Strength standards

How much should a 243 lb (110 kg) man deadlift?

Short answer: at 243 lb (110 kg), the intermediate standard in the deadlift is a 207.5 kg (455 lb) one-rep max. A beginner's first marker is 105 kg (230 lb); advanced starts at 260 kg (575 lb). The scale is mine, built on DOTS — the method is below.

Standards at 243 lb (110 kg)

Standard1RM, kg1RM, lb× bodyweight
Beginner105 kg230 lb0.95×
Novice155 kg340 lb1.41×
Intermediate207.5 kg455 lb1.89×
Advanced260 kg575 lb2.36×
Elite312.5 kg690 lb2.84×

Each row is the one-rep max where that standard starts. Kilograms are rounded to 2.5, pounds to 5.

What competitors lift

At raw USAPL meets in the up-to-120 kg class (693 lifters in the sample), the median deadlift is 240 kg (530 lb); the top 10% lift 295 kg (650 lb) or more. These people spent years preparing to compete — compare yourself with them once you have a couple of years under the bar.

I'll work out your own percentile among them in the percentile calculator.

Where you are now

Lift
Sex
Units

How I build these standards

This is my scale, not someone else's table. It's built on DOTS: a formula that puts results on a common footing across bodyweight and sex (coefficients as used by OpenPowerlifting). The thresholds are a DOTS equivalent of a powerlifting total: Beginner 150 · Novice 225 · Intermediate 300 · Advanced 375 · Elite 450. 450 is roughly the top 5% of men in classic powerlifting meets, 300 is first-meet level.

DOTS is for a total, and this is a single lift. So I make an assumption: your result in one lift is its usual share of a total. The shares are medians from classic powerlifting results in OpenPowerlifting open data (USAPL, about 17 thousand entries): for men squat 35.5%, bench 23.5%, deadlift 41%; for women 36%, 20% and 44%.

Your proportions may differ — some people bench strong, others pull strong — and then a single-lift table shifts. Treat it as a guide to where to grow, not a verdict.

Log your sets in the diary — I'll show you how you climb from one standard to the next.

Other bodyweights

Read next