Question 1

What is Strength Age?

Accepted Answer

Strength Age is the age of the median competitive powerlifter whose bodyweight-adjusted DOTS score matches yours. A 32-year-old with a Strength Age of 24 lifts like the typical 24-year-old in raw competition; the same total at 22 with Strength Age 38 means the same DOTS as a typical 38-year-old. Lower means stronger relative to age peers.

Question 2

How is Strength Age computed?

Accepted Answer

Your competition total and bodyweight feed a DOTS score (Konertz / BVDK 2019, the IPF raw-open standard). The median DOTS at every integer age (18–80) is precomputed per sex from 977,010 qualifying raw full-power meet entries in the OpenPowerlifting dump. Your Strength Age is the age on the post-peak decline branch whose median DOTS matches yours, linearly interpolated between bracketing ages.

Question 3

What does "Prime" mean?

Accepted Answer

Prime is shown when your DOTS is at or above the peak median for your sex — male peak age 28, female peak age 23 in the current dataset. At or above the peak there is no decline-branch age to map onto, so the page reports Prime rather than a number that would imply you are stronger than the strongest age-cohort median. Prime is the ceiling outcome.

Question 4

Why is the dataset peak so young?

Accepted Answer

DOTS adjusts for bodyweight but not training age, and competitive raw powerlifting has grown substantially since 2015 — younger cohorts are overrepresented with recent-era technique, programming, and equipment. The median competitor at 24 reflects a population effect, not an individual one. The framing is "your DOTS vs population median at every age," not "your potential."

Question 5

Is this real data?

Accepted Answer

Yes — derived from the OpenPowerlifting public CC0 dump (cutoff 2026-05-16), filtered to raw equipment, full-power (squat + bench + deadlift) totals, valid sex, plausible bodyweight, ages 18–80. The ETL is published at scripts/build-strength-age-curve.mjs and the exact sample size at every age is recorded in the dataset. Age bins with fewer than 50 lifters are flagged as thin.

Question 6

Does Strength Age work for the older lifter?

Accepted Answer

Yes — this is the most informative direction of the metric. A 55-year-old with the DOTS of a typical 32-year-old gets Strength Age 32. The decline curve is densest between 35 and 65 where sample sizes are largest. The 70+ tail thins out (especially female 75+) and is clamped; treat extreme tail readouts as directional, not precise.

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