Here Is How Much Superman Can Lift, Bench Press, Curl, & Squat

Regarding superheroes, no other name usually stands up to Superman in terms of his iconic strength. Of course, there are a lot of other superheroes with superhuman strength that may be on par with or even greater than Superman’s own strength. But the thing is that Superman has always been the most iconic powerhouse in the world of comics, and his strength feats can prove it. So, how much can Superman lift?

It is estimated that Superman can lift at least 2 billion tons, according to the comics. Some accounts say he can lift much more than that, as his upper limit has never been established. And that means that he is also capable of lifting heavier weights.

One of the things that has always been true about Superman is that he can be as strong as the storyline needs him to be, as there has never been an established limit in terms of how much he can lift. That means we are only talking about estimates here, especially regarding how much he can carry in other types of lifts. That said, let’s look at some of Superman’s estimated lifts.

Lift

In terms of his overall strength, Superman has always been portrayed as one of the most powerful people in the world of comic books because his superhuman strength is seemingly the standard when it comes to comic book characters with incredible strength feats. In that regard, we know that he is exponentially stronger than a regular human being and has always been portrayed as able to lift things heavier than the imagination can come up with.

The thing about Superman is that he has always been portrayed as a character that is as strong as the story needs him to be, and we’ve seen that time and time again in many different storylines wherein he struggled to lift buildings but ended up pushing entire planets.

This means there are fluctuations in how strong Superman is, as different comic book writers tend to have Superman strength feats that vary from one story to another.

But Science World has estimated that Superman can lift at least 2 billion tons. This doesn’t sound surprising because we’ve seen the Man of Steel pulling entire planets on his own. But let’s not forget that some accounts say that he can even push his strength to levels that are beyond imaginable.

One comic book storyline says that Superman has reached 200 quintillion tons in terms of his strength and is still capable of more.

Of course, 200 quintillion seems too much if you think about what Superman can lift, but that isn’t out of the question because we know that comic book storylines can vary from one writer to another.

In that regard, we are going with the more conservative lift of 2 billion tons. But we are not dismissing the possibility that Superman can lift stuff much heavier than 2 billion tons because, as mentioned, he can be as strong as the storyline needs him to be because he has always been the poster boy of strength in the world of comic books.

If we take things into perspective, the Palace of the Parliament of Romania is around 4.1 million tons and is the heaviest building in the world. This means that Superman can easily lift this entire building up all on his own. Meanwhile, we know that the entire planet Earth weighs 5.97 billion trillion metric tons. And Superman has shown the ability to push entire planets out of orbit but not entirely lift them.

As such, we know that 2 billion tons aren’t even the upper limit of Superman’s strength, as this is only a conservative estimation of how much he can lift. That means that he can still lift more as long as the story requires him to lift several times the usual number that he can lift.

Bench press

Of course, we’ve never seen a really good measure of how much Superman can bench press. But there are estimates that we can make based on his usual conservative maximum lift of 2 billion tons. And we are basing this on real-world numbers.

In most cases, the average person can bench press 65% more than they can lift on a maximum. That means 65% of 2 billion tons is around 1.3 billion tons. In that regard, Superman is likely strong enough to push something 1.3 billion tons upward from a lying down position, although we aren’t sure whether or not he has been placed in such a situation. 

Curl

Again, similar to the bench press, we haven’t seen Superman actually curling something because curls are usually just used in workouts instead of real-life situations. Nevertheless, we can still make some estimates based on his maximum lift of 2 billion tons.

The average male can curl up to 31% of his maximum lift. That means 31% of 2 billion tons is around 620 million tons. Of course, we don’t see Superman using curls in real-life situations because most men only do curls in the gym. And we are pretty sure that gyms don’t carry 620 million tons of dumbbells and barbells lying around.

Squat

Finally, we have the squat, which has always been seen as one of the best lifts in the history of lifting. Of course, we haven’t seen Superman squatting or carrying something using the power of his legs because we know for a fact that he usually just flies whenever he is lifting something.

Nevertheless, the average man can squat 90% of his maximum lift. So, what that means for Superman is that he is theoretically capable of squatting around 1.8 billion tons of weight. But we don’t know if he actually needs to do squats because his ability to carry weight while flying cancels out his need to use his legs when lifting.

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