How many push-ups should I be able to do at my age?
For men from the toes, the reference tables put about 22 in the middle in your twenties and 36 or more in the top band. In your forties that is roughly 13 and 25, and in your sixties 8 and 18.
Women's norms are collected on the knees, so the comparable middle figures are about 15 in your twenties and 11 in your forties. Knee and full push-ups are not convertible: in the one study that measured both in the same women, the counts ran roughly two to one.
How you test changes the answer as much as how strong you are. An untimed set to form failure, a one minute timed test and a metronome-paced test produce three different numbers, and comparing one against norms built on another is the usual reason people think they have scored badly.
Source: Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, reprinted in the ACSM guidelines
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Answered by the AskDoc Medical Team · Medically reviewed under our Medical Director, MBBS · How we review
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