Squat strength standards

Updated 16 July 2026

A solid intermediate squat is about 1.5 times bodyweight for men and 1.25 times for women. Where your squat lands, from beginner to world class, depends on your bodyweight, so heavier lifters are held to a lower ratio and lighter lifters to a higher one.

Relative strength, your best lift divided by your bodyweight, is the fairest way to compare lifters of different sizes, so the tiers below are ratios. Open the calculator to see your exact tier adjusted for your bodyweight.

Calculate your exact tier

Not sure of your one rep max? Estimate it with the squat one rep max calculator.

Squat standards as a ratio of bodyweight
Tier Men Men at 90 kg Women Women at 60 kg
Beginner Any Any Any Any
Novice 1.00× 90 kg 0.75× 45 kg
Intermediate 1.50× 135 kg 1.25× 75 kg
Advanced 2.00× 180 kg 1.60× 96 kg
Elite 2.50× 225 kg 2.00× 120 kg
World class 3.00× 270 kg 2.40× 144 kg

For scale, the 90th percentile among drug tested powerlifting competitors aged 18 to 35 is 2.83× bodyweight for men and 2.26× for women. Those are competitors, already a strong and selected group.

Standards for other lifts

Or open the full strength standards calculator to check any of 26 lifts, adjusted for your bodyweight.

How this is calculated

The tiers are the bodyweight ratio milestones strength coaches have used for decades, the same five level vocabulary, beginner to elite, you will see on popular strength ranking sites. They are coaching conventions, not population percentiles, and they group all ages together.

Relative strength falls as bodyweight rises, so the table above is quoted at a 90 kg reference for men and 60 kg for women. The calculator scales the same standards to your exact bodyweight, holding lighter lifters to a higher ratio and heavier lifters to a lower one. The competition benchmark, where shown, comes from a 2024 peer reviewed analysis of 809,986 drug tested powerlifting competition entries and applies to the squat, bench, and deadlift only.

Common questions

What is a good squat?

For a man, a back squat at 1.5 times bodyweight is a strong intermediate lift and 2 times bodyweight is advanced. The bars sit a little lower for women and relatively higher for lighter lifters. Enter your bodyweight and best set above to see your exact tier.

Is a bodyweight squat good?

Squatting your own bodyweight is a real early milestone and puts most people around the novice tier. From there the intermediate line sits near 1.5 times bodyweight.

Choosing an app?

Honest comparisons of the AI workout apps, with verified prices and trials.