It’s truly sad that in this day and age we have not set a firm bar/measure of strength in the weight room.  Bench press, front squat, trap bar dead lift maxes have all been inflated to show unrealistic numbers with sub par form.  The truth behind the reality is that coaches inflate their own egos just as much as their athletes’ bench press numbers. The results are arbitrary.  Want to get your athletes strong?  WORK!  The Wikipedia definition of work states: “In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance.” In the strength and conditioning world, work is defined as the weight (gravity acting on the bar/object) multiplied by the distance the object travels.  If we as coaches don’t set the distance the bar travels, how can we accurately measure our athletes’ strength gains?  The truth is we can’t!  In fact not only do we set inaccurate standards, we guess, which further sets our profession back.