Powerlifting: 500 lbs Squat. Impressive? Achievable? How fast?
Recently I had the opportunity to be a guest at Ryan Lapadat King Of the Lifts (IG: kingofthelifts) podcast where we extensively discussed my Strength Standards and, more importantly, whether social media skewed our understanding on what an average person can achieve and what is considered impressive. We spent a lot of time talking whether 500 lbs squat is a reasonable number to aim for and I did some number crunching in real-time. Unfortunately, I made some mistakes. Thus, I’m writing this article to clear those errors and dive deeper into the world of 500 lbs Squat.
TLDR;
If you are a natural athlete in 500 lbs Squat club and weigh less than 205 lbs, you are damn impressive! The less you weigh, the more impressive you are! And if you reach it just within a few years of training, you are gifted.
Disclaimer
- Data is from openpowerlifting.org I assume it is relatively correct and the sample size is big enough to represent powerlifting as a whole.
- I make assumptions that are not always based on data, but every time I do, I explicitly state that.
- I encourage you to analyze the charts and graphs yourself — there’s a lot more that I skipped for brevity’s sake.
500 lbs counts, averages, and deviations
First, let’s look at the basic stats. In the chart above, you can see how many athletes in which weight class got to the 500+ lbs Squat. I checked 2019 and all time. The TOTAL columns represent a total count of athletes that compete in full powerlifting meets. The percentages are 500+ lbs’ers / all athletes.
From the first chart, we can surely say that 130–163 lbs weight class athletes who can Squat 500 lbs are impressive. But things get muddier in heavier classes. To help bring more clarity, I checked averaged and how far off by standard deviations 500 lbs is.
Except for 265+ lbs class, every class had a lower average than 500 lbs (50% of powerlifters). 265 lbs I’d say was more or less borderline, but lighter classes do not have most of the athletes coming even close to that mark. So, anyone, lighter than 231 lbs and with 500+ lbs Squat is better than average. The lighter they are the farther away from average they are.
Perhaps being 1/5 (205 lbs) or 1/3 (231 lbs) is not that impressive, but let’s not forget we are talking about powerlifting population, not general. This matters and later on I will show you why. But, to make my argument more appealing to powerlifters and not only general population,
I’ll consider 500+ lbs Squat impressive in 183 lbs class and not higher.
Coincidentally, this, is also my class and I will use my anecdotal experience to argue some points.
500 lbs @ 183 lbs
Now this is where things get interesting. We can see growth both in lifters and percentage of lifters who can hit the target. Also, more new lifters come in each year (they could have competed before, but did not hit 500 lbs yet). A quick note:
- Percentages for the first column: All 500 lbs’ers / All lifters.
- Percentages for the third column: New 500 lbs’ers / All lifters.
- Percentages for the fourth column: New lifters / All lifters.
I did not see the point of checking New 500 lbs’ers percentages from New lifters. That would mean: who hit 500+ lbs on their first try, which is not indicative of anything useful to us. Instead, I looked at how many new 500 lbs’ers we get from all the talent pool that year. We land roughly in the 5–6.5% zone. That includes first time competing AND veteran powerlifters who have yet to breach the target. Let me rephrase that:
Every year, we get only 5–6.5% new 500 lbs’ers. That’s 1 in 15–20 of 183 lbs powerlifters.
So, is it impressive? Absolutely. Can everyone achieve it? Probably not at 183 lbs (read on). Those who can, how fast? This is where we move to the second part of my analysis.
Timeframe to achieve 500 lbs
I don’t know about you guys, but anyone who begins squatting with 400 lbs is already damn strong. So, using this chart to extrapolate how long does it take to reach 500 lbs Squat is not the best idea. Clearly, before people even consider competing, they build a certain amount of strength.
Not satisfied with this, I tried equating 500 lbs Squat to Dots points by Tim Konertz (IG: cpt_timmy) which is currently the most fair formula for comparing different weight powerlifters. I chose 183 lbs class as a base and got 153 Dots. From there I looked at all classes and got the chart below.
As you can see, the same problem — starting points are way too high. And most of the 500 lbs (153 dots) squatters are clustered in the <1 year group. That just makes little sense. Maybe 500 lbs target is too low or too high? Well, look at this:
There’s a trend. The smaller the target the the larger the difference between that target and what was done in the first meet. But everything is more or less stable once the target is 450 lbs or more. So, high starting points cannot be explained by the end target.
I also tried eliminating certain weight classes too. But nothing really improved the situation. Starting and end points are just too damn close together and most of the lifters achieve their targets in <1 year. Anyone who’s been in the sport long enough to know well how not true that is.
In fact, from one of my recent analysis (see below), I’ve shown that more than half of powerlifting athletes do not compete more than once. And the ones who compete longer are usually stronger to begin with. Given this, any attempt to try determining how long does it take achieve certain targets is bound to fail. That’s because many people don’t even try.
So, what’s the answer? How long does it take to achieve 500 lbs Squat? Based on data — I can’t tell. It’s way too skewed and disproportional to even begin making educated guesses.
Personal anecdote
I believe I have to rely on anecdotal data in trying to determine how fast can one achieve 500 lbs Squat (@ 183lbs) and since I’m venturing in to speculation area, I feel it would be right for me to bring up my powerlifting career as an example.
I was in the gym since I was 12. Went through the motions of it until 18, where I first competed in powerlifting (2004). If I recall correctly I was in the 75kg / 165 lbs class and my raw numbers were:
- Squat ~125 kg / 275 lbs
- Benchpress ~100 kg / 225 lbs
- Deadlift ~150 kg / 330 lbs
From that point onwards I trained Single-Ply until 2008, then took a break from powerlifting and training and came back to train for one more year in 2010. Afterwards, it was on and off just training for maintenance, not to improve powerlifting numbers. 2 years ago (2018) I came back to train for powerlifting again. This time, Raw. My most recent Squat was 225 kg / 496 lbs 82.5 kg / 181 lbs class. Welp, I’m not even in the 500 lbs club.
So, my training experience is probably somewhere around 15 years total and 7 years for powerlifting. I’m 34 years old. Now, what does this anecdote tell you? That even after so much training I am still not in the 500 lbs club. Maybe I trained like crap? I can assure you I did not. I had programs from my very first training year and when I did powerlifting I trained like a beast, ate and slept like one too — my sole focus was to increase my total and everything else came second (and I never had a meet where I did less than before). My programming wasn’t bad either (and I logged everything). Our powerlifting gym used 3+1 microcycles with hypertrophy, power, and strength blocks in mesocycles. I’m sure I wasn’t a gym bro who just played around. My results prove that too. Nearly 1800 lbs (gym lifts) in Single-Ply at 90 kg / 198 lbs class (I was fat back then) and 1730 lbs in my last meet (it did not go well, haha).
Question is whether I’m average or better/worse. I think I’m average, but the years of training allowed me to reach somewhat respectable numbers. Lets look at my stats:
- Wrist: 17.5 cm / 6.9" — average. Good indicator for total muscle mass.
- Ankle: 22 cm / 8.7" — average. Good indicator for total muscle mass.
- Height: 176 cm / 5’9" — average.
- FFMI: 22–23 — max achievable for an average guy.
- Weight: 80–83kg — max on average for my height at 13–15% BF.
- FFM: ~70 kg — near max for me.
- Vertical jump: 66 cm — above average.
- Birth weight: Above average.
Vertical jump stands out, but the explanation is easy. Getting stronger improves your jump. To a point, but it improves it. 20–30% is reasonable to estimate. And if you subtract that, you get the average. Other thing to note was my high school sprint speeds. I don’t remember the numbers, but I know I was fast(ish). Top 3 in my school of ~1000 students. And I can’t run marathons for shit. That might show that I’m more Type II muscle fiber dominant and better at producing momentary force than sustaining it. Or maybe it’s a result of early weight training, who knows. Birth weight can also be used as an indicator for talent, so there’s that. Other than that, it’s hard to tell whether I’m gifted. I can’t measure my exact muscle fiber types (need biopsies) nor, say, muscle moment arms (that can make a huge difference). My limb lengths are average and none of my lifts is a “good at” lift. Although, in comparison, my Deadlift is better than my peers.
Here’s the thing, if you consider me an average guy or even better than average, then 500 lbs Squat is insanely impressive. Only and only if you consider me below average, then you can say 500 lbs is not impressive. 455 Dots points (660 kg / 1455 lbs Total) puts me in the Top 6% of all 181/183 powerlifters, though…
Final Thoughts
So, ok, maybe you agree with 500 lbs @ 183 lbs is a damn impressive feat. But then you want to say that 500 lbs is not impressive for higher weight classes. Say, 205 lbs. But here’s the thing, average population is not 205 lbs. It is much lighter. Sure, people of North America have a higher average weight (80.7 kg / 177.9 lbs), but that’s purely because of obesity rates. If you look at Europe (70.8 kg /156.1 lbs), even 183 lbs is too heavy. Yes, athletic populations are heavier because of muscle mass, but not by much if we are talking about natural athletes (drug users — whole other ballpark).
The other way we can look at this is through FFMI. 23 is considered maxed out average. I have such an FFMI and I squat (almost) 500 lbs. After 15 years (7 powerlifting) of training. This is not only impressive is near damn not achievable for average Joe who spends only a few years in the gym, if my personal anecdote is to indicate of something.
There’s a BUT though. If you look at openpowerlifting results sorted by Squat, you will see that people who have a big Squat have similar or weaker Deadlift. This could be because of anthropometric reasons and/or selection bias. Imagine AFL/NHL (or other similar) athletes who spend all their time on their feet and who need tremendous leg strength. Of course they will have crazy good Squat. But averages are very different. Look at one of my older analysis where I checked lift distribution.
I have a hunch, these athletes can be partially blamed for this skewed view of what’s achievable and what’s not. They go in, Squat big, do a mediocre Deadlift and call it a day. So, unless you are from an athletic population that’s good on their feet, you have no place in comparing yourself to them. Averages are much different. In fact, in all honesty, I want to redo this whole analysis with Totals to eliminate such single lift biases. Maybe, some day, if there’s demand.
So, to wrap it up, can anyone achieve 500 lbs Squat? My answer is NO. Not even close. While it might look like that when we look at powerlifting population data, I showed that it is extremely biased towards talented athletes (like any other sport with enough popularity). And anyone who hits 500 lbs Squat within 2–3 years of training is rather talented. Forget best 183 lbs lifters who are hitting almost 700 lbs. They are the outliers and do not represent what an average build can achieve. Think:
How many Michael Jordans, Kobe Bryants or Lebron James are there? Well, 3. You think it’s different in powerlifting (Gibbs, Orhii, Haack)? They are 1 in a million elite level athletes and then there are the rest of us — something every aspiring powerlifter should understand.
P.S. I do not think 500 lbs is my limit. Given enough years of dedicated work and no injuries I have a small chance to reach 250 kg / 550 lbs @ 83 kg / 183 lbs — strength is weird, it doesn’t stop increasing for a very long time and I still have 3kg /6.5 lbs of muscle mass to add.
Addendum
Since you are going to ask, here’s what 205 lbs class looks like.
In comparison to 183 lbs (5–6.5%), here every year we get 8–10% of new 500 lbs’ers. That’s 1 in 10–12. Pretty low if you ask me. Add the fact that both 183 and 205 lbs are the most numerous and competitive classes to begin with and suddenly you realize how far ahead these squatters are.
