invwnut

Who cares about bench pressing? I never did straight bar but I was able to bench 65lb dumbbells. The real question is how much can you squat? Everyone likes to say "show me your quads". From my past weight lifting experience, most guys hated squats. I personally loved leg day. I was working with 315lbs on a regular basis, 3sets of 15. I would work with 270-300lb front squats on the Smith machine. That is where one would have the body positioned like a chair. The butt goes straight down and the legs were out in front of the body. The bar was actually behind you at all times so this isolated mostly the quads going up, less glut work iirc.

achoo

I once did 720 pounds back in my competitive powerlifting days. Still can do a set of 5 with five plates on each side.

a_phat_beat

i hope we're talking free-weights here...
back in high school i was doing 8rep4set workouts with 350+
my highest 1 rep max ever was 440.

i dead-lifted 620 1rm, and power clean 260.

(we used to count the olympic bars as 40lb as opposed to 45lb as is the norm. the bar weight is somewhere on the order of 43lb or so)

i was 165lb at the time. (in fact, with football, track and weightlifting, on top of MTB riding i had a terribly hard time getting my weight above 165, i'm currently holding steady @ 170lb)

bigtea

I could have been that cyclist, but my brother talked me into taking a dive....

waterrockets 

Nice. Probably the winner here.

I never did a max squat -- too worried about my knees. I was doing 10x405 on my third set though. So, maybe ~450 max? Dunno.

datlas 

I saw the title and thought this was a poop-bragfest. Shows you how my mind works

achoo

Probably closer to 600, once you got used to handling that much weight. 10x405 is a pretty serious squat, and I'd bet a significant sum that finding anyone drug-free in your weight class who could out-squat you would be almost impossible, even in serious gyms. You're certainly strong enough to do 600, but handling that much weight takes practice and can be intimidating.

Trust me, it's HEAVY. It's amazing how light 315 or even 405 feels after you put over 500 lbs or more on your shoulders. Just putting that much on the bar and lifting it from the rack and putting it right back down can be an eye-opener.

FWIW, I was about 240 lbs when I did that 720. I do have to point out, though, that a good belt and knee wraps used to add about 150 lbs to how much I could squat, and I no longer use either. Good belts are 6" or so thick all the way around - the "wide back, narrow front" belts are totally useless because they don't support your abdomen and prevent it from getting squished and you bent over. And when you put a good set of knee wraps on properly, you'll need help to get up from the bench you sat on to wrap your knees, and you won't be able to walk. When your knees are properly wrapped, you won't be able to bend them at all without a few hundred pounds or more on your shoulders to help force them to bend.

waterrockets 

Yeah, I tried wraps for some of that. The thing that freaked me out was that by the time my set was done, I was worried my feet would need to be amputated from restricted blood flow.

I think I was about 185 lbs at that time (6'4", and a fair bit of fat)

Thinking about moving 500 lbs of freeweights certainly scares me. Enclosed squat racks are a good thing, but that seems like enough weight to break something on the rack if dropped.

Mr. Beanz

I've always thought doing squats was stupid. I could do 315 at anytime no sweat. Buddies bragged about doing 315, some 500 but none could run or ride worth a dam so what did it matter?

Like they say, if squats mattered, the TDF riders would all be bodybuilders!

keebo

My best ever was a 3 ton set thats 336 x 20 reps proper squats, 420 x 10 & 520 x 2 that was 25 years ago now

waterrockets 

While I no longer lift weights (other than a month of lunges that my knees didn't like at all), not all the TdF types are staying out of the gym...



I was lifting for cross training because I was burned out on racing. I wasn't trying to improve race performance, just seeing what I could do in there.

In general though, I see no clear benefit of weight training for road cycling. On the track... different story.

KiddSisko

Squat is a funny word. You know it is.

Mr. Beanz

Lance is alwys up to something to be keep himself in the spotlight... I'd bet he's doing all this weight stuff jsut to promote sales for all the junk I see his face advertising! Not to mention, he's more than likely looking forr more of the female types! Aint gonna get it looking like that Rasmeussen dude!...I can't spell the frigger's name!

achoo

I would never wrap THAT tight, but I would definitely feel a loss of blood flow to my lower legs.

Being able to bury 405 ten times at that height and weight is pretty damn impressive. I was pushing 60 pounds heavier and almost 5" shorter, and I have short legs for my height to boot. You probably have to move the weight at least 4 or 5 inches more than I do.

My nubby little arms used to help my bench press, too. They were certainly no plus on the football field, however.

If you can do enough to break a good squat rack, you're in the wrong sport. A gold medal every four years for the next couple of decades awaits you at the Olympics. But 500 or more pounds IS enough weight that if something goes wrong, you WILL damage something. I had walked out in a step rack with about 550 on my back once, about to drop for the first rep of the set when I noticed some dumba$$ move a seated military bench right next to the squat rack with its upright back right underneath the left set of plates. If I had dropped the plates would have hit the bench and knocked the weights off course and almost certainly messing me up good. THAT will scare you. I quickly re-racked the bar and explained the situation to him in such a way that I never saw him in that gym again.

And FWIW, anyone bragging about being able to squat 315 better be not much more than 100 pounds or so, or they're totally clueless. In biking terms, that's kinda like bragging about being able to sustain 18 MPH - on a slight downhill.

achoo

Yep, it is.

It got even funnier when a high school football teammate forgot to bring his shorts for an offseason weight training session and has to borrow a pair about 4" too small and the whole gym got to see his butt EXPLODE out of the shorts when he tried to squat wearing them. I had the, err, good fortune to be looking right at him from only about 10 feet away when it happened, and I almost fell over I was laughing so hard.

So yeah, discussing squats always brings a smile to my mind.

mrnotwo

it's just amazing how people squat 3-4 times their weight in this thread. I rarely see these numbers on bodybuilding.com forums. According to this https://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLi...Standards.html you guys are ELITE!

waterrockets 

I saw a squat mishap with a similar description on ogrish.com that didn't look so funny (butt exploded out of shorts... literally). They couldn't figure out how to stand the guy back up and keep his various ejected parts in place. Exhale folks, exhale.

Great, a squat e-wang chart to go with the cycling power e-wang chart. I see some correlation between my squat and my 1' power "rankings" (which are meaningless).

passerby

At 139 pounds, my max squat is 295. All of my buddies tell me that I have abnormally stong legs but compared to the numbers I am seeing i this thread, I feel like a wuss haha

RacerOne

Somewhere around 400 with the freeweight in high school at 155#'s, over 600 on the leg press. I don't go anywhere near that now, scares me about the knees.

Of course this poor fellow rides a Trek and is facing certain BB destruction.

achoo

Knee wraps? Weight belt? If not, that's pretty doggone good. Even with those, if you're not wrapping properly or using a good powerlifting belt you're really not getting much help from them.

I'll assume if you're using a squat suit you know what you're doing. Yes, there are special suits just to squat in.

As for why there seems to be a good number of supposedly "elite" squats around here? First, three or four isn't a lot. Not at all, so it could just be random chance. Second, most people when they try to squat, to put it bluntly, simply wuss out over the whole-body effort necessary to be good at it. Good bikers, though, would be a lot more used to being able to continue pushing hard when worn out.

Just ask waterrockets what climbing out of that hole for the tenth time with 405 on his back felt like.

Me? Even now, at the end of a hard squat set I almost pass out - I rack the weight and literally fall to my knees and catch myself on the ground with my hands as the world turns all gray and I almost faint. Back in my competitive lifting days there were several times on my drive home from the gym after working out I had to pull over and puke in the ditch I worked myself so hard.

achoo

Three times your weight is ELITE bench press, not squat:

https://www.goheavy.net/records/viewr...2-1849324b3a58

The drug-free squat record for the weight class I competed in is over 900 pounds. Doing a bit over 700 at 240 pounds is, well, diddly squat.

Bodybuilding.com? BODYBUILDING?!?!?

PS - start using drugs like the bodybuilders do, and the BENCH PRESS for the 242 lb class goes up to over 900 pounds: https://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records/242-men

Stert

the smith machine? are you kidding me? might as well do leg extensions

dc1215

Just curious, do people count the bar weight when putting up these numbers? Of course at 4-500lbs, the bar is a negligible weight, but still, whats the standard on that?

waterrockets 

Remarkably similar to 822W for 1'. Ouch/puke/fall over/win race

45 lb bar, in the area of 10% of total weight -- hell yes you count it

passerby

Oh I definitely use a weight belt but I have never needed knee wraps or any of that good stuff. I can do at least 8 reps of 295 as of yesterday. I think Ill see if I can get over 300 my next leg day at the gym. I definitely agree, though, that squats are an extremely good workout; I'm huffing and puffing more when squatting than any other lift.