Me and a few buddies were having a discussion on this. We are all fascinated by feats of strength and the mystical 1000lb bench/squat/deadlift.
How much do you think a full grown male silverback gorilla could lift on these three? Just from some research I've learned that gorillas have the strength of anywhere from 13-27 average men.
So I figure the average man can bench perhaps......120lbs. This puts the gorilla's theoretical bench press at 2000-4000 lbs. Most of my friends disagreed, they could barely even accept that a gorilla could bench 1500lbs. The extreme genetically gifted of the species could probably hit 5000lbs in my eyes.
As far as squats, with their short legs they might be able to get at least 5000lbs, maybe more. They could also quarter squat 10000 lbs just to show off
and deadlifting....well, I've heard that they can uproot trees when properly provoked, so I'm going to guess quite a substantial number, again in the 5000lb range.
I know this is a bit of a silly discussion, but I'm just curious what you all think.
No one knows how strong gorillas are, because the only way to know this would be to make them pull and push on a dynamometer and it is almost impossible to get them to do that.
There have been estimates done by experts based on the size of their muscles, the amount of force their muscles can generate per gram and the leverage the structure of their tendons allows them to use their muscles. Some estimates put gorillas at only 5 X overall stronger than a male human, and others estimate them to have the upper body strength of up to 30 male humans.
Pulling and pushing strength are not really that relevant. What really matters is power(strength X explosivenss) and at that a gorilla would be 10 X superior to an NFL lineman and 15 X more in the case of those huge mountain gorillas. That is enough power to crack the ribs and give concussions to an entire NFL team with a single run with the ball.
Now the bench press is a different story. We don't know how strong a gorilla would be in the bench press, but it is unlikely that a gorilla would be able to bench a lot more than a Human benching champion for several reasons. The first is that gorillas' muscles are designed for pulling and not pushing. They have gigantic back muscles but their chest muscles are not that huge and their arms attach to the joints in a slingshot position that maximizes pulling strength. Secondly, gorillas have very long arms compared to Humans. Long arms give you better leverage for pulling but hinders you when it comes to the bench press because it makes for a longer distance that your arms have to go through to move the weight. Then, there is the issue of neuromuscular connection. The bench press is an abnormal movement that is not found in nature. Humans increase their strength in it partly through improved neuromuscular connection. However, because gorillas have such huge overall muscle mass, they should be abel to bench raw about twice as much as the World's best Human bencher. Not that impressive, but remember that gorillas are at a huge disadvantage compared to Humans in the bench press.
SUCKMYMUSCLE
