Wilks and DOTS Score Calculator

Three bodyweight-adjusted powerlifting scores from their published polynomials — Wilks as released in 1995, the Wilks 2020 revision and DOTS — side by side on one lifter, because they are different curves and rank lifters differently. Every coefficient names the document it was read from.

The three published polynomials

The published coefficients, constant term first

Reproducing the federations’ own published figures

Three answers to one question, and why that is the finding

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.

Where each one comes from. Wilks is Robert Wilks’s, published in 1995 and used by the IPF “up until the end of 2018”. Wilks 2020 is Powerlifting Australia’s own revision of 28 February 2020, announced on the grounds that “New data has allowed for a rebalancing of coefficients”, with the extreme bodyweight classes “brought into better balance with the middle bodyweight classes”. DOTS is Tim Konertz’s “Dynamisch Objektives Teamwertungs-System”, first used at a meet in 2019 and adopted by the Bundesverband Deutscher Kraftdreikämpfer and by Swiss Powerlifting from 2020. None of the three is the IPF’s current formula: that is IPF GL points, a different functional form with a separate coefficient set per sex, equipment class and event.

Thirty-odd coefficients in a PDF is exactly the shape a confabulated table takes, so none was trusted on its own. Every set here was read from a federation document, corroborated against a second independent source, and then checked by reproducing figures the federations themselves published — a scoresheet column recomputed from the formula, not a table cell quoted back. That is the only check that catches an internally consistent wrong coefficient, and on this batch it caught one.

The check that changed a number. Neither source that prints the Wilks 2020 coefficients prints its numerator, and neither does Powerlifting Australia’s own announcement. The obvious inference is 500: that is Wilks 1995’s numerator and DOTS’s, and it puts all three curves within a few per cent of each other across the whole bodyweight range — at 90 kg a men’s Wilks 1995 coefficient of 0.63839 against a Wilks-2020-on-500 of 0.63916 and a DOTS of 0.64660. That inference is wrong. All ten whole-kilogram cells read from World Powerlifting’s published Wilks 2020 table reproduce on a numerator of 600 to within five parts in a hundred thousand, and none on 500. An internally consistent wrong scale passes every other kind of check; only a published figure catches it. The consequence is on the page: a Wilks 2020 score is about a fifth larger for the same lifter, and the two are not interchangeable despite sharing a name.

And the sign check. The IPF report’s readable text gave the men’s DOTS row with every coefficient positive. Through the polynomial, a 50 kg man then gets a coefficient of 0.239 while a 50 kg woman, from the women’s row on the same page of the same document, gets 1.253 — a difference no bodyweight adjustment could have. The men’s signs alternate, as the women’s row itself shows, and with them restored the 50 kg man gets 0.995, alongside his Wilks 1995 figure of 1.023. The German-language encyclopaedia entry, which prints both polynomials in full and cites Konertz’s own presentation, confirms the pattern digit for digit. Nothing was repaired by guesswork: the arithmetic said a value could not be right and a second source said what it was.

What the page does not do. It does not pick a winner: the IPF’s own report does, on one sample of its own competitions. It does not adjust for age either, because a masters age factor is a published table by age and sex rather than a formula and this calculator has no table interpolation — a fitted stand-in is worst at the extremes, which is where a masters factor is used. The bodyweight score comparison interpreter takes two lifters and says which formulas put them in which order.

Where the line runs between this page and the health section: health owns the lifter’s body and this category owns the competition. A one-rep max estimated from a submaximal set is a training calculation about a person and lives at the one-rep max calculator, with body fat percentage and BMR and TDEE. Here is arithmetic on numbers a referee wrote down: a total, a score against a published curve, a weight class, a loaded barbell. Nothing on this page prescribes training, advises a weight cut, recommends a bodyweight or makes any medical claim — getting into a class is not this site’s business, and the classes are a published fact about a rulebook.

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. “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.
3. 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.
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. International Powerlifting Federation. Detailed Scoresheet — 6th World Men’s Classic Championships, Calgary (Canada), 06-17.06.2018, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 55,000 to 60,000 characters, readable as text, ending mid-entry in the Open -93 kg section). Columns “PL. Lifters BY Team Weight WF Lot All Squat All Bench Press All Deadlift TOTAL W.pts. Pts.” The page never says what “WF” and “W.pts.” stand for, and this batch does not take the abbreviations on trust: the identity was established by arithmetic. All 14 rows read from the -59 and -66 kg classes reproduce from the 1995 Wilks polynomial with a worst coefficient residual of 4.8e-5, and W.pts. is the total times the printed WF on every row.
6. International Powerlifting Federation. Detailed Scoresheet — 3rd Women’s University Powerlifting Cup, Pilsen (Czechia), 09-14.07.2018, powerlifting.sport (read 15 Oct 2026; about 13,000 characters, readable as text). The same column set. All 14 rows read from the Open -47, -52 and -57 kg classes reproduce from the 1995 women’s Wilks polynomial with a worst coefficient residual of 4.9e-5. This is the document that settles the women’s fifth-order coefficient: the IPF evaluation report’s readable text gives −0.0000009054 and this sheet can only be reproduced with −0.00000009054.
7. Powerlifting Australia. “Wilks Formula 2 Released”, 28 February 2020, powerliftingaustralia.com (read 15 Oct 2026; about 10,000 characters of page, of which the announcement is about 1,000). The formula’s own publisher announcing it: “New data has allowed for a rebalancing of coefficients”, with men’s and women’s performances “better aligned” and the extreme bodyweight classes “brought into better balance with the middle bodyweight classes”, and a statement that it “will stand the test of time but will always be subject to reanalysis as the quantum of lifting results builds over time”. It prints neither the equation, nor the numerator, nor a single coefficient, linking out to a calculator and to tables instead — which is why the numerator had to be established from a published table.