Y'all would be surprised how many overweight guys that weigh 250+ and walk into the gym on rare occasion can bench press 225 or more with little to no training.
For guys that are 5'10" and 150 pounds, benching 225 is a big deal.
For heavy guys that are 5'10" and 250, it isn't all that difficult.
A 225 bench press can be achieved by most men, even out of shape ones, within year. The vast majority will take between 1-6 months starting from untrained.
A 5 minute mile is a lot harder.
I would say a 225 is like an 8 minute mile.
this is a joke haha you obviously are a skinny runner and dont lift. I was a 155 800 and 420 mile guy in college. Started lifting and gaining some weigth after and got my bench up to 275 for 3x.
I would say 225lbs is very hard for most people - almost worse than 5:00 because you need to be large enough to lift 225lbs. I think 225 for 1-2 reps is like 450. 275lbs for 1-2 reps is like 4:30. 315 for reps is like 420. 350 for reps is 410, 415 is 4:00 mile, 475-500+ is like 350 miler.550-650 bench is like 346. 700+ bench is like 442........
I think for the conversion to work you need to be a least 6"00, otherwise you cant gain the weight to be strong enough.
5'7" 165 lbs. 2 sets 8 x 225, 6 x 225 @ 59 years old.
A better weight lifting comparison would be a 225 clean and jerk. That at least requires a combination of technique and strength with a commitment to training... a 225 bench press should be achievable by most males of average weight and above by simply going to the gym twice a week and benching to fail.
I bench pressed 350 in 1974, 225, 21 times in 1979, a 17:06/35:57/58:42 10 mile,1:19.59 half but could never break 3 for a marathon
It’s impossible for a person who can bench press 350 to ever run a decent time in a marathon
At least I hope this excuse is valid
This is an honest answer. If you made running a marathon your sole focus for a year, and stopped lifting completely you could improve your marathon, but why lol.
I actually think the 225 v 5:00 isn't crazy. It May even be 225 is 5:30.
At first I disagreed, but in my hs class of 125 boys 5 of us broke 5:00 in the mile and 8 probably could have.
From football, basketball, wrestling, swimming, baseball, throwers etc., about 25 could bench 225 as seniors.
An aside on 225, the NFL combine used 225 for max reps, and record is around 40!
1. Your response makes me genuinely smile (which means I'm happy). I love it when I have a similar moment where I realize that "I was intially on team X", which is usually in my case anecdote-driven or (put another way) based on the availability heuristic, but then work my way through "reasoning from baseline rates" and end up revising my opinion significantly.
2. The output I added (below the line) was copy-pasted from ChatGPT (the latest, most advanced free version) based on a prompt that was similar to the original posters question, with my added context of percentile of adult men to 'help' the model reason. So I have not personally written or edited any of the below the line material. And yes,
3. I have made exactly ZERO effort to fact-check, verify or validate the data/output, or assess the methodology of the output. The #s may be completely wrong or inaccurate in other ways. And I haven't checked other models (Claude, Perplexity, Meta, etc.)
4. The only point of my post was a "running start" to the question (based on some kind of more systematic methodology) so 'we' here avoid the back-and-forth of (as said) anecdote-driven evidence/reasoning or availability bias/heuristic. The 'percentile of all adult men' may not even be the right or best way to looking at this 'problem', but hopefully would provide a better common starting point.
5. Finally, and this is a more general comment to all readers, yes, I realize this is Letsrun, and No, I'm not a first-time visitor, and yes, this is a completely boring way to approach any question here, where (I think) most Letsrun posters just want to argue and fight about something whatever (often ridiculous minutiae, driven by seemingly goon-caving trolls taking a break -- sorry, that will be my only sarcasm here).
An additional qualifier, I structured the query to try and focus and what percentile of adult men could (theoretically, with the right amount of training) achieve a given performance level.
This seemed (to me) the better way to assess which performance level (225 bench vs. 5min mile) would be more difficult to achieve.
But this is obviously a different question than asking what percentile of adult men could right now (based on current fitness) bench 225 and/or run a 5 min mile.
A better weight lifting comparison would be a 225 clean and jerk. That at least requires a combination of technique and strength with a commitment to training... a 225 bench press should be achievable by most males of average weight and above by simply going to the gym twice a week and benching to fail.
225 C&J is way rarer in the normal population than 5:00 mile for two reasons:
- Weightlifting is an obscure sport to most
- It requires a lot of explosive ability, which is something the average population is far less likely to train than running a fast mile or 5k
I'd also say 225 C&J is just harder than a 5:00 mile. Plenty of kids break 5:00 off of bad training and a bit of talent. Almost no one C&Js 225 by accident, except maybe the strongest kids on your football team.
For some 5:00 is pretty easy - even with little or no training many can do it.
For some 225 is easy and they can achieve this with little or no training.
Some can do both with little or no training, but, in general, this is a venn diagram. Maybe the circle is larger for bench pressing
The other consideration is that a 5:00 mile is easier when you are younger. I ran a 5:00 mile at 14 with no training. Strength comes later. I would not have been able to bench 225 at 14 (or 15 or 16) not matter how much training I did.
If I had waited until age 24 to start running, a 5:00 mile would have been harder than a 225 bench press - depending on how active I'd been up to that age.
I benched 285 off maybe 10 weeks of lifting from scratch when I weighed about 175. I'm 6'1". I stopped trying to go up from there because I didn't like the compression on my wrists. That was after only training high reps with dumbbells and a guy from work challenged me to see how much I could bench.
I think 5:00 is more impressive. I'm not sure I could have ever broken it. If so, I would have had to seriously train for years. I took up weight lifting in my 40s and got up to a 325lb bench in less than 2 years.
The window for running sub 5 is much smaller than the window for benching 225lbs.
Curious for the forum's thoughts on this question. They feel similar in difficulty to me, the run was easier for me, but I know lifting is easier for others.
To be fair I think I have pretty good genes for lifting/bodybuilding, but I could bench 225 all through college and I don’t think i’ve ever put a TON of effort into my lifting.
Purely anecdotal but as someone who’s strength/endurance talent feels pretty even, I think a 295-315 bench is more in the ballpark of a sub 5:00 mile.
We gotta recognize biases here, If you are like 5’9-6’0 130-150 lbs with a Vo2Max of 60+ of course you are gonna be disproportionately better at running distance. Just like someone who played football as a kid, is 6’2 235 lbs and has a more average Vo2Max of 35-50 is gonna laugh at you for thinking 5:00 and 225 are even in the same stratosphere.
I think hypothetically, if you were to start off with an average but healthy build of about 5’9-5’10 175-185 lbs, it would probably take about the same time to get to a sub 5:00 mile and a 300 give or take bench press seeing that you go all in on one or another.