strengthpeaking/raw-powerlifting-strength-averages

Raw Powerlifting Strength Averages by Year

Five-year raw powerlifting averages for the squat, bench press and deadlift, grouped by sex, age group, competition weight class and year.

The dataset is calculated and published by StrengthPeaking.com from public-domain competition results maintained by the OpenPowerlifting project.

Canonical Dataset

The canonical and latest version of this dataset, including methodology and interactive tables, is published at:

https://strengthpeaking.com/openipf-raw-strength-averages

GitHub mirror and version history:

https://github.com/strengthpeaking/strengthpeaking-data

Dataset Contents

The dataset contains aggregated raw powerlifting competition statistics, including:

• Sex
• Age group
• Competition weight class
• Year
• Number of qualifying competition results
• Average best successful squat
• Average best successful bench press
• Average best successful deadlift
• Lift-specific sample sizes

Lift values are expressed in kilograms.

The published dataset uses a rolling five-year period. The latest coverage dates and update information are shown on the canonical StrengthPeaking dataset page.

Methodology

Results are restricted to full-power squat, bench press and deadlift competitions recorded as Raw.

Qualifying results require:

• Male or female sex
• A usable age group
• A recorded competition weight class
• A valid competition date
• A positive competition total

Disqualified, disqualified-deadlift and no-show results are excluded.

Squat, bench press and deadlift figures are arithmetic means of positive Best3SquatKg, Best3BenchKg and Best3DeadliftKg values within each cohort.

Each qualifying competition result is counted separately. Lifters are not deduplicated, so an athlete who competes multiple times within a year may contribute multiple competition results.

Missing lifts are excluded from the average for that individual lift. As a result, lift-specific sample sizes may be smaller than the overall cohort sample size.

Where recorded age is unavailable, the midpoint of the available birth-year or age-class information may be used to assign an age group.

Full methodology and the latest release notes are available on the canonical dataset page.

Source Data

Source competition results are maintained by the OpenPowerlifting project.

OpenPowerlifting contributes its competition data to the public domain.

StrengthPeaking independently processes the source competition records and calculates the aggregated statistics contained in this dataset.

OpenPowerlifting:

https://www.openpowerlifting.org/

Intended Uses

This dataset may be useful for:

• Powerlifting strength analysis
• Comparing competition performance across weight classes
• Comparing age groups
• Analysing changes in competitive strength over time
• Sports science and strength research
• Data visualisation
• Statistical analysis
• Powerlifting applications and tools
• Educational and machine-learning projects

Limitations

These figures describe competition results and should not be interpreted as population-wide strength standards.

Important considerations include:

• Competitive powerlifters are not representative of the general population.
• The same lifter may appear in multiple competition results.
• Participation levels vary between cohorts and years.
• Small cohorts can produce less stable averages.
• The current calendar year may represent only a partial year.
• Changes in federation participation and the underlying OpenPowerlifting archive can affect comparisons over time.

Loading with Hugging Face Datasets

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset(
    "strengthpeaking/raw-powerlifting-strength-averages"
)

print(dataset)

Citation

If you use this dataset in a website, application, analysis, article or research project, please cite the canonical StrengthPeaking dataset:

StrengthPeaking.com. “Raw Powerlifting Averages by Year.” Calculated from OpenPowerlifting competition results. https://strengthpeaking.com/openipf-raw-strength-averages

Where appropriate, please also acknowledge OpenPowerlifting as the source of the underlying competition results.

License

The StrengthPeaking derived dataset is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

The underlying OpenPowerlifting competition data is contributed to the public domain.

For the latest dataset version, methodology and downloads, visit:

https://strengthpeaking.com/openipf-raw-strength-averages