Tools

Z-Score Calculator

Enter your squat, bench, deadlift, and bodyweight to get your z-score. Each lift is scored against the top raw lifters in your weight class, and the three are averaged into one number.

What the z-score measures

A z-score says how far a lift sits from the average of the best lifters in your weight class, measured in standard deviations. Each of your three lifts gets its own z-score, and the headline figure is their average. Because every lift is put on the same scale, a squat, a bench, and a deadlift count equally, which fixes the bias against bench press that bodyweight-only formulas carry.

How the score is computed

For each lift we take the mean and standard deviation of the top raw performers in your weight class and sex (the top 50 men or top 30 women), then your z-score is your lift minus that mean, divided by that standard deviation. The scale is centered on those top lifters: a lift at the class average scores 0, and a higher lift scores positive. This follows the method published by Bishop, Williams, Heldman, and Vanderburgh (2018), computed here on the same competition dataset as the rest of the site and rebuilt each time the data updates.

Note on USAPL

USAPL currently awards best lifter by DOTS for open lifters and McCulloch coefficients for masters. It has signaled plans to move to a z-score system, though that change is not yet in effect. This calculator computes that z-score now, from this site's own competition data, so the numbers will not match any single published table.