"Relative strength" is a cope
Gym bros often talk about strength standards referencing bodyweight.
For example, they’ll say that you’re not really strong until you can deadlift 2.5 times your bodyweight.
This is cope, plain and simple.
Why?
Well, strength is only about one thing: the amount of force a person can produce.
The more force a person can produce, the stronger that person is, period. How heavy or light that individual is, is completely irrelevant.
And deep down, everybody knows it.
Nobody in their right mind actually thinks that a 150lbs man who can deadlift 305 is really stronger than a 300lbs guy who can deadlift 600lbs.
Clearly, the big guy is much, much stronger than the smaller man.
However, it is very hard for a smaller guy with a six pack to admit that he’s not nearly as strong as a big dude with ton of excess body fat. And so, rather than expressing his strength in absolute numbers, he will reference his bodyweight instead, to make himself look better.
This is cope.
You may tell yourself that you’re fitter and in better shape then the big dude, and you’d probably be right.
But you can’t say that you’re stronger, because strength has a very simple definition, and bodyweight isn’t part of it.
Sorry.
To drive this point home even more, imagine people started using math to prove to you that they were faster than Usain Bolt.
They could say something like this:
“I know that I run the 100m in 11 seconds and Usain Bolt runs it in 9.58 seconds, BUT Usain Bolt is 6’5” (195cm) and I’m 5’6” (167.5cm), so if you account for that, I’m actually 1.3% faster!”
You would immediately realize that this is massive cope for the fact that Usain Bolt would absolutely smoke this person in a race.
Don’t be like this.