Can I measure my strength and others by their size?

Question

I was wondering if there was a way to calculate, maybe strength's the wrong word, but strength and physical fitness capabilities? If there is then can someone show me how to compute that? Tell me if you need more information than this but I think you'd need something like.....

I'm 5' 1 1/2, I'm female and weigh 108 lbs. My BMI is right around 19, if I calculated correctly. If you need any more info, let me know and I will post it!

Answer 1

You could probably come up with a loose correlation between strength/fitness based solely on size. But I don't think you'd get good results from that. You'd have to have a lot of samples and have them all take some kind of strength/fitness test to gauge overall performance.

Things like arm length, leg length can make a big difference in strength. These slight differences will matter in this kind of measurement.

Just because someone is a certain height/weight doesn't make them fit, or possess strength. Fit people, even kids, can have asthma and cholesterol issues that would affect their abilities even tho they may 'look' healthy and strong.

There would be many variables you'd have to take into account for this to be any kind of reasonable 'exercise'.

No pun intended.

Answer 2

It's a nice idea, but I think you only have to look at some of the athletes that competed in Beijing, particularly the Chinese, to see that size is not the main factor in strength.  Gymnasts competing on the rings require incredible levels of upper body strength, yet apart from their arms and shoulders, appear fairly normal sized. The woman from Thailand who won gold in the 53 kg weightlifting category only weighed about 7.5 lbs more than you do, but was able to clean & jerk 126 kg or 277.7 lbs which is about 2.4 times her own body weight.