What is DOTS?

DOTS is a scoring coefficient that converts a powerlifting total into a single number adjusted for the lifter’s bodyweight and sex, so that lifters of different sizes can be compared on one scale. It was devised by Tim Konertz and adopted by the BVDK, the German affiliate of the International Powerlifting Federation, after the IPF moved to a points system that could not compare men and women. DOTS is an openly published formula: anyone can compute it from a lifter’s bodyweight and lifted weight, with no lookup table and no proprietary data.

A DOTS score is calculated by multiplying the weight lifted by a coefficient that depends only on the lifter’s bodyweight, using one of two sex-specific curves. The coefficient is 500 divided by a fourth-order (quartic) polynomial in bodyweight; because the polynomial grows with bodyweight, the coefficient shrinks as a lifter gets heavier, which is what offsets the advantage of extra body mass. In symbols, with bodyweight in kilograms:

The DOTS curve is fitted over a range of bodyweights — roughly 40–210 kg for men and 40–150 kg for women — and orcatrain clamps a bodyweight outside that range to the nearest bound rather than extrapolating, labelling any such score approximate. This matters because the quartic eventually turns over and would otherwise start handing heavier lifters a larger coefficient, which is the opposite of what the score means.

As a worked example, take a female lifter weighing 71.5 kg with a competition total of 362.5 kg (a 130 kg squat, a 72.5 kg bench press and a 160 kg deadlift). Substituting 71.5 into the women’s quartic gives a denominator of about 500.29, so the coefficient is 500 ÷ 500.29 ≈ 0.9994. Multiplying the 362.5 kg total by that coefficient yields a DOTS score of approximately 362.29. The same lifter’s raw kilograms would rise and fall with their bodyweight; their DOTS score isolates the strength itself.

DOTS uses bodyweight and sex because raw kilograms alone do not say how strong a lifter is relative to their body. A heavier body can move more absolute weight, so comparing a 60 kg lifter and a 100 kg lifter on kilograms alone rewards size rather than strength; the bodyweight coefficient removes that size advantage so a hard-won gain is visible whatever the lifter weighs. Sex is a second input because DOTS ships exactly two coefficient sets, one fitted to men’s performance data and one to women’s — this is a property of the published curve, which offers no third set, and not a statement about gender. DOTS deliberately takes no height term and no age term: those adjustments belong to different coefficient families, and inventing one here would produce a number no other tool agrees with.

DOTS, the Wilks coefficient and IPF GL points are three different public formulas that all answer the same question — how to compare powerlifting totals across bodyweights — and they differ mainly in the shape of the curve they multiply the total by. The Wilks coefficient, devised by Robert Wilks, multiplies the total by 500 divided by a fifth-order polynomial in bodyweight, with separate men’s and women’s coefficients; its coefficients were revised in 2020 (often called Wilks2) to correct how the original treated the lightest and heaviest lifters.

IPF GL points (the “Goodlift” formula the IPF adopted in 2020, replacing its earlier IPF points) multiplies the total by 100 divided by an exponential-decay term of the form A − B·e^(−C·bw), and it carries a distinct set of parameters for each sex and for each event, such as raw versus equipped lifting. DOTS, by contrast, is a fourth-order polynomial with a single pair of sex-specific coefficient sets and was designed specifically to compare men and women on one scale after the older IPF points could not; that cross-sex comparability, and its use in open datasets such as OpenPowerlifting, are why orcatrain uses DOTS rather than Wilks or IPF GL.

A DOTS score does not tell you where a lifter stands among other people: it is a score, not a percentile or a ranking, and it makes no claim about being stronger than any share of a population. orcatrain has no logged population to compare against and does not import one, so no number on this site should be read as a rank. A DOTS score also carries no judgement of whether a value is “good” or “bad”; its usefulness is as a personal figure that moves as a lifter gets stronger. Finally, DOTS is defined on a powerlifting total of the squat, bench press and deadlift and knows nothing about technique, injury risk, bodyweight movements, or the mass a lifter already carries in a calisthenics exercise.

orcatrain scores every logged lift with the DOTS coefficient so that a lifter’s progress is a single number comparable across their own changing bodyweight rather than a raw kilogram count. Because a training log records individual movements rather than a three-lift competition total, orcatrain applies the DOTS coefficient to each lift’s estimated one-rep max and calls the result an orcatrain strength score computed with the DOTS coefficient — never a competition “DOTS total”, which by definition means the squat, bench and deadlift added together. orcatrain computes DOTS itself from the published formula above, storing every measurement in metric units and deriving the score on read, and it keeps each lifter’s training data private to their own account.