[2] Based on the men's and women's world record holders and the top two performers for each event in the IPF's 1996 and 1997 World Championships (a total of 30 men and 27 women for each lift), it concluded: The main function of the Wilks formula is involved in powerlifting contests.
First, second and third places on the winner's podium within their own age, bodyweight and gender classes are awarded to the competitors who lift the most weight respectively.
This occurs for a number of reasons relating to simple physics, the nature of the makeup and limitations of the human skeletal and muscular system as well as the shorter leverages of smaller people.
The Wilks system is primarily a handicapping process that provides an adjusted statistical method to compare all lifters of varying classes and groups on an equal standing and makes allowances for the disparities.
The switch by IPF comes at a time where Olympic Weightlifting Federation (IWF)[8] decided in June 2018 to change from the existing Sinclair coefficient to Robi Points.