DOTS calculator.

What DOTS actually measures

A powerlifting total on its own says nothing about how strong someone is relative to their size. A 600 kg total from a 74 kg lifter is a far better performance than the same total from a 120 kg lifter, but the scoreboard treats them identically. Bodyweight-adjusted scoring formulas exist to fix that: they map a total and a bodyweight onto a single number so lifters across weight classes can be ranked in one list.

DOTS (Dynamic Objective Team Scoring) does this with a fifth-order polynomial fitted separately for men and women. Your bodyweight goes into the polynomial, the result divides into 500, and that coefficient multiplies your total. Because the total appears linearly, doubling your total doubles your DOTS — and the formula can be inverted exactly, which is what the target calculator above does.

DOTS vs Wilks vs IPF GL Points

Wilks (Robert Wilks, 1994) was the original and is still the number most lifters have heard of. It uses the same polynomial shape as DOTS but was fitted to early-1990s data, and it systematically under-rewards lifters at the extremes of the bodyweight range.

DOTS refit the same approach to a larger, more modern dataset. It has become the de facto community standard — it's what OpenPowerlifting ranks by, and what most meet-day scoreboards show. For a typical lifter DOTS and Wilks land within a handful of points of each other, which is a useful sanity check: if two implementations disagree by dozens of points, one of them has a bug.

IPF GL Points ("Good Lift") replaced Wilks as the official IPF formula in 2020. It uses an exponential rather than a polynomial, and it's scaled so that roughly 100 points represents a world-record performance — so GL numbers look nothing like DOTS numbers. It's also the only one of the three with separate coefficients for raw and equipped lifting, which is why the equipment selector above only affects the GL column.

If the vocabulary here is unfamiliar, the programming guide covers training maxes, RPE, and how e1RM is estimated in plain language.

Average lift split by weight class

The split you'll see quoted most often — 36% squat, 27% bench, 37% deadlift — doesn't match what raw lifters actually do. It overstates bench badly, especially for women, and understates deadlift by about as much.

So we computed it. The tables below come from the OpenIPF dataset — the IPF-affiliate subset of OpenPowerlifting — filtered to raw full-power meets from 2014 onwards where all three lifts were successful and reconcile to the recorded total. That's 532,537 qualifying performances. Each figure is the mean share of the total for that lift within that class.

Two patterns come straight out of the data. Sex matters most: women bench about three percentage points less of their total than men at every bodyweight, and deadlift about two points more. Judging a woman's bench against a male average will always tell her it's lagging when it isn't. Weight class matters too: squat share rises and deadlift share falls steadily as lifters get heavier — men shift from 34.2% squat and 43.6% deadlift at 53 kg to 36.6% and 39.0% in the unlimited class. The comparison above uses your actual class rather than one flat number.

One honest wrinkle: the women's figures aren't perfectly monotonic — the 84 kg class dips about 0.2pp below 76 kg. That's because the IPF only introduced the 69 and 76 kg classes in 2021, so the 84 kg class pools lifters from two different class structures. We've left it as measured rather than smoothing it into a nicer-looking curve.

And these are averages, not targets. Leverages, limb lengths, and training history all move them, and plenty of very strong lifters sit well outside the range on one lift. A gap here is a hint about where the cheap kilos are, not a verdict on your training.

What the split is genuinely useful for is spotting where the cheap kilos are. If your bench is five percentage points under a typical share, that's not a moral failing, it's the lift with the most room in it — and the arithmetic is blunt: closing a five-point gap on a 500 kg total is 25 kg, which is far easier to find in an undertrained lift than in a well-developed one. The breakdown above flags a lift as lagging when it's more than two percentage points under an average share.

Using a target score to plan a block

Working backwards from a score is more useful than chasing a total, because it accounts for bodyweight moving. If you're planning to cut into a lower weight class, run the target twice — once at your current bodyweight and once at your target bodyweight — and you'll see exactly how much total you can afford to lose in the cut before the score goes backwards. Often the answer is more than lifters expect, which makes the cut decision much less fraught.

The per-lift breakdown assumes you hold your current ratios. If you're deliberately bringing up a lagging lift, the real path to the target total will lean harder on that lift than the split shown — treat it as the balanced-case baseline, not a prescription.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good DOTS score?

Roughly: under 200 is untrained, 250–300 is a solid novice, 300–350 is a competent intermediate, 350–425 is advanced and competitive at a regional level, 425–500 is national class, and above 500 is world class. DOTS is sex- and bodyweight-adjusted, so the same score means comparable strength for a 60 kg and a 120 kg lifter.

What is the difference between DOTS, Wilks, and IPF GL Points?

All three convert a powerlifting total into a bodyweight-adjusted score so lifters in different weight classes can be ranked together. Wilks (1994) came first and is still widely quoted. DOTS refit the same idea to a more recent dataset and is now the community default. IPF GL Points replaced Wilks as the official IPF formula in 2020 and is scaled so ~100 points is a world-record performance. DOTS and Wilks land within a few points of each other for most lifters.

Does DOTS use kilograms or pounds?

The formula is defined in kilograms. This calculator converts your input for you, so you can work in either unit and get the same score.

Is DOTS different for men and women?

Yes. DOTS uses a separate polynomial for each sex, so a male and a female lifter with the same total and bodyweight get different scores. There is no equipment adjustment in DOTS or Wilks — only IPF GL has separate raw and equipped coefficients.

How is the required total for a target DOTS calculated?

The DOTS formula is linear in the total, so it inverts exactly: the total needed equals your target score multiplied by the bodyweight polynomial and divided by 500. There is no estimation involved — at that bodyweight, that total scores exactly that many points.

How is the squat/bench/deadlift split for a target total worked out?

If you enter your current lifts, the target total is split using your own ratios, so it assumes you keep the same balance between the three lifts. If you have not entered any lifts, it falls back to the average split for your sex and bodyweight.

What is the average squat, bench, and deadlift share of a powerlifting total?

Across 532,537 raw full-power performances in the OpenIPF dataset from 2014 onwards, men average 35.4% squat, 23.4% bench, and 41.1% deadlift, while women average 36.1% squat, 20.2% bench, and 43.6% deadlift. The widely repeated 36/27/37 figure overstates bench and understates deadlift for raw lifters of either sex, and is badly wrong for women, whose bench averages closer to 20% than 27%.

Do lift ratios differ between men and women, or by weight class?

Both, and this calculator uses the measured figure for your specific sex and IPF weight class rather than one flat average. Sex matters most: women bench about three percentage points less of their total than men at every bodyweight and deadlift about two points more. Weight class matters too — squat share rises and deadlift share falls steadily as lifters get heavier, with men going from 34.2% squat and 43.6% deadlift in the 53 kg class to 36.6% and 39.0% in the 120+ class, and women from 34.9% and 45.0% at 43 kg to 36.9% and 42.7% at 84+ kg.

Which weight class am I in?

IPF open classes are 53, 59, 66, 74, 83, 93, 105, 120 and 120+ kg for men, and 43, 47, 52, 57, 63, 69, 76, 84 and 84+ kg for women. A class is an upper bound, so a lifter weighing exactly 83.0 kg is in the 83 kg class and one weighing 83.1 kg is in the 93 kg class. Enter your bodyweight above and the comparison picks the class for you.

PrimedLifter is not affiliated with the IPF or any other federation. DOTS, Wilks, and IPF GL Points are implemented here from their published formulas; federation scoreboards are the authority for competition results. Average lift-contribution figures were computed by us from the OpenIPF dataset (snapshot 2026-07-25), and cross-checked against Powerlifting in Data's published 2014–2023 analysis, which they reproduce to within 0.2 percentage points. OpenPowerlifting data is released into the public domain.