How many push-ups should you be able to do? Push-up test norms by age and sex, and why the tables disagree

Push-up test norms by age and sex

On the CSEP-PATH push-up test, a man aged 20 to 29 who does 22 to 28 push-ups scores good, and a woman of that age doing 15 to 20 from the knees scores good. The table below is the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology's, from its Physical Activity Training for Health (CSEP-PATH) Resource Manual (2nd edition, 2019), as reprinted with permission in the American Council on Exercise's push-up assessment protocol. Its title calls the categories a "health benefit rating", not an athletic grade.

Two details in the source are easy to miss. The women's figures are for push-ups from the knees: the protocol says the categories "are based on the performance of standard push-ups for men and modified push-ups for women". And the bands do not fall perfectly smoothly with age: as printed, very good for women starts at 12 at 60 to 69 but at 11 at 50 to 59. Read a score against the row for your age, exactly as printed, rather than smoothing between rows.

How to do the push-up test so the table applies

Do as many complete push-ups as you can, steadily and without resting, and stop when you cannot finish one or your form breaks on two in a row. That is the CSEP-PATH protocol as ACE sets it out, and the norms above only mean something if the test is done this way.

1. Set up. Hands pointing forward, shoulder-width apart and directly under the shoulders. Hips in line with the shoulders, trunk rigid, head neutral or slightly raised. Men from the toes, women from the knees for this table.
2. Use a depth marker. A partner's fist, a rolled towel or a foam block under the chest. Each rep goes down until the chest touches it, without the stomach or body resting on the mat.
3. Start from the bottom. The test begins in the down position, whenever you are ready.
4. Count only complete reps. Full elbow extension at the top with a straight back, chest to the marker at the bottom.
5. No rests. The push-ups must be steady, with no pause between reps.
6. Stop on failure. The test ends when a rep cannot be completed, or form fails on two consecutive reps. Those failed reps do not count.

ACE's protocol also suggests a few practice reps before the test. A tester who knows where the chest must reach and what counts as full extension is the difference between a score that can be compared next year and one that cannot.

Why push-up norm tables disagree

Push-up tables disagree because they come from different tests, and a count only means something against the table for the same test. The pages that rank for this question print bands that do not match each other. Topend Sports, for example, gives women norms for standard push-ups and credits "ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription" without naming the table, while CSEP-PATH rates women on push-ups from the knees.

The Army's version shows how much the rules move the numbers. Its score tables, approved on 15 May 2025 and in force from 1 June 2025, count "correctly performed repetitions in 2 minutes" of the hand-release push-up, in which, as the name says, the hands are released from the ground at the bottom of each rep.

The "men and combat" column is the standard the Army applies, regardless of sex, to its 21 direct combat specialties; the army.mil announcement of 14 May 2025 calls those standards "sex-neutral". The women's column is the general standard for women in other roles. Neither column can be compared with CSEP-PATH's untimed test, where a rest is not allowed and the women's count is from the knees.

There is no conversion between knee and full push-ups

None of the sources gives a factor to turn knee push-ups into full ones, or a 2-minute count into an untimed one. A woman who does 20 push-ups from the toes cannot read that against CSEP-PATH's knee table and call it very good, or halve it and call it anything; she has done a different test. Pick the table that matches what you did, or do the test the table describes.

Worked examples

Each example names the test that was done and reads the count against that test's table only.

Example 1: a man of 34

Twenty-four standard push-ups, steady, chest to a rolled towel, stopped when the 25th could not be finished. CSEP-PATH, men 30 to 39: very good is 22 to 29, so 24 is very good. Six more and he reaches 30, excellent.

Example 2: a woman of 45, from the knees

Twelve knee push-ups; on the 13th and 14th her hips sagged, two form faults in a row, so the test ended at 12. CSEP-PATH, women 40 to 49: good is 11 to 14, so 12 is good. Had she counted the two sagging reps, she would have written 14, still good but no longer the same test next time.

Example 3: the same man on the Army test

The man from example 1 practises the Army's hand-release push-ups and does 30 in 2 minutes. In the 32 to 36 column of the Army table, 30 earns 74 points; 13 would have passed at 60 points and 60 would score 100. His 24 untimed push-ups and his 30 timed ones are both true; they answer different questions.

Example 4: a retest that means something

Three months later, the man in example 1 does 29. That is a real improvement only if the setup matched: same marker, same tester or same honest rule about form, same time of day and no warm-up fatigue. A number written down straight after the last rep, rather than remembered, is what makes the comparison fair.

What push-up numbers tell you about health

Being able to do more push-ups goes with fewer heart events in one study of active men, but that study cannot show the push-ups caused it. Yang and colleagues followed 1,104 male firefighters in Indiana, mean age 39.6, for ten years, and recorded 37 cardiovascular events (JAMA Network Open 2:e188341, 2019).

The widely shared "40 push-ups cuts heart risk by 96%" comes from the last row: 1 minus 0.04. Read the paper and the caveats are plain. The models were adjusted for age and body mass index, the test was voluntary, so about a quarter of the men had no push-up result, the top group had one event, and the authors write that the results "may not be generalizable to women, older or nonactive persons".

The useful reading is narrower and still worth having: in active middle-aged men, a simple, free count sorted them by later heart risk. That is why a push-up count is worth recording the same way each time, and why a falling count deserves attention as much as a low one.

Counting the test with Simple Online Counter

A push-up test is a single set to failure, so the counter needs no target and no limit. Simple Online Counter is a free, browser-based set of counters that keeps its counts on your device. On the rep counter, turn the limits off, tap once for each complete push-up, and stop tapping the moment a rep fails; undo removes a tap you made for a rep that did not reach the marker.

For training rather than testing, the rep schemes table shows how to set the counter for sets and reps, and the guide to how sets and reps are written explains notation such as 3×10. A test set to failure is also the check on effort ratings: the RPE and RIR guide explains how reps left in reserve are judged, and a push-up test shows how many there really were.

What this guide does not cover

This guide explains published push-up norms and the tests they belong to; it is not medical or training advice. If you have a heart, blood-pressure, shoulder or wrist condition, are pregnant, or have not exercised for a long time, ask a doctor or a qualified exercise professional before a maximal test. Stop at once for chest pain, dizziness or unusual breathlessness, the symptoms that also ended the test in the firefighter study.

It does not cover children's tests, such as FitnessGram's 90-degree push-up, police, fire or other military entry standards, or the norms in ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, which is sold and which we could not check table by table.