There’s no getting around it. Elite level functional fitness athletes are incredibly strong and they have amazing overall work capacity. This article is going to be an in depth discussion on the required strength levels to compete at the highest levels of functional fitness. We will be focusing on both Tia-Clair Toomey and Mat Fraser, as well as a few others. Keep reading for more.
I, like many athletes and coaches, am drawn towards the strength events that we see at the Games, and other Sanctional competitions. They’re always some of my favorite events to watch, and in the last several years Dave Castro has included at least one maximal strength event. Suffice it to say that you can’t get to the top levels of the sport without maintaining elite levels of strength.
Interestingly enough, as I began to do my research for this article I started by reviewing this article that I wrote several years ago where I predicted what numbers top level athletes would need to achieve to remain competitive in the lifts. Check out this chart.
I believe that this trend line has held true for current level games athletes. They have increased in strength, but we’ve seen no drastic increases in recent years. Most of the top level athletes have added 10 or so pounds to their lifts in the last few years. However, there are some interesting nuggets we can look at once we dive into the data.
2018 Games Total
In 2018 Games athletes had to perform a total on day one. This is the heaviest back squat, strict press, and deadlift that they can manage for one rep each. We have excellent data on their lifts and you can watch it below if you care to.
Now some of you who’ve been around the block will correctly point out that many of these lifts may not be their true maxes, as they don’t need to set a PR, they just need to beat the other athletes to win points. I completely agree with you, but if you watch the footage you’ll see that their top lifts are probably less than a few percent away from their true maxes. Now let’s focus on some athletes who we excellent data on over consecutive years.
Noah Ohlsen and Mat Fraser
These two athletes are both at the top of the sport, with Mat Fraser winning the Games many years in a row. They are not the strongest athletes at every lift, but they always finish near the top for these maximal strength events. Here are their numbers for the 2018 Total.
- Mat Fraser: Back Squat (485 lbs), Press (205 lbs), Deadlift (525 lbs)
- Noah Ohlsen: Back Squat (440 lbs), Press (220 lbs), Deadlift (530 lbs)
We can see that these are very respectable numbers. Both of these athletes are 5’7 and both weigh around 195 at any given time. These guys are squatting over double their body weight and pulling over 2.5 times their bodyweight on deadlift. Now let’s take a look at the two ladies that we have good data for.
Tia-Clair Toomey and Brooke Wells
In the 2018 event, both of these ladies finished number one and two respectively. They are arguably the strongest female functional fitness athletes at the Games. Let’s look at their numbers
- Tia-Clair Toomey: Back Squat (330 lbs), Press (130 lbs), Deadlift (415 lbs)
- Brooke Wells: Back Squat (315 lbs), Press (140 lbs), Deadlift (415 lbs)
These are respectable numbers for many guys that I coach, and they are out of this world for ladies. It should be noted that Tia only weighs around 130 lbs, where as Brooke weighs around 150 lbs. This shows you that even though Tia is quite a bit lighter, she is even strong than her heavier competitors.
Now that we’ve reviewed these four athlete’s 2018 numbers. Let’s compare how they did at the 2020 games, where they faced the exact same event.
The 2020 Total
This year was a bit of a strange year due to the pandemic; however, all four of these athletes did compete in the total. This allows us to see what changes in their maximal strength have occurred in the intervening two years.
Noah Ohlsen and Mat Fraser
Both of these guys made it to the Games again. As you will see, their strength levels have generally increased from what they displayed two years previously. Here is the video footage should you want to watch.
- Mat Fraser: Back Squat (492 lbs), Press (210 lbs), Deadlift (535 lbs)
- Noah Ohlsen: Back Squat (455 lbs), Press (205 lbs), Deadlift (540 lbs)
Mat increased his total by 22 pounds from 2018, and Noah increased his total by 10 pounds. Noah did drop from 220 pounds on the strict press in 2018, to 205 pounds in 2020. From watching the event, I think he had a bad attempt on his last rep, in 2020. It looked like he pushed the bar too far forward during the initial portion of the lift. Now let’s look at the ladies
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Tia-Clair Toomey and Brooke Wells
These ladies also increased their overall strength in the intervening two years. This is super impressive considering just how strong they already were.
- Tia-Clair Toomey: Back Squat (335 lbs), Press (140 lbs), Deadlift (415 lbs)
- Brooke Wells: Back Squat (315 lbs), Press (137 lbs), Deadlift (432 lbs)
Tia increased her total by 15 pounds, where as Brooke increased hers by 14 pounds. It seems that that both of these athletes are progressing at the same rate; however, Tia’s progress is even more impressive considering that she is about 20 pounds lighter than Brooke.
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Strength Analysis
Obviously, these are only four athletes and we can’t generalize their improvements to every top level functional fitness athlete. We can refer to my predictive chart above and see if they are increasing along the trend line.
If we average Mat’s and Noah’s back squat numbers we find that their composite back squat is 473 pounds. My prediction from several years ago is just about 475 pounds. If we do the same for their deadlift, we find that the average is 538 pounds, and my predicted value is 546 pounds.
We can see that my predictions are very close to the actual improvements that these four athletes have shown. I would like to give a big caveat here. Using the numbers from four athletes isn’t enough data to scientifically say that they are following this trend. Don’t yell at me statistics nerds! It does point out that a few top level athletes are increasing their strength every year however.
Other Games Level Benchmarks
We know that strength matters for functional fitness, but it is just one part of the equation. Take a look at this article, where I perform an analysis of the top 10% of functional fitness athletes including their strength, and conditioning numbers. Here is an excerpt for the men.
The rankings on the left are the placings for that years Open with first being the winner and 1000th being the last level we analyze. We can see that these men have massive engines. Here is the ladies’ chart.
Just like the men, the female athletes are very well conditioned. They can run, and they can rip through a benchmark WOD just as fast as their male counterparts.
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The Future of Functional Fitness
I think the top level athletes will continue to improve along the same trend line, but there could be a few factors that might affect this. Astute observers of the programing for the 2020 Games will note that there were several long endurance WODs.
If the Games starts to skew towards more endurance oriented events, then I would expect the athletes to start to spend more time preparing for those, and less time lifting. I think Dave Castro is smart enough that he won’t create a Games where only one style of fitness is elevated above another, but we will see.
I think the big take away for us mere mortals is that we don’t need to set huge PRs every few months. These top level athletes are only gaining a few pounds here and there to their strength levels. I think these are reasonable goals for us as well. Instead of hoping for that elusive big lift, plan on accomplishing an intermediate PR, and before you know it you’ll be lifting more than you ever have before. Now get out there and start training !
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