When does body weight start being an important factor in PBs?

[Limth]

I hope I'm articulating this correctly.

Basically, at what point does your body weight become a consideration in tracking and thinking about PBs and lifting goals?

I'm quite new to lifting so I've just been trying to get heavier gradually without much focus on body weight. But body weight must come into the picture at some point. When is that point?

Sorry if this is incredibly naive. I have Googled but so much is generic advice and focused on men's lifting in the context of proper body building. I was hoping for insights from some real people (women!).

Thank you!

Yes, I think there is a correlation, but probably when you're lifting quite heavy.

I was stretching while watching someone squatting at my gym, and in her rest breaks we were chatting - she was squatting sets of 5 at over 70 kilos, which is heavy! I complimented her, but she was modest and said that she weighed over 75k herself and was tall, so she was comparing her body weight with her lifting weight as a percentage.

I know that when I was a bit heavier, I got my first 100k deadlift - and thought, "Ahhh, mass lifts mass" but my trainer said only when that mass is muscle! Fat doesn't lift weights ...

But it's also age, training consistency & length of time training.

A lot of the bros will say Oh, you should be able to squat 1.5 times your body weight, and deadlift twice your body weight, but that's for men.

Thank you. Yeah, that's my issue that information I've found online is a lot of bro-types with generic, macho "rules"

When you say it starts to matter "when you're lifting heavy", what does "heavy" mean? Is it when you're getting to a certain percentage of body weight?

Me and a pal are both at 35kg back squat PB but there's about 15kg body weight difference between us (51kg and 65kg). I just wonder at what point it'll start to matter.

For squats, I think it starts to matter when you get to body weight. In my best days I squatted 1.5 times my bw and my training buddy did the same, she was c.5kg lighter than me so squatted around 10kg less.

Our gym has standards for all movements that are graded from 1 (beginner) to 4 (hardcore), for men and women, all based around body weight. It’s very helpful to see where you are. There’s a website called strengthlevel that does the same and grades by age as well. Obviously there are huge variations by individual, eg my squat is v poor, deadlift about average and bench good for my weight. But anecdotally I’ve seen that the difference is apparent quite early on- heavier beginners progress to heavy weights more quickly than slim people.

I would just make a note of your pbs and rough bodyweight at that time.
Heavy lifting is subjective, and I would aim for a bodyweight deadlift first, then a bodyweight squat.

If you want to compare with friends, percentage of bodyweight is fine.

Depends what you mean by matters. It will always impact on what you can lift, it doesn't only start to do so at a certain weight. That's why strength sports are in weight classes. And strength relative to size is absolutely understood and respected - powerlifters aren't only celebrating the heaviest men. And our totals are turned into something called dots so you can compare between weight classes. I have more dots than some of my heavier friends so I am considered stronger but they put more weight on the bar.

So if you're training with a heavier friend you'd expect they can lift more. Although of course there are other variables. But it doesn't really matter as everyone is where they are in their own progress. If I was training with a friend we'd just lift what we lifted, we wouldn't be comparing.

Basically, at what point does your body weight become a consideration in tracking and thinking about PBs and lifting goals?

Sorry I've just seen I answered a different question as you never said 'matters' 😅

So my PBs and goals are always relative to me, but not just in terms of bodyweight. Also where I'm stronger, leverages, technique etc. My goals are always to be stronger than I was last time. It's no good having a goal of Xkg deadlift as I'll get there when I get there all I can do is train consistently. I'm a powerlifter so I do squat/bench/deadlift. All powerlifters have stronger and weaker lifts, the ratios aren't the same between them at all.

So what I'm saying in an overly lengthy way is always take into account your bodyweight. And yes you might have goals that are relative to bodyweight. But I wouldn't get fixated on long term goals as much as them being the next stepping stone as there's soooo many other variables. And don't compare cos we're all different.

Thank you all so much, this is really useful. I'll check out StrengthLevel website too.

I should say that me and my mate aren't in competition or comparing at all. We're absolutely both there for our own health, wellbeing, strength and improvement. It's just that we both started around the same time and both at 35kg back squat now. She's feeling ready to go heavier but I'm not. And that's totally fine of course. We were just chatting about whether it was because of out body weight differences and how/when body weight comes into the question which isn't something we'd ever really thought about before.

I agree with pp. It is always a consideration but there are plenty of other variables too. Strengthlevel website gives you a rough perspective especially if you are training with someone else but I just use that for "oh that's mildly interesting" as I train with a younger man. We are similar on legs but he often lifts multiples of what I do on upper body so sometimes I check to see whether the difference scaled is real or not. Main thing if you are training with someone else though is to recognise that you are different, and support each other with good form, spotting, consistency and gradual progressive overload. You may plateau sometimes, and that may be at different points, but again it could be for a range of reasons.

I think the question is less “when does it matter” and more “what does ‘matter’ mean?”

My coach once shocked me by saying offhandedly “well all sport is kinda pointless isn’t it”, because my training matters to me for reasons beyond my numbers. But getting hung up on performance is no good for anyone except maybe professional athletes.

If you want to track progress relative to another lifter, there are various formulae that attempt to help you do this or you can just go off percentage of bodyweight. But in crude terms it makes a difference pretty much out of the box: a 20kg lift is much harder for a 40kg person than for an 80kg person even if both are untrained.

For your example with you and your friend, this happens at every level: lifters plateau and progress at different points in the trajectory of getting stronger. It’s not that useful to compare yourself to your peer whose squats are progressing whilst yours are stalling. Better to focus on fixing your own issues. Your numbers will be on the move again when they’re ready.