// Strength Calculators

Deadlift 1RM Calculator

Enter the pull you actually did: the weight, the reps, what you had left, and how your hands and the floor were involved.

Your details

Your result

Estimated dead-stop, bare-hands deadlift 1RM
91.7kg
Working weight for 5 reps
80kg
90% (3 reps)
82.5kg
80% (8 reps)
73.3kg
70% (12 reps)
64.2kg
  • The most conservative version of the estimate: each rep starts from a dead stop with no stretch to reuse, and grip is part of the test rather than removed from it.
  • Averaged from the Epley and Brzycki formulas. Most accurate at 1–8 reps.

Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.

What your result means

The headline arrives with its standard attached — estimated dead-stop, bare-hands deadlift 1RM, or one of the other three. Four labels, one piece of arithmetic. Nothing is added for straps and nothing is taken off for a bounce, because the label is the honest part: it tells you which of your four possible deadlift numbers you just estimated.

Grip is the half of that label with direct evidence behind it. A controlled crossover had trained lifters take sets to failure at 80% of 1RM with straps and without: the strapped condition produced significantly more repetitions, with a smaller loss of grip strength and no meaningful difference in bar velocity. A rep-max equation reads reps at a load and nothing else. So straps don't change how the number feels. They change the number.

Reps left in reserve are added to the rep count before either equation runs, and on this lift you should think hard about what your reserve is measuring. Deadlift sets very often end because the bar has started rolling out of your fingers, not because your hips stopped moving. If that's why you put it down, the reserve you're reporting belongs to your grip rather than to your pull.

Underneath sit the working weight for the rep target you picked and the usual 90 / 80 / 70% rows at 3, 8 and 12 reps. How to distribute percentages across a block belongs to the general 1RM page.

How it is calculated

Epley and Brzycki averaged, with reps in reserve added to the rep count and the execution standard written onto the label

Effective reps = reps entered + reps left in reserve. Epley: 1RM = weight × (1 + effective reps ÷ 30). Brzycki: 1RM = weight × 36 ÷ (37 − effective reps). The estimate is the mean of the two. Working weight for N reps = mean of (estimate ÷ (1 + N ÷ 30)) and (estimate × (37 − N) ÷ 36) — the same average, inverted, so the working weight and the estimate cannot disagree. The execution standard applies to the label. No coefficient in the calculation depends on it.

What it assumes

  • One standard held for the whole set, including the reps at the end where it normally slips. A dead-stop set has a way of becoming touch-and-go around rep five, when resetting the bar starts costing more than bouncing it.
  • The standard names the measurement and never corrects it. The strap research gives a direction, not a coefficient, and the dead-stop versus touch-and-go difference is coaching consensus rather than a published figure — so neither is published here as a percentage.
  • The pull started from the floor on full-diameter plates. Blocks, a rack or smaller plates raise the bar and shorten the range, and a shorter pull is a different lift carrying its own number.
  • The reserve you entered is a reserve of pulling capacity rather than of finger strength. Those two run out at different times, and only one of them is what this tool is estimating.

Units and rounding

  • Weight in kilograms; the estimate, the working weight and every percentage below it come back in kilograms.
  • Reps and reps in reserve are whole numbers, and they are summed before either equation runs.
  • The execution standard is text. Changing it rewrites the result label and the note under it, and leaves every figure exactly where it was.

Worked example

A dead-stop set pulled bare-handed: 150 kg for 4, with one rep honestly still there.

  1. Reserve folds in first: 4 reps + 1 in reserve = 5 effective reps
  2. Epley: 150 × (1 + 5 ÷ 30) = 150 × 1.1667 = 175 kg
  3. Brzycki: 150 × 36 ÷ (37 − 5) = 150 × 36 ÷ 32 = 168.8 kg
  4. Average: (175 + 168.8) ÷ 2 = 171.9 kg, labelled as a dead-stop, bare-hands deadlift 1RM
  5. Working weight for 3 reps: 159.3 kg
  6. 90% = 154.7 kg · 80% = 137.5 kg · 70% = 120.3 kg

About 171.9 kg, dead-stop and bare-handed. Feed the identical set in as touch-and-go with straps and 171.9 comes back untouched, because the arithmetic cannot see your hands. That is the entire reason the label exists: four ways to do the set, one equation, and only the wording to tell you which measurement you are holding.

Limitations

  • It records the standard, it does not convert between them. There is no strap percentage on this page and no bounce percentage either, because no published figure establishes one.
  • Prediction equations have a known problem with this lift and the direction is consistent. LeSuer's group tested seven of them against real maxes and all seven underestimated the deadlift; a later study that predicted deadlift maxes from individual load-velocity profiles also landed under the tested figure. Read your estimate as a floor rather than a ceiling.
  • That finding is not settled, and this page would be overselling it by pretending otherwise. A large recent preprint — hundreds of thousands of near-failure sets, not yet peer reviewed — argues the framing itself is wrong, and that the conversion between reps and a max tracks the weight on the bar rather than which exercise you happen to be doing. On that account the deadlift reads oddly because it is heavy, not because it is a deadlift.
  • Sumo and conventional are two lifts with two numbers, and so is a belted pull against an unbelted one. None of them gets a conversion factor here. Anyone who hands you one has made it up.
  • A rep counts when the hips and knees are locked and the bar is held still — that is how powerlifting technical rules define a completed deadlift, and it is the only definition an equation can be built on. A grind that stalls at a half-lockout is a rep you performed and not a rep the arithmetic counted.
  • Back pain during or after pulling is a conversation with a coach or a physiotherapist, not a reason to re-enter the set with a smaller reserve. Nothing on this page can tell you why a lift hurt.

What to do next

  • Pick one of the four standards and hold it for the whole block. Dead-stop with bare hands is the conservative default, and the only one that still has your grip inside the test.
  • If straps are how you pull your heavy sets, estimate with straps. The number should describe the sets it is about to programme, not the sets you wish you were doing.
  • Write down why the set ended, next to the load. "Hips stopped" and "bar slipped" are two different results at the same weight, and only the first belongs in a strength estimate.
  • Expect a tested single to come in at or above the estimate rather than below it. On this lift that is the equations behaving the way they usually behave, not a good day.

Sources

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// Frequently Asked

Questions, answered.

Do lifting straps change my deadlift 1RM estimate?

They change the input, and everything downstream follows. In a controlled crossover at 80% of 1RM, the strapped condition produced significantly more repetitions than the bare-handed one, with less grip-strength loss and no meaningful difference in bar velocity. More reps at the same load is a bigger number going into the equation. What nobody can give you is the size of that gap in kilograms, so the tool records which condition you used and leaves the maths alone.

Dead-stop or touch-and-go — which should I enter?

Enter what happened. If you get to choose, dead-stop is the more conservative measurement: every rep starts from a full stop with nothing stored, so none of the number depends on how hard you bounced the plates. Touch-and-go reuses elastic energy off the floor and tends to read higher, but that one is coaching consensus rather than a quantified effect, and this page will not invent a percentage it does not have.

Why is my calculated deadlift max lower than what I can actually pull?

Because that is the documented behaviour of these equations on this lift. LeSuer's group found all seven equations they tested underestimated the deadlift, and a study predicting deadlift maxes from load-velocity profiles came in under the tested value too. Neither result gives you a correction you can apply, and a recent preprint disputes the exercise-specific framing altogether. Treat the estimate as a conservative programming input and settle the top end on the bar.

Is a deadlift max less repeatable than a bench max?

The assumption says yes. The measurement says no. A study that tested both lifts under the same protocol reported high test-retest reliability for each, with the deadlift's variation band coming out slightly the tighter of the two. Whatever makes deadlift numbers feel unstable — grip, sleep, a rep standard quietly drifting — it is not that the lift is harder to measure.

Does mixed grip or hook grip count as bare hands?

Yes. Both are grip solutions rather than grip removals: your hands are still on the bar and still the thing that eventually gives out. Straps are the line, because straps take the hands out of the limit entirely. Note which grip you used anyway. A set that ended with your fingers opening on a double-overhand pull is partly a measurement of your grip, and it will read differently the week you switch.

Can I use this for rack pulls or block pulls?

Not as a deadlift max. Raising the bar shortens the range and moves the hardest part of the lift, so a rack pull estimate describes rack pulls. Keep it on its own line in the logbook and compare it only to pulls from the same height.

The floor starts the rep. Your grip ends it.

Pull heavy in Al Manhal with someone watching the lockout and telling you whether the set finished at your hips or in your fingers. Book a free guided tour.

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