TEXAS STRONG
Athletes in Lone Star State can carry their weight.
Picture this: a 1980s sports car with bald tires sinking into the soft sand at a Bolivar Peninsula beach.
Enter my mother — the type of woman who would wrestle a buffalo to protect someone she loves — and her friends on their way back to a rented beach cabin. The guy driving the car yells toward them, something like, “Hey, I’m stuck.”
Without a second thought, my mom and her friends dug out the tires and deadlifted the car out of the sand. The guy waved and drove off.
When she tells this story, she says “Texans are just strong like that.”
Strong-willed and fit, Texans have been ranked America’s physically strongest people based on statistics derived from the online forum Open Powerlifting.
Lift Vault, a resource for powerlifting, bodybuilding and strength training, analyzed five years of data. By breaking down three main powerlifting categories — the squat, the bench press and a deadlift — the company found Texas is one strong Lone Star.
In this study, Lift Vault examined competitive powerlifters from all 50 states. The average squat performed by a Texas competitor is 687 pounds; average bench press is 438 pounds; and average deadlift is 742 pounds. The rankings are based on wilks, a score used to compare relative strength across weight and gender, according to the company.
Shelby Saylor, association director of healthy living of YMCA of Greater Houston and a personal trainer, is not surprised that Texans are the strongest Americans.
“There’s just a culture here that is very inclusive of weightlifting, which is something that has reemerged over the past five to 10 years as a primary form of exercise,” Saylor said. “Deadlift, bench press and squat are really what tell us where someone’s full health is and how well they perform as an athlete.”
The YMCA recently renovated 16 of its Houston locations, adding lifting platforms and more weight plates to accommodate members who prefer free weights.
Texans excel at exercises that encompass what they do in daily life, Saylor said. It makes sense, since the state was founded on ranches and oil patches, she added.
“It was a lot of hard labor, maybe we’re genetically predisposed to being stronger for those reason,” she said. “Lifting a bale of hay, working on a ranch, you’re doing those types of movements.”
Population size should be factored into the ranking.
According to the data, Texas is followed by Virginia, New York, California and North Carolina in strength. The bottom five states on the list are Montana, West Virginia, Wyoming, Vermont and North Dakota.