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83.31
83.3% of the elite reference performance at this body weight
This is the IPF GL formula, in force for every International Powerlifting Federation competition since 1 May 2020, with the coefficients taken from the federation’s own document, The IPF GL coefficients for relative scoring (May 2020). One hundred points is not a maximum and not a pass mark: the document sets it as the average elite performance for that body weight, so a score reads directly as a percentage of that standard.
It is not Wilks. The IPF stopped scoring on the Wilks coefficient after 2018 and adopted this formula in 2020, so a Wilks score and a GL score are different numbers on different scales and cannot be compared with each other. A revised Wilks and a third formula, DOTS, are still used by other federations — check which one your meet actually scores on before reading anything into a ranking.
Powerlifting has a ranking problem: a 60 kg lifter and a 110 kg lifter cannot be compared by their totals, because size buys strength. The fix is a coefficient that scales a total against what people of that body weight actually achieve. For two decades that coefficient was Robert Wilks’ polynomial. It is not any more. The International Powerlifting Federation stopped scoring on Wilks after 2018, used a formula of its own for 2019, and adopted the IPF GL formula on 1 May 2020, which is what this calculator implements.
The GL coefficient is 100 divided by A minus B times e raised to minus C times your body weight, with A, B and C fitted separately for each combination of sex, division and event. Those eight parameter sets come from the federation’s own published document and are used here to all six decimals it prints, along with its rounding rule: round the coefficient first, then multiply, then round again.
The curve was fitted by regression on elite results from official IPF and European competitions from 2011 onward, keeping one best result per athlete. It is a description of what strong people at each body weight have done, not a theory of human strength, and it inherits every quirk of the population it was measured on.
One hundred is not a maximum and not a pass mark. The federation sets the elite reference performance at every body weight equal to 100 points, so a score reads directly as a percentage of that standard: 78 points is 78% of an average elite total for someone your size. That is also why the tool shows the total that would score exactly 100 at your body weight, which is a far more legible target than a decimal.
The source document carries an expiry — it declares itself in force from May 2020 to the end of 2023 and says the parameters should be recalculated on a four-year cycle. No replacement has appeared. Rather than assume, the constants here were checked against the coefficients printed on the IPF’s own detailed score sheets from the 2024 championships, where 58.80 kg gives 0.1658 and 92.60 kg gives 0.1311, and both reproduce exactly. Automated tests hold that comparison, so the day a new table lands, something breaks loudly instead of quietly drifting.
No, and it is a common mistake. The two formulas use different curves and different normalisation constants, so the same lifter gets two different numbers on two different scales. A ranking is only meaningful when every lifter in it was scored with the same coefficient.
None of them is right in an absolute sense; each is a convention its federation agreed to. A revised Wilks appeared in 2020 and is used by some national bodies, while several non-IPF federations moved to the DOTS coefficient instead. Find out what your meet scores on before reading anything into a placing.
Because supportive equipment changes the relationship between body weight and total, and by a different amount in each lift. The federation fitted separate parameters for equipped and classic competition, and for full power and bench-press-only meets, giving eight sets in all rather than one curve stretched over everything.
The curve was fitted on competitive body weights and it degrades outside them. Far below any real weight class the fitted denominator crosses zero, at which point the formula returns nothing rather than an impossible score. Treat anything near the extremes of the scale as extrapolation.