Deadlift: Powerlifting Reference Table
FitnessNorms uses the age-specific deadlift values in Tables 3 and 4 of van den Hoek et al. 2024. The study analysed drug-tested, unequipped powerlifting competition records from OpenPowerlifting. The final dataset contained 809,986 entries from competitions held between 1968 and 2022. Entries are not unique athletes; the same person can appear after competing more than once.
- Displayed P5: source P10, used as a lower-tail proxy because the paper does not report P5.
- Displayed P25: arithmetic midpoint of source P20 and P30, rounded to two decimals.
- Displayed P50: source P50.
- Displayed P75: arithmetic midpoint of source P70 and P80, rounded to two decimals.
- Displayed P95: source P90, used as an upper-tail proxy because the paper does not report P95.
- Score: heaviest successful deadlift at a competition divided by bodyweight recorded at that competition.
| Age group | Female entries | Male entries |
|---|---|---|
| 12-17 | 21,828 | 56,083 |
| 18-35 | 113,654 | 249,077 |
| 36-59 | 47,205 | 68,074 |
| 60-79 | 5,158 | 13,167 |
| 80+ | 96 | 448 |
The 80+ cells contain 96 female and 448 male deadlift entries. The age table pools bodyweight classes and 15 federations, whose detailed commands and judging rules varied. Trend points use the shared chart convention: 15 for ages 12-17, 27 for 18-35, 48 for 36-59, 70 for 60-79, and 85 for 80+. These are display positions, not mean ages.
These percentiles describe successful lifts by drug-tested, unequipped powerlifting competitors. They are not general-population norms, clinical thresholds, or evidence that a particular training method will produce a given score.