How strong is Ranma?

Something has been bothering me in stories that I have been reading lately.

Just how strong are Ranma and Ryoga? One could easily say they are impressively strong, especially Ryoga, but just how physically powerful are they.

Lets start with Ryoga. The greatest argument for his strength over a long term is the umbrella he carries. Other instantaneous physical feats like pushing himself and Ranma into the air with one arm is impressive but less physically taxing then continually holding up his chosen weapon.

First we need to make a couple of quick assumptions about Ryoga. He and Ranma are about the same height and are definitely not the tallest male characters in the series, actually there is evidence that they might both be shorter then average. The average height for a adult male in Japan in around 5'7" (172 cm).

If we assume a height of 5'7" as a start, and go with the proportion theory that the length of a persons arms is around the same as their height from pictures we can see that the umbrella strapped to Ryoga`s back is slightly longer then half the span of his arms. Going with that let's say that it has a shaft one meter long. Now to find a volume we need a diameter. Assuming they have reasonably large hands then we can say perhaps the shaft of the umbrella is two inches (5 cm) wide.

So a quick calculation of volume using a cylinder. pi*r^2*h= 3.14*2.5^2*100= 1963.5 cm^3

now that we have a value for volume we can look at different metals it could be made of (or filled with) to find a weight. The most likely candidates are steel, iron, or lead.

Steel and iron have around the same density at 7.874 g/cm^3.

Lead is much heavier at 11.34 g/cm^3.

So to find a max let's look at lead. 11.34*1963.5 = 22,266.1 g or 22.2 kg = 49 lb

Steel would be both stronger and lighter then this.

Considering this could be a third to a half the weight of an average high school age boy in japan, it is not really that surprising they would find this very heavy. This still does not make it a superhuman feat to use.

Now to the crux of the problem. At the beginning of the series Ranma as a female did pick up the umbrella and hold it defensively, even opening it up to deflect Ryoga's bandannas. Even then this is not a superhuman feat to do, especially considering she kept it tucked in close to her body.

No where in the story after this did Ranma ever do heavy weight training to increase his strength beyond this in either form. Ranma`s training was extensively on speed.

No where was there any discussion of Ki enhanced strength, let alone Ranma learning techniques for it. On several occasions they show female Ranma lifting large chunks of ice or stone, but this was always an instantaneous action that involved lots of adrenalin and leverage.

Now for the biggest argument I could offer against Uber Ranma. Regardless of how strong he might be, outside of a life or death situation why would he reveal so much about his abilities to an opponent?

Ranma is a secretive individual by nature. He almost never in the series talked about his past with anyone, the only exception would be him discussing the dragon's wisker.

Almost all exposition about the past was done by Genma so he could try to portray himself in the best possible light.