How It Works

Most strength calculators do one thing: compare your lift to a fixed number. That's fine if you're comparing yourself to yourself. It falls apart the moment you try to compare a 39-year-old woman to a 57-year-old man, or a 60kg person to a 90kg person.

Who Lifts More does something different. Every score is personal — calculated against a baseline built specifically for you.

Here's exactly how it works.

Step 1 — Your 1 Rep Max

Your 1RM is the maximum weight you can lift for a single repetition. If you know it, enter it directly. If you've been training with a working weight for multiple reps, we estimate it using the Epley formula — one of the most widely validated 1RM prediction methods in exercise science:

Estimated 1RM = weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30)

So if you lifted 120kg for 2 reps, your estimated 1RM is 128kg. You can enter this directly or let us calculate it — just enter the weight and the number of reps in the second box.

Step 2 — Your personal baseline

For each lift, we calculate what a solid, experienced gym-goer with your exact stats should be lifting. This baseline is personalised for four factors:

Bodyweight

Strength doesn't scale linearly with bodyweight — a heavier person has more muscle mass to work with, but lighter lifters often have better strength-to-weight ratios. We use real-world strength data from Strength Level, one of the largest lifting databases in the world, to set bodyweight-specific standards for each lift.

Gender

Men and women have different physiological baselines for strength — particularly in the upper body, where the gap is larger than in lower body movements. Rather than applying a single blanket ratio, our standards are set separately for men and women based on actual lifting data, so a woman's bench press and a man's bench press are judged against their own relevant populations.

Age

Strength typically peaks between 25 and 35. We apply modest adjustments for lifters outside this range:

This means a 57-year-old man and a 30-year-old man with identical bodyweights are not judged by the same standard. The older lifter's score reflects what is genuinely impressive for their age.

Height

Taller lifters have a longer range of motion on some lifts, which affects performance. A taller person has a mechanical advantage on deadlift (longer arms mean less distance to travel relative to leg length) but a disadvantage on bench press (longer range of motion). We apply small height-based adjustments to each lift to reflect this. These are intentionally modest — height is a real but minor factor compared to bodyweight and gender.

Why we don't use the Wilks score

The Wilks coefficient is the gold standard for comparing strength in powerlifting competitions. It was developed by Robert Wilks of Powerlifting Australia and has been used by the International Powerlifting Federation to determine the best overall lifter across different weight classes and genders. It is mathematically rigorous and well validated within its intended context.

The problem is that context. Wilks was designed for competitive powerlifters comparing a combined squat, bench press and deadlift total — not for recreational gym-goers comparing individual lifts. When you apply it to a single exercise like a hip thrust or a Romanian deadlift, you have to estimate what that lift represents as a fraction of a theoretical powerlifting total. Those fractions are educated guesses at best, and they introduce compounding errors that make the scores less meaningful, not more.

There is also a more fundamental issue. Wilks does not account for age, and its gender adjustment is built from elite competition data rather than from the broader gym-going population. A 55-year-old woman and a 25-year-old woman are judged identically. That is not a fair comparison.

Who Lifts More uses Strength Level's real-world data across millions of lifts as its foundation, then layers age and height adjustments on top. It is less elegant than a single polynomial equation, but it is more accurate for what this tool is actually trying to do — give everyday gym-goers a fair, honest comparison across different bodies, ages and lifts.

Step 3 — Your tier

Once we know where your lift sits relative to your personal baseline, we assign a tier. Our tiers are calibrated for the general gym-going population — not competitive powerlifters, and not the self-selected community of dedicated app users who are already stronger than most people who train.

Step 4 — The match target

This is the part most calculators don't do.

Once both profiles are filled in, we calculate what each person needs to lift on each exercise to match the other person's score — recalculated for their specific physiology. If you're a 70kg woman and your husband is a 90kg man, we don't just compare your raw numbers. We calculate what he needs to lift, at his bodyweight, to have achieved the same relative result that you did at yours.

Change either person's age, weight or height and the targets update instantly.

If you enter both people's actual lifts, each side shows whether they're ahead or behind — with the exact gap in kg or lbs.

The lifts we cover

We cover the major barbell and compound movements, and we're adding more all the time — including Strongman lifts. If there's a specific lift you'd like to see included, get in touch.

A note on Strongman lifts

The Strongman lifts (Axel Deadlift, Axel Overhead Press, Log Press, Atlas Stones over Yoke) are calibrated against people training specifically for Strongman competition — not the general gym-going population. That means the tiers will look different in scale to the powerlifting lifts: hitting "Intermediate" on a Log Press represents a genuinely serious Strongman-focused level of training, not just a solid regular gym-goer.

A note on accuracy

No formula is perfect. Individual variation in strength is enormous — two people with identical stats can have very different 1RMs based on training history, technique, leverages and genetics.

Our strength standards are sourced from Strength Level, based on tens of millions of real lifts, and adjusted to reflect the general gym-going population rather than dedicated competitive athletes. The age and height adjustments are based on published exercise science research.

What this tool gives you is a fair, informed comparison — not a definitive scientific verdict. Use it to settle arguments. Use it to set targets. Use it to find out, once and for all, who actually lifts more.