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Wilks and IPF GL points calculator

Wilks and IPF GL points for a total — with both versions of Wilks side by side, because they disagree by up to a quarter and reorder a third of tied lifters, and with the IPF's own coefficients marked with the date they expired. Nothing you type here leaves your browser — it is worked out on your own device, so there is nothing to send and nothing to log.

“Wilks” is two different formulas

The Wilks coefficient divides a constant by a fifth-order polynomial in bodyweight. There are two published versions: the 1994 original, which divides 500, and a 2020 revision, which divides 600 and uses entirely different polynomial coefficients.

Swept across bodyweights, the two disagree by:

Somebody saying “I hit a 450 Wilks” has not said which formula, and the difference is larger than most people's annual progress.

And the gap changes with bodyweight, so it reorders people

This is the half that matters. If the revision simply multiplied everybody by 1.15, every ranking would survive untouched and the version would be a matter of taste.

It does not. The gap depends on bodyweight, so lifters move past each other. Built 8,684 pairs of lifters constructed to tie exactly under Wilks 1994, and recomputed them under the 2020 revision:

2,966 of them — 34% — come out in the opposite order.

A dead heat under one version of a formula is a clear win under the other, with nothing changed but the year the polynomial was published.

And past a certain bodyweight it stops being a handicap

A handicap coefficient must fall as bodyweight rises. Wilks does — up to a point, and then it turns round:

Above those weights the coefficient rises, so the same total scores more the heavier the lifter. A 400 kg total by a woman scores 308 at 150 kg and 754 at 200 kg.

This is what a fifth-order polynomial does outside the range of data it was fitted to. It is not a flaw anybody introduced and it affects very few real competitors — but a calculator that prints the number anyway, with no remark, is handing over an answer that has quietly stopped meaning anything. This page says so instead.

The official IPF coefficients expired in 2023

The IPF stopped using Wilks at the end of 2018, replaced it with IPF Points in 2019, and replaced that with IPF GL Points in May 2020.

The IPF's published coefficient document is headed:

“ACTUAL FROM MAY 01, 2020 TO DEC 31, 2023”

That period has ended. The IPF's own formula page still links only that document, and a search found no replacement. So the coefficients on this page — and, necessarily, on every other IPF GL calculator — are the only ones the federation publishes and are past their stated validity.

This page counts the days since that date rather than quoting a number, so it cannot go stale about its own staleness. What it cannot tell you is whether the IPF has issued a replacement somewhere this search did not reach.

There are eight coefficient sets, not one

Men and women, classic and equipped, full powerlifting and bench press only. A score computed with the wrong set is not slightly off — it is not comparable with anything, because the constants differ by factors of three or four between them.

Most calculators ask for sex and equipment. Fewer ask whether the number is a three-lift total or a bench alone, which is the one most easily got wrong.

Where these numbers come from, and how good each source is

These are not of equal quality and the page says so rather than presenting one wall of figures:

What a relative score is not

It is a scoring convention for ranking people of different bodyweights in one competition. It is not a measurement of a person, it is not a fitness test, and its numbers mean nothing outside the federation and era that defined them.

This page will not tell you whether your score is good. That depends on a federation, a year and a field of competitors, and it knows none of them.

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