "I'm slow," says the guy who runs a 5.2 40-yard dash.

You want to see fat, weak, and slow, go to the mall sometime and have yourself a good look around at what passes for average in this country. Or swing by a retirement home and check out those bodies. Newsflash, Mr. and Ms. Athletic Body 2010, we're all going to wind up in bodies like that someday, wishing for, nay, pining for our size-8 wearing, 350-squatting, 5.2-dashing days. So, as the song goes, enjoy yourself--it's later than you think. 

This may be an LA thing, but the point is that I just don't hear statements like MAGL's very often. So he's to be commended on that.

Anyway: as for MAGL's actual question: should he be shooting for strength standards prescribed by EXRX?

I looked into them--you can too via the link above--and saw that their standards were high, but, I think, realistic. Here's their chart for recreational weightlifters on the bench press:

Chucking myself blithely under the bus here, I can bench press a whopping 230 pounds at a body weight of about 183 or so. That puts me between an intermediate and an advanced lifter by these standards, which I would say is about accurate. Although I've been lifting since 1987 or so, it's long been apparent to me that, though I'm not a weakling, my potential for building massive strength is fairly limited compared to a lot of guys.

I'm okay with that. And so this chart seems about right: I'm ahead of some guys and well behind some others in raw strength. Given what I see in the gym, that feels accurate. Ditto for their standards on the squat, press, clean, and deadlift.

However, circling back to MAGL's question: "should" a person work towards these standards? I suppose it depends on their goals. If I worked my way up to a 280 pounds bench press over the next year, to catapault me into the 'advanced' column, would I be healthier than I am now?

Probably not. In fact, given what may very well happen to my shoulders in that time period, or how my cardio, mobility and flexibility work would probably have to suffer as I became a big-weight specialist, I may get unhealthier. So by 'health' standards, I'd say absolutely not.

I'd get stronger, of course, and I may become marginally more athletic in an explosive-strength kind of way. From personal experience, however, I would also probably be more vulnerable to injury.

To make those numbers I'd have to eat more and more often, gulp down more supplements, get more sleep than I do and spend as little time as possible moving outside of the gym. None of those are very likely or very appealing at this point, so the bottom line is that I'm unlikely to be making these particular numbers any time soon.

MAGL, you're a martial artist and a twice-a-week lifter. You like your workout regimen. You feel good about the way your body looks and feels already. If you really, really want to get bigger and stronger and are willing to put in the kind of time and effort such an endeavor requires--these numbers are as good a place to start as anywhere else. But if not, I'd suggest not letting a chart of what you "should" be lifting dictate the way you feel about your body.