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Deadlift Calculator

Our free deadlift calculator estimates your one-rep max (1RM) from a set you have already pulled. Enter the weight on the bar and how many reps you did, pick a 1RM formula, and it works out your estimated max — with all five formulas shown side by side — plus the warm-up sets to use before a heavy pull.

How it works

Your deadlift one-rep max, or 1RM, is the heaviest weight you can pull from the floor to a locked-out standing position once, with good form. Testing a true max is risky and tiring, so lifters usually estimate it from a lighter set they can already do. This calculator offers five 1RM formulas. Epley is the most widely used estimate in gyms and training programs. It assumes each extra rep you can do means your true max is a little higher than the weight in your hands.

Enter the weight you lifted, including the bar. A standard Olympic barbell weighs 45 pounds, so 315 pounds usually means the 45 pound bar plus 270 pounds of plates. Enter the number of reps you completed with good form, stopping when you could not do another clean rep. Choose pounds or kilograms; the formula works the same in either unit, and the answer comes back in the unit you picked.

With the Epley formula, one rep gives a max equal to the weight itself, since 1 + 1/30 is about 1.03, which is close to the weight you just lifted once. Five reps adds about 17 percent, ten reps adds 33 percent, and fifteen reps adds 50 percent. The estimate is most reliable for sets of 10 reps or fewer. Past 10 reps, grip and endurance start to matter more than raw strength, and the formula tends to guess high, so treat high-rep estimates with caution. Deadlift sets are usually kept at 5 reps or fewer anyway, which is exactly where the formulas are most reliable.

The formulas rarely agree exactly, and that is the point of showing all five. For 315 pounds for 5 reps, Epley gives about 368 lb, Brzycki about 354 lb, Lombardi about 370 lb, O'Conner about 354 lb, and Wathan about 367 lb — a spread of about 16 lb, or 4 percent. Brzycki and O'Conner tend to read lower, Lombardi a little higher, and Epley and Wathan usually land in the middle. If the five estimates are close together, you can trust the middle of the range; if they spread widely, usually because the set was more than 10 reps, treat the whole estimate as rough and base your training weights on the lower end.

The warm-up table below your max turns the estimate into a session plan. A good deadlift warm-up starts around 50 percent of your max for 5 easy reps, then climbs in jumps of about 10 percent — 60 percent for 5, 70 percent for 3, 80 percent for 1 to 3, and 90 percent for a single — before the top set.

Worked example

Say you deadlifted 315 pounds for 5 clean reps at your gym in Texas. Here is the math, step by step.

First, divide the reps by 30: 5 ÷ 30 = 0.167. Add 1: 1 + 0.167 = 1.167. Multiply by the weight: 315 × 1.167 = 367.5, which rounds to about 368 pounds. That is your estimated one-rep max. The other formulas agree closely on this set: Brzycki and O'Conner both give about 354 lb, Lombardi about 370 lb, and Wathan about 367 lb. In practice you would not load 368 pounds and try it cold; you would work up to it through the warm-up sets.

From that 368 pound max, the warm-up weights follow easily. Fifty percent is 368 × 0.50 = 184 pounds for your first warm-up set. Sixty percent is 221 pounds, seventy percent is 257 pounds, eighty percent is 294 pounds, and ninety percent is 331 pounds for your final single before the top set. If you lift in kilograms, the same example is 143 kg for 5 reps, giving an estimated max of about 167 kg, since 143 × 1.167 = 166.9.

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