Strength standards and tiers

“Is 250 pounds a good bench?” depends entirely on who is lifting. Strength standards answer that by comparing your lift with published tables for people of your bodyweight and sex. Logex shows the result as a tier.

In plain terms. Find the row of the table nearest your bodyweight. Walk up the five thresholds (Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Elite). Your tier is the highest one your best lift reaches.

The reference data

The tables come from strengthlevel.com and are stored in the app as docs/StrengthStandards.json (units: pounds; extracted 2026-04-12). The file holds 42 exercises. StrengthStandardsService maps 52 of the app’s exercise ids onto them, so several app variants share a table (for example, a Smith-machine squat uses the back squat table, and both incline benches use the incline barbell bench table).

For each exercise and each sex the file has a list of bodyweight rows, and each row has five thresholds. For the barbell bench press the male table has 21 rows from 110 to 310 lb in 10 lb steps, and the female table has 18 rows from 90 to 260 lb.

Bodyweight (male, bench)	Beginner	Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Elite
170 lb	112	155	209	270	336
180 lb	121	166	221	284	352

The six tiers, in order, are Untrained, Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced and Elite.

The lookup

row    = the table row whose bodyweight is closest to yours
tier   = Elite         if best ≥ row.elite
         Advanced      if best ≥ row.advanced
         Intermediate  if best ≥ row.intermediate
         Novice        if best ≥ row.novice
         Beginner      if best ≥ row.beginner
         Untrained     otherwise
next   = the next threshold up, or none at Elite

Three details matter:

• No interpolation. Logex does not blend between two rows. It takes the nearest one. At 175 lb, which is exactly halfway between the 170 and 180 rows, the lighter 170 row wins the tie. At 176 lb the 180 row takes over, so thresholds step up in jumps rather than gliding.
• Out-of-range bodyweights clamp. Below the first row or above the last, you get the first or last row.
• No bodyweight, no tier. If your profile has no bodyweight, or the exercise has no mapped table, the lookup returns nothing and the screens show no tier. The bodyweight comes from your profile (Body metrics), not from the bodyweight field on an individual workout.

Which table: sex and reference

The profile stores sex as typed. For tiers the app uses the male or female table:

1. your sex, if it is male or female;
2. otherwise the standards reference you picked explicitly in your profile;
3. otherwise the male table, the long-standing default.

“Nonbinary” and “Prefer not to say” therefore use whichever reference you chose, or the male table if you did not choose. The choice is private to your profile and is used only for this lookup (and for starting-weight hints; see Personalization).

A worked example

You weigh 180 lb and your best bench e1RM is 250 lb (for instance 215 lb × 5 at the top of a session: 215 × 1.1667 = 250.8).

• Male table, 180 lb row: 121 / 166 / 221 / 284 / 352. You clear Intermediate (221) but not Advanced (284). Tier: Intermediate. The app shows Advanced as next, 34 lb away.
• Same weight on the female table: 55 / 88 / 132 / 184 / 242. 250 clears Elite. Tier: Elite, with no next tier.
• If you weighed 172 lb instead, the nearest row is 170: 112 / 155 / 209 / 270 / 336. Still Intermediate, but Advanced is now 270, 20 lb away.

Pull-ups, chin-ups and dips are graded on reps

For these three lifts the published standards are rep counts at bodyweight, not weights, so Logex grades them on the most reps in one working set of the workout, never on a weight or an e1RM. The table’s “< 1” (less than one rep) is read as 0.5, so a single rep clears Beginner. The next tier is shown as a rep count. These lifts are graded where a single workout’s sets are summarised (the post-workout insights). The Progress screens that compare an e1RM in pounds list only weight-graded lifts, and the assisted dip machine has no standard at all, because assistance is not comparable to bodyweight reps.

At 180 lb on the male pull-up table (novice 6, intermediate 13, advanced 23, elite 32), a workout whose best set is 10 pull-ups is Novice, 3 reps short of Intermediate.

What number is compared

This is the part to know if two screens ever disagree.

• Progress hub, Lifts, Strength standards, Body map and Achievements compare your best estimated 1RM for the lift (see Estimated 1RM), using the table for your profile’s standards sex.
• The exercise stats page (“At a glance”) compares your heaviest single set weight, and it does not pass your sex, so it uses the male table.

The service’s own header comment says tiers are computed from “max weight”, but the Progress screens pass the e1RM. The two numbers are close for low-rep sets and further apart for high-rep sets, so the same lift can sit in different tiers on the two pages.

Limits and rough edges

• It is a reference, not a verdict. The tables describe a population of lifters who submitted numbers to a website. They are useful for orientation and are not validated for any individual.
• Equipment matters. A machine press is compared with a table for that machine type, and different machines load differently. The mapping is a best match.
• Bodyweight movements are rough. For pull-ups, chin-ups and dips the female tables in the data file are malformed, with rows labelled by level names instead of bodyweights. A lookup against them cannot reach any tier and reads as Untrained. If you use those lifts, treat their tiers as approximate until the data is cleaned up.
• Your best only goes up. Tiers use your all-time best, so a deload or a break does not demote you.