If you needed someone to help you lift something, where would you be able to find the strongest people? A new report found that Texas apparently has the strongest people in the U.S. – and has for some time.
“For the eighth year in a row, America’s strongest state is Texas,” said Lift Vault, a weight lifting website that conducts an annual review of powerlifting data. To determine which states are the “strongest” the site compared the top 10 lifters from each using the Dynamic Object Team Rating System (DOTS) method.
Lift Vault also broke down the data to show average squat, bench press, and deadlift scores.
So, the next time you ask someone “do you even lift,” (read about the meme here if you haven’t heard of it) check first to see if they are from one of these top 10 states:
1. Texas
2. Florida
3. New York
4. Virginia
5. California
6. North Carolina
7. New Jersey
8. South Carolina
9. Michigan
10. Minnesota
According to Lift Vault, DOTS “is a relatively new method for comparing powerlifting performance across gender and weight class,” that is gaining popularity among weight lifting federations.
“If we assume the adequacy of the proposed statistical verification criteria and the evaluation procedure, we can conclude that the GOODLIFT (GL) formula is in the lead, the DOTS formula ranks second by a large margin,” said the International Powerlifting Federation in its 2020 evaluation of scores.
While Texas maintained its perch at the top of the list, the top overall lifter in the nation was identified by the Lift Vault as Austin Perkins of Mississippi. He totaled 1,876 pounds at the USAPL Raw Nationals 2023.
“To accomplish this, Austin strung together a squat of 691 pounds, a bench of 441 pounds, and a 744-pound deadlift at a bodyweight of just 164 pounds,” said Lift Vault. “This earned him a DOTS score of 615 and arguably the most impressive lifting performance in recent history.”
According to Livestrong, the average American man (weighing around 199 pounds) can bench press 135 pounds untrained and around 215 pounds at an intermediate weight lifting level.