Wilks Points: Why the Heavier Lifter Often Wins
Here is a result that surprises most people the first time they compute it.
A 70kg lifter squats 140kg — twice their bodyweight. A 100kg lifter squats 180kg — 1.8 times theirs. On strength-to-weight ratio the lighter lifter is comfortably ahead. On Wilks points, the scoring system raw powerlifting actually uses, the heavier lifter wins: 109.55 to 104.91.
Both numbers come from the same Wilks Calculator, and both are correct. They are measuring different things.
What strength-to-weight ratio measures
Lifted divided by bodyweight. It is intuitive, trivially computed, and answers a real question: how strong are you relative to the body you have to carry around? For climbing, gymnastics and bodyweight work, it is close to the thing that matters.
As a way of comparing lifters it has a serious flaw, though. It assumes strength should scale in a straight line with bodyweight — that a 100kg lifter ought to be able to lift exactly ten sevenths of what a 70kg lifter can. Bodies do not work that way.
Why strength does not scale linearly
Muscle force is roughly proportional to cross-sectional area, which scales with the square of a linear dimension. Body mass scales with volume, which goes as the cube. Scale a lifter up and their force-producing capacity grows more slowly than their weight does.
The practical consequence is well documented across every strength sport: lighter athletes lift more relative to bodyweight, heavier athletes lift more in absolute terms, and neither fact makes either group stronger in any useful sense. A ratio comparison systematically flatters the lightest competitor in the room.
What Wilks does about it
The Wilks formula fits a curve to that relationship. It runs bodyweight through a fifth-degree polynomial with sex-specific coefficients, producing a coefficient that gets multiplied by the weight lifted. Heavier lifters get a smaller coefficient because more is expected of them:
| Bodyweight | Wilks coefficient (male) |
|---|---|
| 60kg | 0.8529 |
| 75kg | 0.7126 |
| 90kg | 0.6384 |
| 100kg | 0.6086 |
| 125kg | 0.5698 |
Notice the curve flattens. Between 60 and 75kg the coefficient drops by 0.14; between 100 and 125kg, by only 0.04. Wilks expects a large jump in absolute strength from a lifter going from 60 to 75kg, and much less from one going 100 to 125kg — which matches what actually happens as lifters get heavier and a growing share of added mass is not contractile tissue.
Run the two lifters through it: 140 × 0.7494 = 104.91 for the 70kg lifter, 180 × 0.6086 = 109.55 for the 100kg one. The curve says the heavier lifter's 1.8× bodyweight is the better performance, even though the ratio says otherwise.
Which should you use?
Depends entirely on the question.
- Comparing yourself to other lifters, or across a weight change: Wilks. It is what the sport uses, and it is far fairer across the bodyweight range than a raw ratio.
- Tracking your own progress at stable bodyweight: neither. Just track the weight on the bar. Both scores are a scaling of that number and add nothing.
- Deciding whether a cut cost you anything: Wilks, and this is where it earns its keep. Drop from 83kg to 75kg and lose 5kg off your total, and the raw number says you got weaker while Wilks may well say you improved. That is the honest reading — you are now producing nearly the same force from less body.
- Assessing bodyweight-movement capacity: the ratio, which is what the calculator returns alongside the Wilks score for exactly this reason.
Caveats worth keeping
Wilks is a curve fitted to competition data, which means it reflects the population it was fitted to. It has known quirks at the extreme ends of the bodyweight range, and the sport has debated and revised its scoring formulas more than once — the calculator here implements the original Wilks, which remains the most widely recognised.
It also says nothing about the lift itself. A Wilks score computed from a squat with questionable depth is a precise number describing an imprecise thing. The formula assumes the lift happened.
Used sensibly, it is the best single-number answer to "who lifted better?" that a simple formula can give. Used as an identity, it is one more thing to be anxious about. Compute it occasionally, note the direction, and get back to adding weight to the bar.
Wilks is not the only formula any more
Worth knowing, because you will see the others quoted and they do not agree.
Wilks (1994) is the original and remains the most widely recognised. It is what the calculator here implements, and what most gym conversations mean by "Wilks".
Wilks 2 (2020) refitted the coefficients against more recent competition data, partly to address criticism that the original disadvantaged certain bodyweight ranges. The scores are not interchangeable with the original.
IPF GL points replaced Wilks in International Powerlifting Federation competition. It uses a different functional form and is fitted separately for each lift and equipment category.
DOTS is a further refit, popular in online calculators and some federations, again with its own coefficients.
They all do the same job — scale a lift against bodyweight so lifters of different sizes can be compared — and they disagree at the margins because they were fitted to different data with different assumptions. None is authoritative. If you are comparing yourself to a published score, make sure you know which formula produced it, and if you are tracking your own progress, use the same one every time for the same reason you use one 1RM formula every time.
Using it across a weight-class change
This is where the score earns its keep, and it is worth walking through carefully.
Suppose you compete at 83kg and are considering dropping to 75kg. The relevant question is not whether your total will fall — it almost certainly will — but whether it falls by more than the coefficient rises to compensate.
At 83kg the male coefficient is 0.6675; at 75kg it is 0.7126, about 6.8% higher. A 170kg lift at 83kg scores 113.47; to match that score at 75kg you need 159.24kg. So you can afford to lose 10.76kg off the lift — 6.3% of it — and break even. (Note the asymmetry: the coefficient rising 6.8% buys you a 6.3% fall in the lift, not a 6.8% one, because the two changes compound rather than cancel.)
That reframes the decision usefully. It is not "will I be weaker", it is “will I lose more than about six percent of this lift”, and for a well-run cut of eight kilos the answer is usually no.
What the score does not tell you
Two limits worth keeping in view.
It says nothing about the lift's quality. The formula multiplies whatever number you give it. A score computed from a squat with questionable depth, a bounced bench, or a deadlift with hitched reps is an arithmetically precise description of a lift that would not have counted. The formula assumes the lift was legitimate; only you know whether it was.
It is a comparison tool, not a training metric. If your bodyweight is stable, your Wilks score moves in exact proportion to the weight on the bar, and computing it adds no information at all. Its whole value is in the cases where bodyweight is changing or where you are comparing across lifters. Outside those cases, just look at the bar — and keep tracking the things you can act on, like your working weights and your weekly volume.