Strength standards from meet results: squat, bench press and deadlift by weight class and age

These numbers are not the general public. They are lifters who competed in drug-tested categories at raw powerlifting meets: people who trained for a meet and then lifted in front of judges. A typical gym-goer's numbers are not in this data, so the table says nothing about where you should be or what you should lift.

The data come from OpenPowerlifting, a public-domain archive of meet results.¹ From its release of October 30, 2026, the tables keep full-power meets (squat, bench press and deadlift in one meet) held from January 1, 2015, in the raw and tested categories, and take each lifter's heaviest successful squat, bench press and deadlift. That leaves 327,938 lifters: 108,389 women and 219,549 men.

How to read the table

A percentile is a place in the line-up. The 50th percentile, the median, is the lift with half the lifters in that row below it and half above. The 25th percentile has a quarter of them below it; the 90th has nine in ten below it. Each row is one sex, one weight class and one lift, with the number of lifters it counts.

• Weight class means the International Powerlifting Federation's classes, read from the bodyweight recorded at the meet where the lift was made: "63" is over 57 up to 63 kg, "84+" is over 84 kg. It is how the data are grouped, not a suggestion about anyone's bodyweight.
• Kilograms first, pounds in brackets. Kilograms are rounded to the nearest half kilo and pounds to the nearest pound (1 kg = 2.20462 lb).
• Each lift stands alone. A lifter's heaviest squat, bench press and deadlift can come from different meets, so a row's three lifts don't add up to anyone's total.
• A row needs at least 50 lifters to be printed. None fell short in this release: the smallest row, the women's 47 kg squat, counts 3,855.

By sex and weight class

The 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles of each lifter's heaviest successful lift, tested raw full-power meets from 2015 on.¹

Download this table (CSV). Free to reuse with a link back to this page.

By age

The 50th percentile of each lift by age band, all weight classes together. The age is the lifter's age at the meet where that lift was made. Lifters under 18, and lifts from entries with no age recorded, are left out of this table only; they stay in the one above.

Related tables: how active your state is, from the CDC's state survey, including the share of adults who do strength work two or more days a week. All nine tables, with their sources and how to cite them, are listed on one page for writers.

What stands out

• The deadlift is the heaviest of the three and the bench press the lightest at every percentile, in every weight class, for women and for men.
• The median rises with each heavier class. For every lift and both sexes, the 50th percentile is higher in each class than in the class below it. The men's median squat goes from 111 kg (245 lb) at 59 kg to 230 kg (507 lb) at 120+.
• The spread inside one class is wider than the step between classes. In the men's 83 kg class the squat runs from 160 kg (353 lb) at the 25th percentile to 227.5 kg (502 lb) at the 90th, a 67.5 kg gap; the median of the next class up is 12.5 kg higher (195 kg against 182.5 kg).
• The bench press is about two-thirds of the squat for men and a little over half for women, comparing medians in one class: 120 kg against 182.5 kg in the men's 83 kg class, 57.5 kg against 102.5 kg in the women's 63 kg class.
• By age, the squat and deadlift medians are highest at 24–34 for both sexes and lower in each band after it, with 60+ the lowest. The women's median bench press is 62.5 kg (138 lb) in all three bands from 18 to 39. The age table puts every weight class together, so a band's median also depends on the mix of classes in it.
• The busiest classes are the men's 83 kg and 93 kg, with more than 47,000 lifters per lift each, and the women's 63 kg, with more than 19,000.

How to use it for your own training

As a map of where competitors sit, not as a scale for you. The number worth comparing is your own, from a month ago. Pick one lift, write down the weight and the reps every session in a workout log, and add weight or reps over time; progressive overload covers how. The weight for a set comes from the reps you're about to do, not from a row in this table.

If you want a number of your own to set beside it, the one-rep max calculator estimates a max from one hard set. That is an estimate from a set in the gym; the table lists the heaviest single lifts that judges passed at meets, so the two are not the same measurement. The DOTS calculator turns a three-lift total into one score adjusted for bodyweight.

Where the numbers come from

OpenPowerlifting is a public archive of powerlifting meet results. Its bulk download for the release updated October 30, 2026 (revision 4a1c65a7) was taken on October 31, 2026, and its file held 4,059,940 result rows.¹ The licence file in the download says the data are "contributed to the public domain".

The filters, in order: a meet on or after January 1, 2015; full power, the squat, bench press and deadlift in one meet; the Raw equipment category, which the dataset defines as bare knees or knee sleeves (the Wraps category is left out); the tested category, which the dataset says records whether results count as drug-tested and "does not imply that the lifter actually took a drug test"; women and men; no disqualified or no-show entries; sanctioned meets; a recorded bodyweight.² That kept 885,472 entries from 327,938 lifters.

A lifter is one name and sex category in the data, which numbers lifters who share a name. For each lifter and each lift, the table takes the heaviest successful lift across those entries, with the weight class and age from the meet where it was made; a tie keeps the earlier meet. The percentiles use linear interpolation between neighbouring lifters (the inclusive method spreadsheets call PERCENTILE.INC). The same filters can be run again on any later release.

If you reuse the table, cite OpenPowerlifting, not this page: the data are theirs. A link back here is appreciated.

How to cite this table

For the data, the attribution OpenPowerlifting's licence file suggests: "This page uses data from the OpenPowerlifting project, https://www.openpowerlifting.org." For these percentiles: Diogo Fitness, "Strength standards from meet results", October 31, 2026, computed from the OpenPowerlifting release of October 30, 2026, https://diogofit.com/learn/strength-standards/.

If you want someone reading your numbers

A table of competitors can't say what your next session should be. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around your week and a weekly call looks at how the week went and sets the next one. How coaching works lays it out, and apply is the first step.

Common questions

What is the average bench press by age?

For competitors, the table above gives the median rather than the average. Among men in tested raw meets: 125 kg (276 lb) at 18–23, 135 kg (298 lb) at 24–34 and at 35–39, then 130, 120 and 95 kg in the older bands. Among women: 62.5 kg (138 lb) from 18 to 39, then 60, 55 and 45 kg. Every bodyweight is in those figures together, and they describe competitors, not people in general.

What is the average squat weight for men and women?

It depends on bodyweight, so the table splits it by class. Among tested raw competitors, the median squat runs from 111 kg (245 lb) in the men's 59 kg class to 230 kg (507 lb) at 120+, and from 72.5 kg (160 lb) in the women's 47 kg class to 125 kg (276 lb) at 84+.

How much should I bench, squat or deadlift?

This table can't answer that and doesn't try: it shows where competitors sit. The weight for your own sets comes from the reps you plan to do, which how much weight to lift walks through, and the comparison worth making is with your own log.

Do these tables give strength levels?

No. They give percentiles of one stated group, with the method above, and no level names. Where you sit among competitors in drug-tested categories says nothing about whether your training is working; your log does.