Powerlifting is mostly a young persons game. With that said, there are about 4.1% of entries in the meet results dataset where the lifter was over the age of 60. Are those lifters competing in the most popular federations?

Apparently not. The older lifters over the age of 60 are competing in the federations that were historically prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. That means NASA, AAU, and IPL have a higher percentage of lifters who are over the age of 60.

Most powerlifters usually have a very short career as it’s a taxing training process that puts a lot of stress on peoples’ bodies. With that said, I wanted to look at the median dots for lifers through their career and how much their dots increased from meet to meet.

Lifters make the most increase in their strength from their first meet to the second one. By meet 5, the increase in ones dots is significantly less pronouced.

The increase in a lifters dots throughout their career is also visible in the following problem. The biggest increase in ones dots usually occurs from meet one to two.

The Dots score is a bodyweight-adjusted strength formula used in powerlifting to compare lifters of different sizes on a level playing field. A powerlifter who has a dots score greater than 400 is generally considered to be really strong. The elite lifters tend to have hit those lifts in the states of Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Ohio, Georgia, Tennessem and Illinois.

In powerlifting, bombing out means failing all three attempts on any single lift (squat, bench press, or deadlift). It is not a common occurence, but certain lifters do not plan well for their meet and that sometimes leads to people not successfully hitting their attempts. In this graph, we share the percentage of lifters who bombed out in each state. The states with the highest rate of bombing out are Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Perhaps the strangest thing in the data is that older lifter tend to have a higher rate of bombing out. It is also worth noting that the IPL and USPA actually have higher rates of bombing out.

Every sport needs to attract new participants and retain those who have got exposure to that sport in the past. Powerlifting retention rates tend to be around 50%, meaning that half of the lifters who competed in a particular year had competed in the past. Is that good? I don’t know as I don’t have any retention metrics available from other activities such as pickleball, bodybuilding, etc. What do you think?

Powerlifting has ONE big program. The sport is no longer attracting a high proportion of new lifters. This decline is largely driven by young gen z men, who don’t seem as interested in fitness as millennials were. I’m curious to see if this trend continues in future years.