It's still true that it's not necessary to go beyond those benchmarks.
Going from "weak" to a 0.75-1xBW Press, 1.25-1.5xBW Bench, 1.75-2xBW Squat & 2-2.5xBW Deadlift will greaty improve your athletic ability and readiness for life. Sure going beyond that will still improve your performance, but you'll need to invest a lot and get very little improvements in return -> the law of diminishing returns.
Training to go beyond those benchmarks usually requires specific programs that take away to much energy(recovery) and/or time from your sport specific training. That's why at this point almost all coaches simply try to maintain that level and work on other qualities.
If you've got nothing else to do then by all means strive for bigger numbers, because a 3xBW Deadlift will always be better than a 2xBW Deadlift.
However if you're after something different, the path from a 2xBW to a 3xBW Deadlift could keep you away from that goal.
conor78 is very close to the point of diminishing returns, that's why I asked for his exact goals.
If for example his goal would be to maintain his strength but increase his conditioning (from his OP I get that conditioning seems to be somewhat important), I'd say GSLP is not the best fit, because a linear progression at that level (1.75xBW Squat & 2xBW Deadlift) will very likely take too much out of you to do any productive conditioning work.
If on the other hand someone with a 0.75xBW Squat & 1xBW Deadlift would ask the same question, I'd tell him to do GSLP, because it would make him strong first and that alone would increase the performance in many ways (even conditioning).
Agree
@Steve Freides. I don't think you can ever be too strong in any sport!
I agree, but as I said because of the diminishing returns getting past a certain point (the benchmarks I mentioned) it takes too much away from your sport specific training.
Let's have a soccer player who reached the benchmarks. Now we clone him. You increase your clones lifts by another 10-25% by focusing on strength protocols that leave limited room for other training. I just maintain my clones strength with minimal stuff and focus on running technique, shooting & passing drills and things like that. At the end of that "taining cycle" who would have the better soccer player?
Certainly me.
This is true for most sports, besides the ones I mentioned in my other post.
I don't agree. If you have a sport for which improving your PL numbers could get in the way, that's one thing, but if you don't, you don't need to be a competing power lifter in order to benefit from going past a double bw DL or similar milestone.
Good point Steve. I often ponder, how strong is strong enough for your life, hobbies, or sport? My main hobby in the summer is SCA/HEMA(medieval combat) and I dare say that most people never workout. In the winter I ski, and while I feel that being strong is helpful it really isn't necessary to squat or even workout you legs to be a great skier.
Of course I can not back this up with any kind of scientific research, but when it comes to the things life can throw at you, I argue that maintaining the benchmarks and then focusing on yoga for a year, then focusing on swimming for the next year, then focusing on running the next year, then climbing etc... (I think you get point of what I'm trying to say
) will have a much bigger impact than using your limited time to train (because of family, job etc.) to increase your lifts beyond the benchmarks.