A silly question at first glance, but please hear me out.
The other day I met a guy who bragged about lifting a 385 lbs bench press, aiming for 440 lbs before the end of this year. He was overweight with a belly, but decent sized upper body. No legs. Appearantly he had significant knee problems, why he skipped leg day entirely. Also, it became appearant that alcohol was an important interest of his. Judging by his way of explaining stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cheated his 1 RM with no form what so ever.
Then I thought to myself: I would have been more impressed if he did a 440 lbs squat, than a bench press!
I may be wrong here, but can’t let go of the ego lifting involved in bench press focused lifting. Also, stabilizing a heavy weight on your shoulders will get your attention - even though it’s not an extreme weight.
More people bench than squat, which has resulted in more people benching higher numbers than squatting high numbers. In most gyms, I imagine you’ll actually find more people benching 405 than squatting 405, much like how you’ll probably find more people that can bench 405 than can yoke walk 405.
That said, I am more impressed by a 440lb bench than a 440lb squat. It simply takes longer to train for the former than the latter, for most people.
Assuming he had no injury preventing from squatting, a 440lb bench press is much more impressive than a 440lb squat.
When I first started lifting weights the only question I heard from anyone who knew at least something about lifting weights was, “How much can you bench?”
440lb squat is crazy,440lb bench is extremely crazy for me,I would never ever reached this number as I am only doing hypertrophy style training.A year or two ago isn’t there a pro Indonesian bodybuilder died while squatting 440lbs
I shared a squat rack (people still do that right?) with a monster of a guy training a local strongman comp. I would’ve been squatting circa 100kg, this dude was making light work of my set up just pressing it. I quickly moved on and left him to it! I am always in awe of the seriously big pressing movements.
I’m not anywhere near either camp and it’s doubtful I ever will be, but if I make the numbers relative to myself then yes, the bench is more impressive all day long.
A 440 lb bench is more impressive than a 440 lb squat with some caveats.
If it is one of those touch and go benches, verses an ass to grass squat, no.
Typically, we are expected to squat more than we bench, but dudes do a minor little squat and call it good. And do a minor little touch and go bench and call it good.
Any dude that can squat 2xBw in my opinion is a bad ass. If they can also do 1.5xbw bench, and 1xbw press, yeah, I am more impressed than the 440 bench.
For me, at 190, that would be a 380 squat (no fucking way at 61), a 285 bench (no fucking way) and a 190 OHP ( I did hit 155).
So, yes, impressive as fuck - but not as impressive as the guys that hit the other metrics of 2.5BW for DL, 2xBW for Squat, 1.5BW for BP and 1xBW for OHP.
Yes, it was actually raw powerlifting I had in mind, but these monsters are often able to squat 770 lbs and above.
To clarify my original intent re the bench pressing guy - I just thought he should train legs also, and it seemed somehow reckless to only shoot for bench pressing and leaving them legs out in the cold. I suggested he do some more frequent light bodyweight and resistance bands adaptions for rehab (he wasn’t interested). Adding, I wasn’t that surprised to hear he followed the classic 5x5 formula (not such a bad foundation), and had no idea about other strength developing techniques.
Nevertheless - A 440 lbs bench press is indeed impressive!
I think I get what you mean. Although a 440 bench is a much bigger achievement than a 440 squat, it’s almost diminished if someone avoids training legs.
In my opinion at least if someone doesn’t train legs I’m not overly interested in what they can press. Probably because training legs takes a completely different mentality and is so much tougher mentally to get through and push yourself
I think a lot of us only regard 5x5 as a beginner format because nearly all linear progression schemes use some form of it.
5x5 done with serious intent week in and week out is one of the most painful and brutal training methods anyone can do, imo. Sure 20 rep squats and 10x10 are brutal but you can’t really run one of those schemes using 80-85% of a 1RM for 12-16 weeks on end let alone 6 months.
You can “just barely” pull off pushing that envelop using a 5x5 scheme but the rest of your life is miserable (walking up stairs, sitting down in a car seat, tying your shoes).
I agree just anecdotally speaking. I’ve seen a lot of strong athletic guys squat 440+. Truthfully don’t think I’ve ever seen someone bench 440+ in person. That’s enough for me to say these two aren’t even on the same planet.