Relative Strength

Relative Strength: what is it?

Absolute strength is what appears on the bar. Relative strength is what that means for the person lifting it. A 150 kg squat is a very different achievement for a 60 kg athlete than for a 120 kg one, and in gymnastics, climbing, combat sports, running, HYROX and every bodyweight movement in a CrossFit workout, it is the ratio that determines what an athlete can actually do. Which means relative strength has two levers, and a coach can pull either: raise the numerator, or lower the denominator.

Calculating and reading it

Divide the one-rep max by bodyweight in the same units. A 90 kg client with a 135 kg squat has a relative squat strength of 1.5. Coaches usually write this as a multiple of bodyweight, and track it per lift rather than as a single figure, because ratios differ a lot between exercises - deadlift ratios run highest, overhead press ratios lowest.

The useful reading is directional. If a client's absolute strength holds steady while their bodyweight falls, their relative strength rises and their pull-ups, running and sled work all get easier. If absolute strength climbs while bodyweight climbs faster, relative strength falls even though the numbers on the bar look better.

Where it decides outcomes

Any time the athlete has to move, carry or accelerate their own body, relative strength is the constraint. Pull-ups, muscle-ups, running economy, climbing, sprint acceleration, weight-class sports and obstacle events all reward it. In these contexts an extra five kilos of muscle that does not contribute to the movement is a cost, not a gain.

The mirror image is worth stating too. In sports with no weight class where mass itself helps - throwing events, rugby front row, powerlifting at the heaviest class - absolute strength wins and relative strength is close to irrelevant. Knowing which category a client is in decides whether you should be worrying about their bodyweight at all.

Improving it without wrecking the client

The clean route is to prioritise strength work while keeping bodyweight stable or slowly falling. Heavy low-rep work drives large neural adaptations with relatively little added mass, which is exactly what you want here. Combine that with adequate protein and a modest deficit, and the ratio moves from both ends at once.

The dangerous route is cutting weight hard. Big deficits cost strength, and a client who loses eight kilos and thirty kilos off their squat has gone backwards on the ratio while feeling like they won. Watch the ratio, not the scale - if relative strength is falling during a diet, the deficit is too aggressive or the lifting volume has dropped too far.

• Track relative strength per lift, not as a single global number.
• During a fat-loss phase, keep heavy work in the plan; drop volume before you drop intensity.
• A rising ratio during a diet means the plan is working, even when the bar numbers dip slightly.
• For weight-class athletes, plan the ratio backwards from the class, not the other way round.

The bodyweight-scaling problem

A simple ratio is not perfectly fair across body sizes. Larger athletes are almost always stronger in absolute terms and almost always weaker per kilo, because muscle cross-sectional area does not scale linearly with body mass. That is a geometric reality, not a training failure, and it is exactly the problem that scoring formulas like Wilks were built to solve.

So for coaching one client over time, the raw ratio is fine and easy to explain. For comparing clients of very different sizes to each other, or for ranking them, a scaled score is the fairer tool.