Bodyweight Score Comparison Interpreter

Two lifters, three published formulas, and whether they agree. Wilks 1995, DOTS and IPF GL points rank the same pair in different orders often enough that “who is the better lifter” has no answer without naming the formula first — which is why several of them exist.

The default pair, scored four ways

Two more constructed pairs where the formulas split

Which formula ranks whom, and why the question has no single answer

This page is about the strength sports — powerlifting, the squat, bench press and deadlift, and weightlifting, the snatch and the clean and jerk. They are different sports under different bodies, the International Powerlifting Federation and the International Weightlifting Federation, and almost nothing carries from one rulebook to the other. Every figure below that belongs to an edition, a rulebook date or an Olympic cycle is printed with it, because both bodies revise them.

Why a score like this exists. A total in kilograms ranks lifters inside one weight class and nowhere else, and the heavier lifter lifts more almost without exception. A bodyweight-adjusted score multiplies the total by a coefficient that falls as bodyweight rises, so a federation can award one best-lifter prize across the classes. It is a comparison against one published curve and nothing more — not a measure of talent, not a prediction, and not transferable between the two sports, which use different formulas fitted to different data.

There is no single right answer here, and that is the most useful thing this page can tell you. Powerlifting has at least four bodyweight-adjusted scores in live use — Wilks 1995, the Wilks 2020 revision, DOTS and the IPF’s own GL points — fitted to different data, so they rank the same two lifters in different orders. The IPF’s own evaluation report of March 2020 placed GL first in six of its eight competition categories and the formula the IPF had then officially approved last or next to last in seven. A score quoted without naming its formula, and for Wilks its edition, is not a score.

This page takes two lifters and reports whether the three formulas agree about them, and which one is in the minority when they do not. Three rather than four is a deliberate choice: with three formulas and no tie, a pair either produces unanimity or has exactly one formula in the minority, so the classification is complete and the page can always say something definite. Adding a fourth would introduce two-two splits with nothing useful to say about them. Wilks 2020 is in the tables instead, where its figures can be read alongside the other three.

Why disagreement is structural rather than a defect. A Wilks 1995 coefficient is 500 divided by a fifth-order polynomial in bodyweight; a DOTS coefficient is 500 divided by a fourth-order polynomial; an IPF GL coefficient is 100 divided by an exponential, A − B·e^(−C·bodyweight). Three curves of three different shapes, fitted to three different samples, cross each other — and wherever two of them cross between two lifters’ bodyweights, those two lifters swap places. The crossings are not at the edges of the plausible range either: the default pair on this page is a 93 kg lifter with 900 kg against a 140 kg lifter with 1025 kg, both ordinary heavyweight performances, and the oldest formula reverses the other three by over seven points.

The IPF has published its own view, and it is worth reading as a view rather than a verdict. Its evaluation report of March 2020 scored five formulas on two criteria across eight competition categories and ranked them GoodLift 23, DOTS 44, Wilks-2 50, Wilks 57 and its own then-official formula 66, with GL placed first in six of the eight categories. That is one body’s statistical judgement on a sample of its own competitions, and it is why the IPF scores on GL today. It does not make a BVDK meet scored on DOTS wrong, or a Powerlifting Australia result scored on Wilks 2020 wrong. The honest position for a calculator is to print all of them and name the disagreement, which is what this page does.

Two limits on what the page computes, both stated rather than hidden. The GL column uses the IPF’s classic powerlifting coefficients, chosen by sex, so a comparison of equipped totals has its GL figure on the wrong row — the IPF GL points calculator has all eight rows and should be used for that. And both lifters are scored in the same sex category, because none of these formulas was fitted to compare across them: each has a separate coefficient set per sex precisely so that it does not have to.

What this page is not. It is not a ranking of lifters, a prediction, or a statement about anybody’s potential — it compares two performances against three published curves and reports where the curves disagree. For the three scores on one lifter, the Wilks and DOTS score calculator computes them with every coefficient printed; for weightlifting’s entirely separate adjustment, the Sinclair coefficient calculator works per Olympic cycle. The totals themselves come from the powerlifting total and attempt selection calculator, and which class each lifter is in from the weight class and bodyweight interpreter.

Frequently asked questions

Related calculators

References

1. Kopayev O, Onyshchenko B, Stetsenko A. Evaluation of Wilks, Wilks-2, DOTS, IPF and Goodlift Formulas for Calculating Relative Scores in IPF Powerlifting Competitions, March 2020, published by the IPF at powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 20,000 to 25,000 characters). Its Appendix 1 prints the coefficients of all five formulas side by side and all of them came through as text. Its conclusion ranks GoodLift first overall (23), then DOTS (44), Wilks-2 (50), Wilks (57) and the IPF’s then-official formula last (66), with GL first in six of eight categories. Two extraction defects were found in it by arithmetic rather than by reading. The men’s DOTS row came through with no minus signs, giving a coefficient of 0.239 at 50 kg where the women’s row on the same page gives 1.253. The women’s Wilks fifth-order coefficient came through as −0.0000009054, which makes the coefficient negative above about 55 kg; the correct figure is ten times smaller. Neither defect is in the published document — both are in what the fetch delivered. The five equations themselves are absent.
2. International Powerlifting Federation. IPF GL Coefficients for Relative Scoring, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 8,000 characters). Headed “ACTUAL FROM MAY 01, 2020 TO DEC 31, 2023”. Table 1 gives A, B and C for eight categories; all 24 values came through as text and match the IPF’s separate evaluation report digit for digit. Says the coefficients come from regression on elite “Golden Standard Samples” from IPF and European competitions from 2011, that a coefficient is computed “with an accuracy of 6 decimal places”, and that it is “reasonable to adopt a four-year cycle”, recounting them “one year before the World Games year”. Both printed formulas are images. Formula (1) came through as the bare label “(1)” and Formula (2) as “⋅⋅ (2)”, with every operand, constant and exponential missing; the prose names the parts (“Bwt – body weight; A, B, C – constants; e is the base of the natural logarithm; 100 – normalization factor”) and not their arrangement. Its two worked examples give inputs only — their results are absent — so neither was used as a check.
3. “Wilks coefficient”, en.wikipedia.org (read 15 Oct 2026). The second independent source for the Wilks and Wilks-2 coefficients, which it gives labelled a to f for men and women in both sets. It agrees with the IPF’s evaluation report on every digit the two both print, and it is the source that resolves the women’s fifth-order coefficient as −9.054 × 10⁻⁸. It attributes the formula to “Robert Wilks, CEO of Powerlifting Australia”, dates the revision to March 2020, and states that the IPF used the coefficient “up until the end of 2018”. What it does not have, and the reason this batch had to look further: the equation is missing from the readable text, it never says which power of bodyweight each coefficient belongs to, and it does not state the numerator for either set.
4. “DOTS-Relativwertung”, de.wikipedia.org (read 15 Oct 2026). The source that recovered the men’s signs. It prints both polynomials in full with German decimal commas — men “500/(-0,0000010930*w^4+0,0007391293*w^3-0,1918759221*w^2+24,0900756*w-307,75076)” and the women’s with 0,0005158568, 0,1126655495, 13,6175032 and 57,96288 in the same alternating pattern — with w the bodyweight and the numerator 500. Every digit agrees with the IPF’s evaluation report; the signs do not, and the arithmetic says this one is right. It attributes DOTS to Tim Konertz, gives his own expansion “Dynamisch Objektives Teamwertungs-System”, cites his presentation “Die DOTS-Formeln – die neuen Wilks” as the primary source (accessed 23 October 2019), records the Insanity Meet 2019 as the first meet to use it, and records its adoption by the Bundesverband Deutscher Kraftdreikämpfer for team competitions from 2020 and for individual competitions after a Bundesausschuss decision at the end of 2019, and by Swiss Powerlifting from 2020. It gives the author’s own validity ranges, 40 to 210 kg for men and 40 to 150 kg for women, and does not state that the coefficients have ever been revised.
5. World Powerlifting. “Wilks Formula Calculator”, worldpowerlifting.com/technical/ (read 15 Oct 2026). Publishes the “Wilks 2020 Formula”, which it says “replaces the old Wilks Formula of 1995”, as two lookup tables of coefficients by bodyweight — women 40 to 150 kg and men 40 to 133 kg. The check that changed a number on this batch. Ten cells were read at the whole-kilogram column: men 1.3895 at 40 kg, 0.9968 at 60, 0.8923 at 70, 0.8191 at 80 and 0.7294 at 100; women 1.8486, 1.3190, 1.2042, 1.1318 and 1.0525 at the same bodyweights. All ten reproduce from the Wilks-2 polynomial on a numerator of 600 to within 5e-5, and on 500 every one is out by a factor of 1.2. The page prints no equation and no date, and its table headings read “Wilks Formula” without a year, so this batch takes the tables as the 2020 set on the page’s own statement and says so.
6. European Powerlifting Federation. Detailed Scoresheet — XVII Western European Men’s Equipped Championships, Hamm (Luxembourg), 17-20.09.2026, goodlift.info (read 15 Oct 2026; about 5,500 characters, readable as text, though the table arrives flattened so the column mapping is a reading of the layout rather than a parse). Columns “Rnk, Name, d.o.b., Team, Bwt, IPF GL, Cf., Lot, All Squat, All Bench Press, All Deadlift, Total, IPF GL Pts”. The decisive check for GL on this batch: all 14 rows with a valid total reproduce from the IPF’s May 2020 men’s equipped coefficients to within 5e-3 of the two decimals the sheet prints. That also establishes something no IPF document states — a championship in September 2026 is still scored on a set whose own sheet says it was valid to 31 December 2023.