Benching 225 is equivalent to what mile time?

Some of you guys' perception is so distorted it's unreal? 225 bench = 5 min mile!?!? What on earth? You can walk in any gym on earth and find a handful of guys that can bench 225. Someone who can run a 5 min mile is WAY harder to find. I think it's over 6 minutes, and probably around a 6:30.

As a data point, there is a fitness competition I did years ago for law enforcement officers. This is a self selected group of people who train for all around fitness (strength and cardio). Two of the six events were a max bench (scored as a percentage of body weight) and a 1.5 mile run. Looking at these results from 2016, there are exactly 7 (out of 128) competitors who did better than a 6 minute pace for 1.5 miles. The fastest was 8:17, which still isn't a 5 min guy. On the bench press (which is a paused rep that is judged strictly) you have to go about a hundred deep in the results before you start finding guys benching less than 225. You may object and say that cops are larger and more muscular than the average person, which may be true, but the bench results show body weights, and they're around 180 on average. That's about an average weight for a normal adult male. If you are less than 160 lbs as a full grown adult male, you have to understand that you are TINY and that your perspective on this stuff is going to be very skewed.

Bench Press Results:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B01n91HT379tSWxmaWhJR1FhNGs/view?usp=sharing

Run Results:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B01n91HT379tX0pLblhLa0tWdUU/view?usp=sharing

Go wrestle wrote:

Alan Webbs Triceps wrote:

I hit 245 for a max bench in college while I weighed around 145 - 148. I found that 225 for the bench came noticeably easier than 5:00 for the mile. I ran a 5:03 PR for 1600m in high school.

Yeah, I know, I'm not the typical 3:43 mile PR guy everyone else is on Letsrun.

My question is why did you run track and not do something using your talent?

I broke 5 early in high school barely thinking about it, but can’t bench my weight. (6’1 150)

I wasn't clear on the timeline: I had a 5:03 PR for 1600m (yeah, I know, average/slowish) in high school when I weighed around 125lbs-135lbs. I could only max bench (*I think*, it's been a while) 155lbs. I didn't run competitively in college and undoubtedly got slower and put on 10-13 lbs. That's when I hit the 245lbs bench.

As for why I ran in high school, I loved running and wanted to do that over anything else. I didn't see any significant penchant for strength in high school, just in college was when I observed it.

runners are puny wrote:

This is way simpler than the guess work.

World Record Bench is 1074

World Record Mile is 3:43

225/1074 = 20.9%

so 20% preformance on the world record mile 223"/20.9% = 1067" or 10:47

Conclusion a 225 bench equates to a 10:47 mile.

I think there is an easier way to do this. At the NFL Combine, the league tests how many 225 lb bench presses each player can do. The all-time record is 51 by Justin Ernest. For simplicity's sake, we'll say this is the "American Record" even though this is not an athletic endeavor that people normally compete in:

Ok, so a human being can do 51 reps of 225 lbs. At what pace can a human being do 51 reps of a mile? Well, the American Record for 50 miles is 4:51:25 (5:50/mile) by Barney Klecker in 1980:

Again, because no one really competes in 50-mile races, this probably isn't an accurate estimation of the BEST possible performance. But close enough! I'm willing to say one bench press at 225 is equivalent to running one 5:50 mile.

ex-runner wrote:

Go wrestle wrote:

My question is why did you run track and not do something using your talent?

I broke 5 early in high school barely thinking about it, but can’t bench my weight. (6’1 150)

Yeah this is like the other guy who claimed he couke easily bench over 250lbs whilst weighing under 150lbs. Then some other guy stated that elite powerlifters of the same weight bench around the same.

If these posters are for real then they really wasted their time running.

I definitely didn't *easily* bench 245 lbs while weighing 148 lbs. That was a one time thing and I haven't gotten close to that later in life even with getting my man strength and filling out.

I loved running and still really enjoy it. I'm glad I ran, albeit slowly for Letrun standards, and don't have any interest in competitive weightlifting or powerlifting.

I got .7 as the "leftovers" from your .3, if that makes sense #commoncorebeforeitwascool

When you say 12' mile is 30% of world record, don't you mean that the world record is 30% of a 12' mile?

56 kg / 123 lbs 16-17 years old

Squat W Wynn 197.50 435.25 1996

Bench Press Nick Norwood 110.00 242.50 6/2006

Deadlift M Wynn 210.00 462.75 1996

Total M Wynn 490.00 1080.25 1996

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the very best 17 year olds run 4:00 miles

gofigure

theJeff wrote:

runners are puny wrote:

Where do you get .7? That equation is way off. I am dividing by the percentage to come up with the number same way one would base workout times off a percentage of max. I tried to base this how we might age grade a performance. 225 is 30% of the world record. 12' mile is about 30% of the mile world record. Looking around the city I live in 12' mile would be a struggle for a lot of people.

I got .7 as the "leftovers" from your .3, if that makes sense #commoncorebeforeitwascool

When you say 12' mile is 30% of world record, don't you mean that the world record is 30% of a 12' mile?

Wow. I now fully understand the issues with common core.

Yes, I supposed it could make to say the mile world record is 30% of a 12' mile which would be the equivalent of a 225lb bench is 30% of the world record.

This is a quality argument. I thought about taking this approach although I don't think either the bench rep out or 50 milers are completed enough for this to be reliable.

Stupid question deserves a stupid answer. Check your foreskin

This board is going to be skewed toward the run because we all have seen many people run 5:00 but not many Bench 225.

In my time in the Army I’ve seen about as many people run 5:00 or the equivalent as I’ve seen Bench 315. Not common. I’ve seen many more run 6:00 and 225. 225 is still not that common but I can go to a gym right now at least one guy will be able to Bench 225. This is also skewed.....9 times out of 10 this dude will also weigh 200+....so not very impressive. Same goes with 5:00....9 times out of 10 the 5:00 guy will be under 150lb....again not impressive.

Alan

theJeff wrote:

runners are puny wrote:

You're right. Too early to be doing math. It should be way slower (17'). I am happy to go with the raw record. In which case 225 is 30.47% of that.

223"/30.47% = 731.87" so 12' mile.

Just ran a race, so my brain isn’t working quite right, but:

I don’t think you can make an equation like that. As bench gets worse, it gets closer to 0, but as mile gets worse, it gets closer to infinity.

Help me understand this.

I did: 738.5 x .7 = 225, so

(223” x .7) + 223” = 379” = 6:20ish, which is much closer to the estimates on this board... but it still doesn’t seem right.

If we take the world record as an optimal, then a random person will run the mile somewhere between the WR (223.13 seconds) and infinity. Conversely, in the bench, a random person will lift somewhere between 0 and the WR (738.5 lbs). Normalizing these so that they map to values between 0 and 1 where 0 is the worst and 1 is the best generates the result that a 225 bench is equivalent to a slightly slower than 12 minute mile.

This is one way to compare performances. I doubt it's a very useful way, however. We should let the data speak for itself, as I indicated in an earlier post. A straightforward approach is to find the proportion p of people in a sufficiently large sample who lift greater than 225 lbs, and then find the mile time in which the proportion p of people in a sufficiently large sample run less than.

We can estimate the sampling distribution of this estimator and construct confidence intervals of the estimate if so desired.

Except it doesn't quite work like that. In running events, there is a relatively small percentage between a decent performer and an elite one. It takes a huge effort to improve 10%.

In certain other events/sports, 10% is a tiny improvement.

For example, improving 10% from a 70m javelin throw to a 77m throw is a decent but very very ordinary improvement for a thrower to make in a year. Even within one competition a thrower could start throwing ~70m then get his arm in and hit ~80m.

Likewise, if a man with a 225lb bench max improves by 10% he's now benching 247lb. A great improvement but nothing special.

However, if a 1:55 800m runner improves by 10%, he runs 1:43. Which is astronomical.

How about a 10% improvement in pace/mile? The 1:55 only improves to a 1:49... you know what, you are right, that is a crazy jump :-)

It looks to me like many letsrunners don’t understand how much easier it is to lift heavy when you gain weight. Benching 225 seems very impressive when you are a serious runner with a 20 BMI. But the fact of the matter is that you male runners could all bench 225 within 6 months if you stopped running, stuffed your faces non-stop to gain 30 pounds (much of which would be fat, but who cares), and lifted 2-3 times per week. I have no idea why you would want to do this, but is quite doable even for slow-twitching ectomorphs.

While benching 225 is something almost all healthy adult males can achieve, a sub-5 mile certainly is not. And there are plenty of people who would have to kill themselves dieting and training to break 6. Not all of those people running 25-30 minute 5ks at your local races are slackers believe it or not! Benching 225 pounds seems equivalent to a 6-7 minute mile to me, but it is hard to say. So I will also go with 6:30.

As others have mentioned, what is incredibly difficult is to have a good bench press and a good mile time simultaneously.

I think many are forgetting how challenging a 5:00 mile (or even a 5:30 mile) even are for an "average" athletic male.

I ran competitively in college with a mile best of 4:02. I'm about 6 years and 30lbs out of that. I've been trying to get back into running but am stuck around 185-190lbs. Running 30 miles per week for several months and my fitness has improved but the best I've been able to run for 5km is around 19:30. I suspect I would not get much under 5:30 for a mile.

This is an "average" 185-190lb athletic male.

theJeff wrote:

How about a 10% improvement in pace/mile? The 1:55 only improves to a 1:49... you know what, you are right, that is a crazy jump :-)

It's still a massive jump compared to a 225 to a 247 bench, and also doesn't make any sense to do it that way mathematically nor can you justify it any other way.

A mile is a random arbitrary unit of distance. The event I selected is the 800m, not the mile. But of course if you want to look at the mile it's just the same story.

10% further than a 70m javelin is 77m

10% heavier than a 225lb bench is 247lb

10% faster than a 4:15 mile is 3:49.

There's no getting around those solid facts. Hence comparing the two disciplines by percentages makes no sense.

Except it doesn't quite work like that? Of course it doesn't. The map is not the territory. And, as I suggested, this isn't a good map. I suggested we should let the data speak for itself, and we have a lot more data than just approximate upper or lower-bound (i.e., world records).

Yes I agree, hence if you read my post you can see that I was using this 800m comparison to shoot down the methods proposed of equating bench and mile world records mathematically and then trying to determine percentages of that, which lead to the ridiculous figure of 12 minutes for the mile.

Of course, you need to look at numbers of people in a random population that have done both.

ex-runner wrote:

belial wrote:

Except it doesn't quite work like that? Of course it doesn't. The map is not the territory. And, as I suggested, this isn't a good map. I suggested we should let the data speak for itself, and we have a lot more data than just approximate upper or lower-bound (i.e., world records).

Yes I agree, hence if you read my post you can see that I was using this 800m comparison to shoot down the methods proposed of equating bench and mile world records mathematically and then trying to determine percentages of that, which lead to the ridiculous figure of 12 minutes for the mile.

Of course, you need to look at numbers of people in a random population that have done both.

Why the part in bold?