How many push-ups should you manage?
Your count against your age group.
Sex
Keep going until your form breaks twice in a row, not until you are desperate.
Chest to a fist or a rolled towel at the bottom, arms straight at the top, body in one line the whole way. No sagging hips and no resting on the floor. The table below uses full push-ups from the toes.
Push-ups by age and sex
| Age | Men, top band | Men, middle | Women, top band | Women, middle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20-29 | 36+ | 22 | 30+ | 15 |
| 30-39 | 30+ | 17 | 27+ | 13 |
| 40-49 | 25+ | 13 | 24+ | 11 |
| 50-59 | 21+ | 10 | 21+ | 7 |
| 60-69 | 18+ | 8 | 17+ | 5 |
Men from the toes, women on the knees, which is how the reference tables were collected. Counts from a timed or metronome-paced test are a different measurement and do not belong in this table. Source: Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, reprinted in the ACSM guidelines.
All six together
nothing measured yetThree things the six tests measure, each against a published cohort. Two minutes apiece.
Results stay on this device unless you save them.
For men in their twenties, the reference tables put around 22 push-ups in the middle and 36 or more in the top band; by the sixties that is about 8 and 18. Women’s norms are collected on the knees, which is not convertible to full push-ups. The study behind the famous 40 push-up claim followed 1,104 male firefighters for ten years and counted 37 cardiovascular events between them, and its own authors wrote that the results do not make push-up count an independent predictor of risk.
How to get to your first one
A progression with measured loads at every step, why raising your hands beats dropping to your knees, and how little training strength actually needs.
Common questions
How many push-ups should I be able to do?
It depends on your age and which form you are using. For men from the toes, roughly 22 in your twenties is average and 36 is the top band; in your forties that is 13 and 25; in your sixties 8 and 18. For women on the knees, roughly 15 in your twenties and 30 for the top band. The chart on this page has every decade.
Is 40 push-ups really linked to heart health?
A 2019 study of 1,104 male firefighters found that those managing over 40 had far fewer cardiovascular events over ten years than those managing ten or fewer. It is worth knowing and it is much weaker than the headlines suggested: 37 events in total, adjusted only for age and body mass index rather than smoking, blood pressure or cholesterol, and the authors said plainly that it does not establish push-up count as an independent predictor. Forty is not a clinical threshold.
Do the push-up norms apply to women?
The standard reference tables for women use modified push-ups from the knees, so the women’s column here is knee push-ups. The two are not interchangeable: in the one study that measured both in the same women, full push-ups averaged about half the knee count. The firefighter study had no women in it at all, so the 40 figure says nothing about women.
What counts as a proper push-up in a test?
Chest down to a fist or a rolled towel, arms fully straight at the top, and the body in one line from head to heels throughout. No sagging hips, no piking up, and no resting on the floor at the bottom. Stop when your form breaks on two consecutive repetitions rather than when you are desperate.
Should I test timed or to failure?
Pick one and stay with it, because they are different tests. The reference table on this page is untimed, going until form fails. A one minute timed test and a metronome-paced test both produce different counts, and comparing a count from one protocol against norms built on another is the commonest mistake in push-up content.
How do I get from zero to ten?
Raise the surface rather than dropping to the knees: push-ups against a kitchen counter, then a chair, then a low step, then the floor. Three sets a few times a week, stopping two reps short of failure. Most people who cannot do one on the floor can do ten against a counter on day one, and the progression from there takes weeks rather than months.
Written and checked by the AskDoc Medical Team under our Medical Director, MBBS. How we review. Health education, not medical advice.