How many people in the world could deadlift more than 700?

[RubenScheepers]

I always wondered myself this question.

How many people in the world could lift more than 700 pounds?
More than 10,000 people? Maybe 100,000?

And how many more than 800 pounds?
around 1000?

900 pounds only a couple i guess..

More than 1000 lbs only one so far, Andy Bolton isn´t it?

Please give in your thoughts!

Think this could be interesting..

[matthewvincent]

at least 16

[Billy Wolt]

I've wondered the same thing, except wondered how many people drop a duece at any given moment.

I eastimate that 1 in 1000 are on the bowl at any moment. So 6 million people are taking a dump right now.

[RubenScheepers]

Whahahahaa, thats also a nice one to know..

:M:

[Kevin Cronin]

It would really be nothing more than an educated guess, seeing as some guys dont compete (a buddy of mine from the gym pulls low 7s but doesnt compete in anything) or might not compete in deadlift and so wouldnt max on it (specifically thinking of OLers)

If you are talking about how many can pull 700 right now, I'd guess it's below 10,000. Dont really know tho, obviously. If you're talking about how many have the genetic potential to, with some number of years of dedicated work, obviously that number is higher.

[zachgallmann]

i've always wondered about this kind of stuff.. like overhead pressing.. how many guys can clean and axle press over 350 or 400? same with log... what weights, especially in strongman make you a world class puller, presser, etc? we all know the obvious answers because they're competing at the WSM, Arnold, etc... but what about the amateurs?

[Ryan Brown]

is the question how many people CAN deadlift over 700 or how many COULD? If by could, you mean with proper training and diet, then I'd say the number is pretty large. If you mean how many people could walk out in their garage today and pull at least 700 then I'd say not that many relatively speaking--certainly way less than 10,000 I'd say. It could be less than 500. Fact is that unless you are specifically training for deadlift (not many people do) then it is highly unlikely that you will just happen to have the strength to pull that much weight.

For 800 the number is very low for both "could" and "can" and for 900 it is much lower.

[RubenScheepers]

Thanks all! Interesting posts here.

Ryan, I mean people who CAN deadlift it right now!

I also was thinking of no more than 10,000 people in the whole world (6,7 biljon), most of them professional powerlifters, olympic lifters and strongman and the rest amateurs.

That makes it a very specific and small group, less than 0,0001% of the world population if i am correct..

Thats pretty cool to know if you are one of that person!

Not for me, but also very soon I hope.. :D

[Ryan Brown]

Thanks all! Interesting posts here.

Ryan, I mean people who CAN deadlift it right now!

I also was thinking of no more than 10,000 people in the whole world (6,7 biljon), most of them professional powerlifters, olympic lifters and strongman and the rest amateurs.

That makes it a very specific and small group, less than 0,0001% of the world population if i am correct..

Thats pretty cool to know if you are one of that person!

Not for me, but also very soon I hope.. :D

yeah in the case of who can actually do it right now I'd say a pretty small number. Basically you can look at the powerlifting usa or powerlifting watch lists that give a listing of the top deadlifts from all federations for all weight classes. If you add up all the 700+ deadlifts from all those lists, you have a pretty small number relatively speaking. That's all the people that competed in the last year.

Sure there are some strongmen, gym goers, etc. that didn't compete that can do it. There are also some random freaks out there I guess who can probably do it even though they have never even lifted weights, but that is probably a handful--personally I've never met someone who has never trained deadlift that could pull 700. I don't think you can figure it based on a % of the population because it is almost an impossible task if you have not trained for it. You take the percent of the population that trains for it and then take a small percentage of that number. Keep in mind that the USA is also a strong country--much of the world has much smaller and much weaker people. I'd say even the vast majority of the NFL cannot do it--even though people talk about them being very strong. A lot of them could probably do it if they trained for it, but of course they do not because it is not a very productive lift for football.

700 is not necesarily going to make you world class in the lifting world, but it is a number that is well above what the avg. "strong" guy can even think about doing. I'd say most gyms I've been to don't even have one guy that can do it. Reading this board you would think 700 is fairly common, but among the general population it is not. It is over 14 plates after-all.

[Brandon Campbell]

lol 700 around the board is common, 800 is the rare one. most top level HW and LW can pull 700 or close to it. And more and more every year over it. so there is at least 100 just in our sport alone.

[MikeMastell]

I've read before in an article(so take it with a grain of salt, we all know how accurate they are) 1% or less of the population can benchpress their own body weight. And we know bench press is the most popular exercise by far in the gym so i'd have to guess 700 DL is substantially lower than that number.

[Ryan Brown]

lol 700 around the board is common, 800 is the rare one. most top level HW and LW can pull 700 or close to it. And more and more every year over it. so there is at least 100 just in our sport alone.


lol...our sport alone.. our sport and powerlifting are the only two sports that care anything about the deadlift. It's not like football programs, track, baseball, etc. are out there training deadlift. Most people don't even know what a deadlift is

[Alex Klotz]

I've wondered the same thing, except wondered how many people drop a duece at any given moment.

I eastimate that 1 in 1000 are on the bowl at any moment. So 6 million people are taking a dump right now.

I think you underestimate. If people spend on average 10 minutes a day taking a crap, that means 1/144 people are pooping at any given time, meaning about 45 million people are taking a dump at any given time. 10 minutes may itself be an underestimate, and in the third world there are a lot of sanitation problems so diarrhea is pretty common.

As for the deadlifts, just going off records, the 8 heaviest divisions all have top-20 deadlifts above 700, and 3 people have done it at 148, so that's 163 right there, as a lower bound. I'm sure there are a lot more people at the higher weight classes who have done it. The way to go about doing it is to find result tables from powerlifting meets from around the world and compiling the results.

(source: http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records)