So I asked this question on the Pro Raw forum, and 83% got it in under 12 months, only 1 lifter is still not there after 18 months.
If your lifting to increase your max, and cant hit them in under 12 months, sack your coach, give yourself an uppercut or start asking questions about your training.
99% of posters on ProRaw are likely to be people who compete in powerlifting, and have a proclivity towards to strength training. Dare I say that part of the reason is because they have some degree of natural talent at it.
If you took a bare novice with no lifting experience who was skinny, older, sedentary and not particularly talented athletically, I would be a bit more forgiving. I have seen plenty of people under proper coaching who haven't been able to hit the figures within 12 months through no fault in their training, programming or attitude.
Where I train is adjacent to a ordinary gym and we've had a number of people have started training because they just wondered in accidentally and were recruited. Some of these guys hadn't lifted a weight in their life. These people are the ones who make the slowest progress. Its actually the bench press I am thinking of most here. If you had lifted weights previously, you probably have a few years of benching behind you (even if it was a less than optimal way of training). But if come from a clean slate, it can take well over a year to put on the necessary mass to hit a 100kg paused bench.
What I like about the 140/100/180 idea is that its a simple message which encourages beginners to just train hard at a simple program centred around the main lifts, without overthinking or complicating things. But... there's no science to it, they are just random numbers.
Case in point...
There's a lifter I know who holds the Australian 66kg deadlift record with
277.5kg@67.5kg (raw) and recently the unofficial IPF raw world record of 271kg @68kg, but his best raw paused bench in comp is 97.5kg. By formula, his rawdeadlift is still one of the biggest ever in any federation in Australia (raw or equipped). He has been training powerlifting for over 10 years and is one of the most robotic trainers I've ever seen - he's like the terminator. It's not his coaches, programming or attitude. The same coaches and programming have trained numerous PL world champions over the past 30+ years. There is a reason why he can't bench 100kg: he's just a very light, long armed skinny guy who isn't a phenomenal bencher. Maybe he would bench 100kg if he put on 5-10kg (which in his case would probably mean eating 2x as much as he does now), but this would probably do more harm to his overall total. Keep in mind,
97.5kg @68kg is still almost 1.5x BW. If a 110kg lifter benched 160kg raw in comp (same %wise), you wouldn't think twice about it, but according to the 140/100/180 theory, this lifter is still a beginner? 100kg bench is just an arbitrary number.
FWIW, I reached 140/100/180 within 12 months of continuous training
