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Wilks Calculator
Enter your squat, bench and deadlift, or type your total straight in, along with your bodyweight. Your Wilks score normalizes a total across bodyweights so lifters of different sizes can be compared. This calculator uses Wilks-2, the 2020 revision. DOTS and IPF GL are shown alongside it.
Total fills in automatically from your three lifts. Only know your total? Type it straight into the Total box. Editing a lift refreshes it.
What a Wilks score is
The Wilks coefficient, devised by Robert Wilks in the 1990s, was the sport's standard pound-for-pound score for decades. It takes your total and your bodyweight and returns one number where higher means stronger for your size, so a 60 kg lifter and a 120 kg lifter can be ranked against each other.
Most historical results, old meet records and long-running leaderboards are quoted in Wilks, which is why the score is still worth knowing even where a federation has since moved to something else.
Wilks and Wilks-2 are not the same number
This is the part that trips people up. The original Wilks coefficients were fitted to equipped powerlifting results from 1987 to 1994. As raw lifting grew and the sport's population changed, the fit aged badly at the ends of the bodyweight range.
Wilks-2 is the 2020 refit that addressed this, and it is what this calculator uses. A total scored under Wilks-2 will not match the same total scored under the original formula, so an old personal best quoted in classic Wilks is not directly comparable to a number produced here. If you are chasing a historical figure, check which version it was calculated with.
How it is calculated
Wilks multiplies your total by 600 and divides by a fifth-order polynomial of your bodyweight, with separate coefficient sets for men and women:
Wilks-2 = 600 × total ÷ P(bodyweight)
The formula is defined on kilograms, so pounds are converted first (1 lb = 0.45359237 kg). Bodyweight is clamped before scoring, to 40–200.95 kg for men and 40–150.95 kg for women, because the polynomial is only fitted inside that range.
Wilks, DOTS and IPF GL
All three convert a total plus bodyweight into a single relative-strength number using different coefficient sets, and they rank lifters similarly while producing different point values. IPF GL is the score the IPF uses at competition today. DOTS is the common default elsewhere. Compare like with like: a Wilks to a Wilks, never a Wilks to a DOTS. There is more in strength scoring explained.
Common questions
What is a Wilks score? A coefficient that normalizes a powerlifting total across bodyweights so lifters of different sizes can be compared. Higher means more relative strength.
Does this use Wilks or Wilks-2? Wilks-2, the 2020 revision. The original coefficients produce a different number for the same total.
Why did federations move away from Wilks? The original was fitted to equipped results from 1987 to 1994, and the fit did not represent modern raw lifting well, particularly at the light and heavy ends.
Does Wilks account for age? No. It adjusts for bodyweight and sex only.