Deadlift Max Calculator

The deadlift is the lift where the reference set has to be shortest. Nothing catches a failed rep and nothing holds your spine in position but you, so the useful test is three to five reps with the technique still clean. Enter weight and reps below; the fields are metric, so 275 lb goes in as 125 kg.

Worked example

275 lb (125 kg) for 3 reps:

• Epley: 125 × (1 + 3 ÷ 30) = 137.5 kg, about 303 lb
• Brzycki: 125 × 36 ÷ (37 − 3) = 132.4 kg, about 292 lb
• Average of the two: 134.9 kg, about 297 lb

Notice how tightly the two formulas agree at three reps: 11 lb apart on a 300 lb estimate. Short sets are where every 1RM equation is at its most trustworthy, which is convenient, because short sets are also what the deadlift wants.

Stop the set at the technique, not at the failure

In the bench press a failed rep pins you. In the deadlift a failed rep is usually just a bar that does not leave the floor — the danger is not the miss, it is the three reps before it, done with a spine that has quietly stopped holding its position. The lower back is the most commonly injured region in resistance training after the shoulder, reported in somewhere between 12.9% and 48% of cases across studies.

Practical endpoints for the reference set:

• The back rounds, or the hips shoot up ahead of the bar.
• You lose tension at the start and pull the bar out of a soft position.
• Bar speed off the floor drops sharply between reps.

Any of those means the set is over, whatever number you were aiming at. An estimate built on two good reps beats one built on five, of which the last two were something else.

The same estimate, other lifts

• Squat max calculator
• Bench press max calculator
• Overhead press max calculator
• Bicep curl max calculator

To program from the result, use the 1RM percentage chart — 3 reps sits at 93% of max on the NSCA table, which is a useful sanity check on the numbers above. For the formulas themselves, see the one rep max calculator.