How strong is strong enough?

[stilleto]

/\ /\ read the above quote...


i disagree with everyone else. if you want to get stronger, for the best results get into a powerlifting routine. westside barbell is where it is at for strength

i agree with this- although there are plenty of routines that will work- all geared toward powerlifting/strength. you won't go WRONG with a westside routine though.

 

[Tweakle]

300/400/500 bench/squat/dl is attainable for naturals imo.

 

[Santa_Claus]

"Your squat is higher than your bench means you have some strength imbalances that need to be addressed", I find an interesting statement. Your squat should always be higher than your bench or you do have some strength imbalances - weakass legs.
Being your build (or very similar) myself, I feel that the 5X5 would be a better routine, although power lifting will help for sure. Basically, you could keep the routine you're doing and just make sure to add weight each week. Your body will adapt to the extra poundages.
One other thing to try is to keep using the same weights you are now and increase the reps for several weeks. In 3 weeks (a guess) if you can bench 230 12-15 reps, then you can probably do 250 X 2 or 3.

Yah I just started day1/week1 of the 5x5 and im excited to see what kind of results I will get from that kind of training.

The weird thing is that my arms are very long and somewhat thin. I have girly wrists (my mom has bigger wrists than me). I have a huge (muscles not fat) ass, REALLY wide hips and long and strong legs but my squat sucks.

I think the problem is as follow...I've trained for only ~7 months and until last month. I only trained my legs once a week and my leg training consisted only of 4 sets of squats. So for 6 months I trained my upper body like a mad man and only did 4 sets of squats per week for the lower body.

Now I squat 3x a week(different styles and different intensities) and the strength of my lower body has increased. I can now deep squat what I strugged doing at parallel a month ago.

 

[Creepusmaximus]

Well once you have to gain too much bodyweight and train too much to gain the strength, which then interfers with your goals then your strong enough

Power benefits from pure strength gains stop helping after you reach a point where you can't generate the force in the time needed in the activity.
With sprinting, strength only helps at the start and to stop your legs and hips collaspsing each foot strike and absorbing force, plus basic form. After that you only have 0.1 of second to exert force each foot strike, so can see getting stronger after a point in time won't help you to run faster, since you can't use all your strength in that short period of time. It takes about 0.5 sec to generate max force. So you will be just wasting time and resources gaining more strength.

Most people will usually stop benefiting from pure leg strength when they reach double bodyweight on the squat, since by then you bodyweight will represent about 33% of your strength levels.
then you start to concentrate on other things like reactivity and rate of force developement. Ability to fire and relax quickly helps running greatly too, which heavy weight training tends to interfere with

so I would aim for 2xBW on squat, 2 to 2.5x on dead, and 1.25 to 1.5 on bench is enough. Off course this depends on your leverages.
Assuming your doing all of em raw, and a moderate stance fullsquat, strict flat back deadlift and a shoulder width grip bench
There is no reason why you can't train power and strength concurrently. Each will help the other

I like that answer. Your pretty weak right now. I would go by X BW.