What is a DOTS score?
A way of comparing lifters who do not weigh the same. A 600 kg total is an enormous lift at 75 kg bodyweight and an ordinary one at 140 kg, so a raw total cannot rank a meet. DOTS divides the total by a curve fitted to what lifters of each bodyweight actually achieve, which turns every total into one number on one scale.
The same 500 kg total, scored at five bodyweights, makes the point faster than any explanation:
| Bodyweight | DOTS for a 500 kg total |
|---|
| 60 kg | 422.02 |
|---|
| 75 kg | 358.71 |
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| 90 kg | 323.30 |
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| 110 kg | 296.13 |
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| 140 kg | 274.01 |
|---|
The lighter lifter scores 148 points higher for the identical weight on the bar, because that total is far rarer at 60 kg than at 140 kg.
How DOTS is calculated
1. Add the three lifts into a total
total = squat + bench press + deadlift
2. Put your bodyweight through the polynomial
P = (A × BW⁴) + (B × BW³) + (C × BW²) + (D × BW) + E, with one coefficient set per sex
3. Score the total against it
DOTS = total × 500 ÷ P
For men the coefficients are A = -0.000001093, B = 0.0007391293, C = -0.1918759221, D = 24.0900756 and E = -307.75076. For women they are A = -0.0000010706, B = 0.0005158568, C = -0.1126655495, D = 13.6175032 and E = -57.96288. The curve is defined from 40 to 210 kg for men and 40 to 150 kg for women, and a bodyweight outside that range is scored at the nearest end, which this calculator says when it happens.
Every figure on this page was produced by the same code as the calculator, and the code was checked against five published worked examples before it shipped: an 80 kg man totalling 430 kg scores 296.50, and a 63 kg woman totalling 300 kg scores 322.65.
What total do you need for 300, 400 or 500 DOTS?
Run backwards, the formula answers the question lifters actually ask. These are the totals required to hit each score, in kilograms.
Men
| Bodyweight | 300 DOTS | 400 DOTS | 500 DOTS |
|---|
| 60 kg | 355 kg | 474 kg | 592 kg |
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| 75 kg | 418 kg | 558 kg | 697 kg |
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| 90 kg | 464 kg | 619 kg | 773 kg |
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| 110 kg | 507 kg | 675 kg | 844 kg |
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| 140 kg | 547 kg | 730 kg | 912 kg |
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Women
| Bodyweight | 300 DOTS | 400 DOTS | 500 DOTS |
|---|
| 52 kg | 246 kg | 328 kg | 410 kg |
|---|
| 63 kg | 279 kg | 372 kg | 465 kg |
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| 75 kg | 308 kg | 411 kg | 513 kg |
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| 90 kg | 337 kg | 449 kg | 561 kg |
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| 110 kg | 364 kg | 485 kg | 607 kg |
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Deliberately, there are no labels like beginner or elite attached to these numbers. Where a score sits among real lifters depends on the federation, the division and the year, and that is a question for a rankings database rather than a formula.
The masters age adjustment
Enter an age and the calculator also shows the McCulloch score, which multiplies DOTS by an age coefficient so that masters lifters can be placed against lifters in their twenties. The coefficient is 1.000 from 23 to 40, then climbs:
| Age | Multiplier |
|---|
| 40 | 1.000 |
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| 45 | 1.055 |
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| 50 | 1.130 |
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| 55 | 1.225 |
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| 60 | 1.340 |
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| 65 | 1.480 |
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| 70 | 1.645 |
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A 60-year-old therefore has their score multiplied by 1.34: a 388 DOTS total becomes 519.87 McCulloch points. Junior lifters are adjusted the same way in the other direction, from 1.23 at 14 down to 1.00 at 23. Not every federation applies an age adjustment, so check your rulebook before assuming the meet will use it.
DOTS, Wilks and IPF points
Wilks came first, in the 1990s, and was fitted to equipped lifting data from that era. When the IPF dropped it in favour of IPF points, which cannot compare men against women, the German federation BVDK needed a score that could, for team competitions where everyone lifts on one team. Tim Konertz wrote DOTS in 2019 to fill that gap.
The practical differences are that DOTS is fitted to raw rather than equipped lifting, uses a simpler fourth-order polynomial, and is deliberately drop-in compatible with Wilks, so the two scores sit on a similar scale. If you are comparing a score to one from before 2019, check which formula produced it.
None of these say anything about a single lift. For that, the one rep max calculator estimates a max from a set you have already done, and the barbell plate calculator works out what to load to get there.