You have probably watched someone at the gym pull a loaded barbell off the floor. Maybe you have tried it yourself. The deadlift is honest, because the bar either comes up or it does not.
So what should you actually be able to lift? A 2024 analysis of 809,986 drug-tested powerlifting competition entries published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport gives the clearest answer we have.
The headline numbers come from the top 10 percent of competitors in their physical peak. At the 90th percentile for ages 18 to 35, men pulled 3.25 times their own bodyweight. Women pulled 2.66 times theirs.
The dataset covered 571,650 men and 238,336 women, aged 12 to 96. These were competition powerlifters, not the general gym population, so the numbers describe the top of the field, not the middle.
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What the deadlift numbers look like by age
Relative strength falls with every age band, but slower than many expect. The researchers grouped lifters into four age bands and reported the 90th-percentile pull for each.
Age band | Men, 90th percentile | Women, 90th percentile Also read: 7 everyday foods that may gradually raise your risk of type 2 diabetes |
|---|---|---|
18 to 35 | 3.25 x bodyweight | 2.66 x bodyweight |
36 to 59 Also read: 7 everyday foods that may help your body maintain healthy testosterone | 2.98 x bodyweight | 2.51 x bodyweight |
60 to 79 | 2.64 x bodyweight Also read: A once-weekly menopause patch just got a lot cheaper to access | 2.19 x bodyweight |
80 and over | 2.30 x bodyweight | 1.68 x bodyweight Also read: 8 warning signs your gut trouble could be Crohn's disease, not just IBS |
At the top of the field, men over 80 still pulled more than twice their bodyweight, and women over 80 still pulled about 1.7 times theirs. The point is not that you should match a 25-year-old powerlifter at 70.
It is that the deadlift keeps rewarding training deep into later life.
Where ordinary lifters land compared with the elite
Among the same young adults aged 18 to 35, the median male deadlift was about 2.6 times bodyweight and the median female lift about 2.1 times. The 25th percentile sat near 2.3 and 1.75 times bodyweight.
Remember again that these competitors trained for the lift. Most people in a general gym who deadlift occasionally sit well below those numbers.
A practical starting target for a healthy adult beginner is one times bodyweight. The next steps are 1.5 and 2 times.
By the time you can pull twice your bodyweight, you are already stronger than the average person your age who does no resistance training.
Why the deadlift tells you something about health
The deadlift leans on the whole back of the body. Glutes, hamstrings and spinal erectors do the pulling. The forearms and hands keep the bar in your grip. Both have their own health signal in large cohort studies.
In the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study, published in The Lancet in 2015, researchers tracked 139,691 adults in 17 countries for a median of four years.
Every 5-kilogram drop in grip strength was tied to about a 16 percent higher risk of dying from any cause.
We have broken down what the grip-strength signal looks like at each age in a separate benchmark piece.
Lower-body strength matters too. A 2026 cohort study in JAMA Network Open followed 5,472 US women aged 63 to 99 for a mean of 8.3 years and tested both grip and the sit-to-stand chair rise.
Women in the strongest quartile had about a third lower risk of death from any cause than those in the weakest, even after accounting for daily activity and walking speed.
How to use these numbers if you train
Treat the age-band figures above as a ceiling, not a first-year goal. Powerlifters at the 90th percentile have usually trained with coaching for years.
A sensible path for most adults is to build the basics first, then push for a bodyweight pull, then 1.5 times, then two.
Age shifts the goalposts, but the health benefits do not require elite numbers. A 55-year-old who deadlifts 1.5 times bodyweight is loading the same muscles, bones and grip that the mortality research keeps flagging.
If you have a history of back pain, a disc problem or chronic hip or knee issues, talk to a doctor or a qualified coach before you load the bar. Form fails long before strength does.
For most adults, two hard pull sessions a week are enough to make steady gains. Start with a weight you can lift cleanly for five reps, add a small amount each week, and retest your single-rep max every three months.
This article is made and published by Mie Hermansen, who may have used AI in the preparation.