Student Details

Problem Statement

Will weightlifters ever hit a theoretical “maximum” bench press?

To answer the question, we will be looking at historical data of previous bench press world records between the year 1973 and 2008.

Over the years, new athlethes continue to push the boundary on what was previously known as the heaviest bench press and with the advancement of research and technology in training methods we see even bigger increases in weight.

One of those advancements was the bench press shirt which allowed for more weight to be lifted and saw use from 1985 onward.

Based on the visual below, we can see that with each passing year, there will be weightlifters who will consistently push beyond what was previously thought to be the limit of human potential in the bench press.

Data Source

Code and Visualisation

library(readxl)
## Warning: package 'readxl' was built under R version 3.5.3
benchdata <- read_excel("BenchData.xlsx")

library(ggplot2)
## Warning: package 'ggplot2' was built under R version 3.5.3
#Creating initial ggplot
b <- ggplot(data = benchdata, aes(x = benchdata$Year, y = benchdata$Weight))

#Adding coordinate points            
b <- b + geom_point(colour = 'blue',  size = 4)

#Adding labels to the graph
b <- b + labs(title = "Bench Press World Record (kg)", subtitle = "1973 to 2008", x = "Year", y = "Weight Lifted")

#Editing the scale for presentation
b <- b + coord_cartesian(xlim = c(1970,2010), ylim = c(250, 500))

#Adding theme
b <- b + theme_classic(base_size = 17) 

#Add line for incorporation of bench "shirt" in records
b <- b + annotate("text", x = 1985, y = 330, label = "Shirt Introduced", size = 3) + 
      geom_vline(xintercept = 1985, color = 'red', linetype = 'dashed')

#Adding line graph for the coordinates
b <- b + geom_line(aes(group = 1), color = 'green', size = 2) 

#View the visuals
b