Relative Powerlifting Strength — How much can you gain?
Suppose you started competing in Powerlifting and also stayed in the same weight class forever. Just how much can expect to increase your total? The question seems simple enough at first, but then you think about all the IFs… Turns out there are just too many variables to consider: experience level, muscle mass, anthropometry, insertion points, muscle fiber distribution, and other genetic differences and life factors. But maybe there’s enough historical data to see general trends?
TLDR: You can gain ~10 +/-4.5 GL points in 3 years while maintaining body weight since your first powerlifting meet.
Well, I tried. While the results are interesting, they are speculative at best. There are just way too many assumptions to deal with. Read on, if you’re still curious.
Selecting the right data
It was very important for me to make sure I get data as clean as possible. I removed as many variables that might influence the results as I could. Here is exactly how I did it:
1st, I only accepted lifters who competed only and only in IPF. Tested, standardized equipment and judging, the largest fed out there were the reasons.
2nd, I worked only with male data. Because there was more of it, and while I could have used male and female together using IPF GL points, it seemed like an unnecessary variable.
3rd, I only chose Raw lifters. In addition, those who did both raw and equipped were eliminated too. The reason for this was simple: equipment changed over time, which could have had a strong influence on the results. I did, however, accept lifters who did Benchpress meets. My assumption was that those who do full meets might as well do single benchpress events on occasions.
4th, I removed lifters who competed at least once before 2012 (the onset of Raw). I didn’t want any old data since I made the assumption it was less accurate.
5th, I removed any lifters who first competed before they were 23 years old. That’s because maturity plays a big role in one’s strength. And since IPF has Open division from 23 onwards, I thought this made sense.
6th, I required the lifters to have at least 5 meets and 2 years+ of lifting experience. Building strength requires time, extracting trends requires data points. Simple as that.
7th, and last, I did not allow the lifter’s weight to fluctuate over 1 standard deviation (SD) from its average. This was to ensure that weight did not influence the total.
After all this, it left me with only 103 lifters. Not a lot, but enough to draw some conclusions from.
Preparing the data
Now that I had the data, I needed to interpret it. The simplest way would have been to take first and last meet results, but that doesn’t account for the fact that the results aren’t always consistently increasing. In fact, that is rarely the case. Just look at Taylor Atwood’s totals.
There are good meets, and then there are bad meets. What if the last meet was way lower than a meet year ago? Clearly, the first/last comparison method won’t work. So, instead, I opted to figure out a regression that would fit each individual athlete’s rate of progress. The simplest approach was to calculate linear regression, but that wouldn’t have made no sense. The strength increase is never linear. Instead, I went with 2nd order polynomial regression. I didn’t go higher because I didn’t want to overfit the data. Even 2nd order polynomial caused problems, but since I had so little data per lifter, I couldn’t do much about it.
After this, it required some more cleanup. First, since I only cared about strength increase, I removed any negative correlation (strength going down over time). I also required the r2 to be at least 0.5 to make sure there was at least some strength over time association. This also eliminated weird results (injuries and whatnot).
Now, since I had the regressions formulas for each athlete, I could determine how much they increased their strength over X amount of time, regardless of how long they trained.
Interpreting the data
Before I dig into the meat of it all, I needed to check how well my predicted starting and ending points looked. If it was nowhere near close to being normally distributed, I probably did not have good enough data. Fortunately, it looked acceptable.
Here it is. In all it’s glory. As you can see, I only opted to predict up to 3 years of training. That’s because, since I used the 2nd order polynomial (quadratic) equation, it was bound to predict smaller results. That’s nonsense.
So, how much can you add to your total while keeping your body weight stable (in 3 years) since the beginning of your powerlifting career?
It’s somewhere between 9.61 (+/-4.32) and 10.92 +/-4.66 GL Points. But why different numbers and what does the Top/Bottom 50/75% mean? Well, at what point do you think people decide to compete? When they just hit the gym? When they become somewhat strong? Well, to answer: we don’t know. Although, it’s probably safe to say that no one competes in their first week in the gym. That’s why I played around and remove some data to see whether my results change.
Columns marked Bottom 50/75% mean I removed 25–50% of athletes who started stronger than the rest. This could have potentially eliminated lifters, who progressed slowly because they were already nearing their max strength potential and show “true” strength progress for newbies. To my surprise, the difference was negligible.
Columns marked Top 50/75% were the opposite (I removed the weakest lifters) and this is where things got weird. Normally, you’d assume that those who started stronger, probably spent more time in the gym before their first meet. That would mean their rate of progress should be slower. But it wasn’t! One way to explain this would be athlete retention. The more successful ones tend to train longer. This could have introduced some bias. But I’m leaning more towards a much simpler explanation: talent. It just shows that there is a large discrepancy in what one can achieve with their respective genetics.
Conclusion
So, there you have it, folks. While I’m not willing to bet my conclusion is 100% correct, I think it’s reasonable. Adding over 10 GL points while maintaining your weight class is most of what you expect. Which is not a lot. And remember, just because someone competes in the same weight class, doesn’t mean they are not bulking up and cutting down. After all, the primary strength variable is muscle size. The more you have it, the more you can lift.
Which brings us to the last point: stop trying to maintain your weight and hope that you will become an Elite class lifter. You won’t. You need to increase your muscle mass as much as possible. Which means jumping weight classes at least once or even twice in your powerlifting career. As long as you are adding muscle, you are adding to your total. Something, we, powerlifting coaches, preach to you every day.
Bonus
Here’s how GL points convert to additional KGs to your total. And if you want to find out exactly, just go to https://www.ipfpointscalculator.com/ and enter your own numbers.
