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You've probably heard that stronger people tend to live longer and healthier lives. It's true. Research consistently shows that muscular strength serves as a powerful predictor of longevity, while also delivering immediate benefits like better bone density, reduced fall risk in seniors, and improved resilience to injuries. But here's the question that actually matters for your daily life: How strong do you really need to be?
If you're new to exercise or wondering whether your current strength levels are adequate, this article will help you figure out what "strong enough" means for your unique situation. We'll explore practical targets, testing methods, and most importantly, how to think about strength in terms of what you actually need to do in your life.
Let's start with the most encouraging news about strength training. Exercise doesn't have some magical threshold where benefits suddenly kick in. When you're just beginning, any improvement in strength creates meaningful health benefits that can genuinely impact your quality of life. Your first few weeks of consistent training will produce noticeable changes in how you feel, move, and recover from daily activities.
This means you don't need to bench press your body weight or deadlift impressive numbers to start reaping rewards. Every push-up you can do today that you couldn't do last month matters in some way toward your muscular fitness. Every grocery bag that feels lighter in your hands or any daily task that is suddenly easier than it was a month ago represents real progress.
Once you've established a routine and built some base strength, though, it becomes helpful to set more specific targets. This is where the concept of functional strength becomes incredibly valuable.
Functional strength refers to having enough strength to perform your normal, everyday tasks comfortably and safely. Unlike gym-based strength measures that are common to dedicated strength and conditioning for sport purposes, functional strength is more personal and depends entirely more on your life circumstances, career demands, family situation, and age.
The beauty of thinking about strength this way is that it makes your training immediately relevant to your real world. Instead of chasing arbitrary numbers for personal bests, you're building strength that directly improves your daily experience. That said, if you love chasing personal bests in the gym and have a means to do it safely with a program and trainer, that is excellent and we highly recommend that you keep doing it. This article is more specific to those seeking only more health related benefits to exercise that aren’t worried about high-end performance.
Your job significantly influences your strength requirements. If you work in healthcare, construction, or any physically demanding field, your functional strength needs will be higher than someone who works at a desk. A nurse needs the strength to safely transfer patients throughout a 12-hour shift. A warehouse worker needs to lift and move boxes repeatedly without injury or excessive fatigue.
For physically demanding careers, aim to train at or slightly above your job requirements. If you regularly lift 50-70 pounds at work, practice lifting and carrying that weight safely for multiple sets in your training. Focus on movement patterns you use on the job: carries, loaded step-ups, pushing, and pulling motions. By learning to handle the weight you regularly handle for single efforts at work for multiple high quality sets you are building what is known as reserve strength. This is the strength you possess beyond the necessary scope of your task. This makes your body more efficient with that weight and you are less likely to sustain injuries from fatigue related mistakes in your movement.
Parents and caregivers have their own unique strength demands. You need the capacity to pick up and carry a 30-60 pound child repeatedly, load strollers and car seats, chase kids at the playground, and handle household tasks like carrying groceries and moving furniture.
Some practical targets for active family life include being able to carry about 20-25% of your body weight in each hand for 30-60 seconds (think multiple grocery bags), performing 10-15 solid push-ups, and having the lower body strength to get up and down from the floor easily while playing with children. These may seem like really simple things, until you find yourself struggling to do them comfortably or without feeling your body being taxed from it. Even a basic baseline of strength developed from our suggestions earlier can help, but if you have gym access even doing a few total body circuits on the machine weights can make a big difference. If you have the skill to do it safely, free weights may be a more time efficient option and may carry over better to real life activities if for no other reason the fact that they require you to control a weight that isn’t on railing.
As we age, functional strength becomes absolutely crucial for maintaining independence and quality of life. For older adults, the focus shifts to preventing falls, maintaining the ability to perform activities of daily living, and preserving the strength needed to stay independent.
Key functional targets for seniors may include being able to perform 12-15 chair stands in 30 seconds without using hands, carrying 10-20 pounds per hand for short distances, and maintaining the ability to get down to and up from the floor safely. These capabilities directly translate to climbing stairs, carrying groceries, and recovering from stumbles or falls. That said, many seniors who have not been active on a consistent basis for much of their lives may need to work up to those numbers over time. If this is describing you, we highly recommend finding a trainer in your area that specializes in senior fitness that can ensure that you have a safe environment with balance aids to help as you build your strength baselines, especially if things like standing up on your own are becoming challenging. You should definitely look into it sooner than later.
While functional strength is highly individual, here are some practical benchmarks that support general health and capability for most young and middle aged adults so you have something to start with:
Lower Body and Carrying Capacity
Upper Body Strength
Hip Hinge and Lifting
Bonus Health Indicator: Grip Strength
Grip strength is surprisingly predictive of overall health but largely overlooked. If you have access to a hand dynamometer, values below about 27 kg for men and 16 kg for women suggest focusing on grip and general strength training. Farmer's carries, rowing exercises, and deadlifts improve grip strength quickly. It’s largely believed that grip strength is more of a proxy metric than anything, for general health anyway. So, while we recommend using the hand grip dynamometer if you have access to one, that’s mainly for an objective assessment. It doesn’t mean go out and buy a little grip trainer. The grip strength is an indicator of other things you are doing like strength training. If you have really weak grip strength it indicates a lack of basic functional strength somewhere and that is also likely showing up in your traditional gym exercises.
Let’s move beyond functional strength for now and look at strength more like it applies in typical gym programs for contrast.
When thinking about strength standards, it's helpful to understand two key concepts:
Relative strength compares your lifting capacity to your body weight. This is often the most useful measure for non-athletes because it accounts for differences in body size and provides a fair comparison across different people.
Absolute strength is simply the total weight you can lift, regardless of your body size. This matters more for tasks involving fixed loads, like moving a 50-pound box (to use a functional strength example), where your body weight is irrelevant to the task demands.
For most people focused on health and daily function, relative strength provides the most meaningful benchmarks unless there is a very specific task they need a baseline level of strength for.
If you're curious about your current strength levels or enjoy tracking progress with numbers, strength testing can be valuable. However, testing needs to be done safely, especially for beginners.
A one-repetition maximum (1RM) represents the most weight you can lift once with perfect form through a full range of motion. While 1RM testing is common with exercises like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses, we don't recommend true 1RM testing for most non-athletes, particularly beginners especially if you aren’t training with a trainer or supervised gym environment.
Instead, use submaximal testing like a 5-repetition maximum (5RM). Perform a heavy set of 5 reps with good form, finishing with 1-2 reps still "in the tank." This approach is much safer while still providing useful data about your strength levels. You can use this measure to estimate your 1RM too if you want to compare against 1RM benchmarks.
Once you have strength data from submaximal testing, you can use online tools to see how you compare to others:
EXRX.net:
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These tools aren't perfect, but they provide helpful context for your progress and you may find it motivating.
Not everyone finds numerical comparisons motivating. Some people, especially beginners or those building confidence, may find comparisons overwhelming or discouraging. Others thrive on data and benchmarks, using them as fuel for consistent training.
Both approaches are completely valid. What matters most is having some method of tracking progress, whether through formal assessments, functional milestones, or simply noting how daily activities feel easier over time.
If you're ready to build functional strength, here's a straightforward framework:
A simple starter session might include: goblet squats (holding a dumbbell high up against the chest while squatting); hip hinges or deadlift variations, like a Romanian deadlift, as allowed by your mobility; rows; push-ups; farmer's carries, and planks.
Ultimately, "strong enough" means having the physical capacity to live your life with confidence and without unnecessary limitations imposed by a lack of strength necessary for the task. It means being prepared for the physical demands your life places on you, whether that's keeping up with your kids, excelling at the manual tasks of your job, or maintaining independence as you age.
Start where you are, build gradually, and use whatever combination of functional milestones and formal assessments keeps you motivated and progressing. Your strength journey is uniquely yours, and every step forward is worth celebrating.
Remember, the goal isn't to become the strongest person in the gym. It's to become strong enough to live the life you want to live, with energy, confidence, and capability to spare.
Full Body vs. Body Part Training Splits: What Beginners Need to Know - This article has advice on how to structure you training week for beginners.
Why Fitness Assessments Matter- This article gets more into fitness assessment in general. The topics of functional, relative, and absolute strength are all a subset of fitness assessment as a whole.
High-Intensity Workouts: Are 1000-Calorie Burns Worth It - While not really about strength training, this article can still help set expectations and help you plan aspects of your health and fitness habits if you are a beginner.
If you really want to deep dive and learn these topics in a comprehensive framework and organized curriculum, you may want to learn more about our flagship health and wellness course:
The information provided in this article is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, professional fitness guidance, or a substitute for consultation with qualified healthcare or certified fitness professionals. Before beginning any exercise program, strength testing protocol, or making significant changes to your current routine, consult with your physician, especially if you have any pre-existing health conditions, injuries, are pregnant, or have concerns about your ability to exercise safely.
