Cebul.la · Writing · Brant Cebulla · · Updated
Being tall negatively affects ability to max back squat
I’m 6'3". On a squat, that is a long way down. The usual claim is that the extra range makes a heavy back squat harder.
It does, once body weight is the same. Among men who posted a one-rep max, a height, and a weight, each extra inch of height lines up with about a 6.5 pound lighter squat. From 5'6" to 6'0" that is about 39 pounds. At my height, against a 5'9" man of the same weight, the gap is that same 39 pounds. Against a 5'6" man it is about 59 pounds.
Leave weight out and height almost disappears. The median squat stays between 330 and 350 pounds from 5'4" to 6'4". Taller men weigh more, about 5 pounds of body weight per inch. Across those six inches that is about 30 extra pounds of body weight, which lines up with roughly 45 pounds more squat, enough to cover the 39 pound height penalty.
The numbers
This is the same CrossFit Games profile scrape as the Fran post: athlete IDs 1 through 299,999. I kept people who posted a back squat, a height, and a weight, and dropped impossible values. That leaves 32,961 men and 13,024 women. An earlier version of this post used 1,067 men from a smaller 2014 scrape, described in Gathering CrossFit data: the methodology. The figures below replace those.
People who know their max and type it in are a stronger group than a typical class, so these squats sit higher than a true cross section of men who train. The height comparison is inside that group.
What men squat
The median men’s back squat is 344 pounds. The 75th percentile is 386 pounds and the 25th is 300. The mean is 345, with a standard deviation of 65, so a lot of the men land between about 280 and 410. A bit over half the squats fall from 300 up to 400 pounds. Each bar below is 50 pounds, so the 300 bar is 300 up to 350.
Show the numbers
| Pounds | Athletes |
|---|---|
| <250 | 2,140 |
| 250 | 5,348 |
| 300 | 9,935 |
| 350 | 8,367 |
| 400 | 5,230 |
| 450 | 1,426 |
| 500+ | 515 |
Height on its own
A regression of squat on height alone, for these 32,961 men, is:
Back squat lb = 281 + 0.92 × height in
Height is in inches, so 5'6" is 66 and 6'0" is 72. The line says a 6'0" man squats about 5 pounds more than a 5'6" man. Height accounts for about 0.1% of the variation in these squats. The slope is detectable because the sample is large, and the gap is those 5 pounds.
The medians show the same flat line. Body weight is the column that moves. The rows run from 355 men at 5'4" to 5,453 at 5'10", and 558 at 6'4".
| Height | Weight | Squat |
|---|---|---|
| 5'4" | 157 | 331 |
| 5'5" | 161 | 335 |
| 5'6" | 168 | 331 |
| 5'7" | 172 | 335 |
| 5'8" | 177 | 340 |
| 5'9" | 183 | 345 |
| 5'10" | 187 | 345 |
| 5'11" | 193 | 345 |
| 6'0" | 198 | 345 |
| 6'1" | 204 | 350 |
| 6'2" | 208 | 345 |
| 6'3" | 215 | 342 |
| 6'4" | 220 | 342 |
Same weight, different height
At the same body weight, each extra inch of height lines up with about a 6.5 pound lighter squat. Holding weight constant is what makes the height penalty visible. The regression of squat on height and body weight is:
Weights posted in kilograms were converted to pounds, and heights posted in centimeters were converted to inches. Each extra pound of body weight lines up with about 1.4 pounds more on the squat. Together, height and weight account for about 18% of the variation. Weight alone accounts for about 14%. The height term shows up once weight is held still.
A narrower look is men who all weigh 185 to 194 pounds. There are 6,289 of them. Inside that window the fitted slope is about 8.5 pounds per inch, steeper than the 6.5 pounds in the full model. The medians fall from 365 pounds around 5'6" to 5'8", to 331 at 6'0", to 290 at 6'3".
Show the numbers
| Height | Median squat (lb) |
|---|---|
| 5'6" | 365 lb |
| 5'7" | 375 lb |
| 5'8" | 365 lb |
| 5'9" | 365 lb |
| 5'10" | 353 lb |
| 5'11" | 345 lb |
| 6'0" | 331 lb |
| 6'1" | 320 lb |
| 6'2" | 315 lb |
| 6'3" | 290 lb |
| Height | Squat |
|---|---|
| 5'6" (145) | 365 |
| 5'7" (277) | 375 |
| 5'8" (659) | 365 |
| 5'9" (900) | 365 |
| 5'10" (1,386) | 353 |
| 5'11" (977) | 345 |
| 6'0" (1,054) | 331 |
| 6'1" (453) | 320 |
| 6'2" (267) | 315 |
| 6'3" (89) | 290 |
Women
The women’s pattern points the same way, and the pounds are smaller. The median women’s squat is 215 pounds. From 5'0" to 6'0" that median stays between 209 and 220, while median body weight climbs from 127 to 167. At the same body weight, each extra inch lines up with about a 2 pound lighter squat, about 12 pounds across six inches.
Height and weight together account for about 9% of the variation in the women’s squats. Among the 4,556 women who weigh 130 to 144 pounds, the median still steps down as height goes up.
| Height | Squat |
|---|---|
| 5'2" (565) | 220 |
| 5'3" (675) | 220 |
| 5'4" (900) | 215 |
| 5'5" (654) | 205 |
| 5'6" (635) | 205 |
| 5'7" (381) | 200 |
| 5'8" (187) | 200 |
What the two results mean
A tall lifter who weighs what tall lifters usually weigh posts about the same max as a shorter lifter. The extra body weight covers the extra range. A tall lifter who weighs the same as a shorter lifter posts a lighter max: about 6.5 pounds per inch for the men here, about 2 pounds per inch for the women. That is the sense in which being tall makes a max back squat harder.