Strength Standards

What it is

These are scores that compare lifters across body weights. A 60 kg lifter and a 100 kg lifter can both bench big numbers. These scores let you compare them fairly.

Kinoku works out four of them from your own lifts:

• DOTS — the score most powerlifting feds use now. It replaced Wilks in 2020.
• IPF GoodLift (GL) — the IPF’s own score. It ranks lifters at IPF meets.
• Wilks 2 — a 2020 update of the older Wilks score. Many feds still use it.
• FFMI — a body-build score. It rates how much muscle you carry for your height. Useful if you train for size.

All four run on your phone. No internet. No account. You put in your total and body weight, and the score comes out. The math never leaves your device.

Percentile chip

When your score lands in the top half, Kinoku adds a small chip. It says “top X%.”

This turns a bare number into something you can read. “I benched 140 kg” is one thing. “I benched 140 kg at 82 kg body weight, top 8% for my age” tells you a lot more.

The percentiles come from public meet results. They are honest about who they cover: trained lifters, not the whole population.

Strength ratios

The Strength tab also shows how your lifts balance against each other. Each ratio has a target range:

• Hamstring to quad — often 0.6 to 0.8
• Bench to overhead press — often 1.5 to 1.7
• Push to pull — close to even, with some room
• Deadlift to squat — often 1.1 to 1.3

A ratio that drifts far off can flag a weak spot. These spots often lead to a tweak or strain before they show up as a stall.

Strength trend with a margin

Kinoku also fits a trend line through your last 12 weeks of estimated one-rep maxes per lift. You get:

• A trend line — your recent path, smoothed out
• A margin of error — how much your data bounces around
• A days-to-goal guess — “at this rate, a 3-plate bench is about 47 days away,” shown as a range

When your data is too noisy to read, Kinoku says so. It shows “not enough to project yet” instead of a made-up date.

Why all three scores matter

No one agrees on the one “right” score. Each has its own story:

• DOTS (2019) is the standard across feds for classic powerlifting. It fixes some Wilks quirks at very light and very heavy body weights.
• IPF GoodLift (2020) is the IPF’s own score for its meets. Lift at an IPF meet, and this is the number on record.
• Wilks 2 (2020) updates the first Wilks formula from 1994. Some feds still post records in it.

The same lift gives a different value in each. Kinoku shows all of them with percentile chips. You can compare against the one that fits your goal. (For the old 1994 Wilks score, used only to match pre-2020 records, try the web Wilks calculator.)

Methodology

The formulas are written up on the methodology page. That covers the DOTS curve, the IPF GL parameters, the Wilks 2 numbers, and the FFMI height fix. Sources include the IPF technical specs and Kouri 1995 for FFMI.

To learn how to read these scores, see the DOTS pillar article in /learn.

Privacy

It all stays on your phone. The percentile tables ship inside the app as files, loaded when it starts. No request leaves the app to work out your score. That is part of why this is an Elite feature for lifters who value privacy. It is a calculator, and a private one.