Sex, bodyweight and total. The result says which Wilks it is, because there is more than one.
Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.
The score is your total multiplied by a coefficient derived from your bodyweight. That coefficient is the whole idea: it scales a 60 kg lifter's total and a 120 kg lifter's total onto one axis, so a meet can be ranked without being ranked by size.
The label matters as much as the number. This is the original Wilks — Robert Wilks's 1994 fifth-order polynomial in bodyweight, with the 500 multiplier — and it is one of four scores currently in use. Wilks-2, published in 2020, refits the polynomial on more recent championship data and uses a 600 multiplier. DOTS is a different fit again. IPF GL Points replaced Wilks as the IPF's own metric in 2020.
They do not agree, and they are not meant to. A score is only comparable against another score from the same formula, which is why a bare Wilks figure quoted with no version is a number that cannot be checked — the most common way this goes wrong is comparing a 2015 leaderboard against a calculator that has quietly moved on.
What the number is not is a statement about how strong you are for your age, your training history, or the general population. It normalises for bodyweight and for nothing else. It is a ranking device built from competition data, and outside that context it says less than it appears to.
Score = total × 500 ÷ (a + b·x + c·x² + d·x³ + e·x⁴ + f·x⁵) where x is bodyweight in kilograms and the coefficients differ by sex. Men: a = −216.0475144, b = 16.2606339, c = −0.002388645, d = −0.00113732, e = 7.01863e−6, f = −1.291e−8 Women: a = 594.31747775582, b = −27.23842536447, c = 0.82112226871, d = −0.00930733913, e = 4.731582e−5, f = −9.054e−8
A man weighing 83 kg with a 470 kg competition total.
313.7, and the two examples together make the point of the coefficient: a 300 kg total scores higher than a 470 kg one, because the formula is answering a question about bodyweight-adjusted performance rather than about absolute load. You may or may not find that reasonable; either way, it is what the formula does.
The original, published by Robert Wilks in 1994 — a fifth-order polynomial in bodyweight with the 500 multiplier and separate coefficient sets for men and women. The result names it for that reason, because a bare Wilks score in 2026 is ambiguous between at least two formulas.
Wilks-2, from 2020, refits the same shape of polynomial on more recent championship data and uses a 600 multiplier rather than 500. It exists because the original had drifted against modern results, particularly at the lightest and heaviest bodyweights. The two produce different numbers from identical lifts, and neither is a correction of the other in the sense of being convertible.
No. DOTS is a separate coefficient fitted independently, not a version of Wilks, and it produces its own scale. It is common in the sport now, which is part of why quoting a score without naming the formula has become a real problem rather than a pedantic one.
It moved to IPF GL Points in 2020, calibrated on its own championship data. That makes GL the right number for an IPF context and a poor one outside it, which is roughly the trade every one of these formulas makes: the more tightly a coefficient is fitted to one population, the less it travels.
This page will not answer that, and the refusal is deliberate. Calling a score good requires a population to compare it against, and the estate removed its strength-standard bands because the ones it was publishing were unsourced and wrong. What can be said plainly is that 300 on the 1994 formula is a competitive-level score, and that where it sits among lifters like you is not something a coefficient can tell you.
You can enter one, and the formula will return a number, and that number means nothing. The coefficient was fitted against three-lift competition totals; a bench-only figure run through it is not a bench Wilks, it is an uninterpretable result of a valid calculation.
A total is only worth what the lifts were judged at, which is the part a formula cannot see. If you want the standards checked before you chase the number, the guided tour at Al Manhal is free.