Push-Up & Sit-Up Fitness Test Calculator

Choose sex and enter age (30). The calculator picks the push-up bracket 30-39 and the sit-up bracket 26-35; the two tables use different age bands.

Do the push-up test first, after a light warm-up. Use the standard position, on hands and toes with the body straight, lower until the chest is close to the floor, and push back to straight arms. Keep going without resting until you cannot complete another rep with good form. Enter the count: 25.

Rest for several minutes, then do the 1-minute sit-up test: lie with knees bent at about a right angle, feet flat and not anchored, hands resting on the thighs. Curl up until your hands slide to the tops of your knees, return, and count full reps for 60 seconds. Enter 32.

Read the results. Push-ups: Above Average, with the Average range for your bracket shown as 13-24. Sit-ups: Average, with an Average range of 31-34. The ranges tell you how far you are from the next tier: 34 push-ups would move this man to Good, and 35 sit-ups to Above Average.

Write down the date, the counts and how you did the test, and repeat it the same way in four to six weeks.

Sit-ups are scored against the 1-minute sit-up norms from Golding, Myers and Sinning, *The Y's Way to Physical Fitness* (YMCA of the USA), as widely reproduced. The table has six age brackets for each sex: 18-25, 26-35, 36-45, 46-55, 56-65 and 65+. The protocol those norms assume is the one above: knees bent, feet unanchored, hands sliding to the knees, 60 seconds.

Push-ups are scored against a standard push-up rating table with brackets of 17-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60-65. The numbers match a table that is widely reproduced online, but its original research source is not documented; Topend Sports, which publishes it, says the original source is unknown. We could not trace it to a named study, so treat it as a practical reference rather than a validated norm. The women's figures used here are for full push-ups, not the modified version from the knees.

Lookup rule: each bracket stores six cut-offs. A count above a cut-off moves you up one tier. For men aged 30-39 the push-up cut-offs are 1, 7, 12, 24, 33 and 41, which gives Very Poor 0-1, Poor 2-7, Below Average 8-12, Average 13-24, Above Average 25-33, Good 34-41, Excellent 42 or more. Where the published table lists the same number at the top of one tier and the bottom of the next, the calculator puts it in the lower tier.

Age handling: push-up ages are held between 17 and 65, so anyone older is rated in the 60-65 bracket. Sit-up ages are held between 18 and 70; a 17-year-old is rated in the 18-25 bracket and anyone 66 or older in the 65+ bracket.

A 45-year-old woman does 12 full push-ups and 18 sit-ups. Her push-up bracket is 40-49, where Average is 5-9, so 12 rates Above Average. Her sit-up bracket is 36-45, where Average is 19-22, so 18 rates Below Average, one rep short of Average.

The split is common and useful. Upper-body pushing endurance and trunk-flexion endurance are separate capacities, so a strong push-up score says nothing about sit-ups. It points her training toward the sit-up side, not toward concern.

The edges of the tables need more care. A 70-year-old man with 10 push-ups and 15 sit-ups rates Average on both, but the push-up rating comes from the 60-65 bracket because the table stops there. A 17-year-old man with 20 push-ups and 30 sit-ups rates Average on push-ups but Poor on sit-ups, because the sit-up table starts at 18 and he is compared with adults up to 25.

Protocol changes the count more than a few weeks of training do. Anchored feet let the hip flexors do more of a sit-up; half-depth push-ups are easier than full ones; resting at the top of a push-up breaks the continuous test. Any of these makes the rating look better than it is, and makes the next test impossible to compare.

The tiers are relative. Below Average means fewer reps than the middle of that table's group, not a problem with your health. The practical value is the trend: the same person, the same protocol, a higher count six weeks later.

The two tests are also narrow. They measure muscular endurance in two movements. They say nothing about maximal strength, cardiovascular fitness, mobility or balance, and a cyclist or runner can score modestly here while being very fit.

This is a fitness-tracking tool, not a medical or occupational fitness assessment, and it is not a substitute for advice from a doctor or physiotherapist. Stop a test if you feel pain, dizziness or chest discomfort.

The push-up table has no documented research source, and the sit-up norms come from an older YMCA sample; neither is guaranteed to represent your population today. The calculator trusts the count you enter, cannot check form, does not offer a modified push-up table, does not combine the two scores into an overall rating, and does not rate anyone past the oldest bracket of each table.

Endurance tests pair well with strength measures. The One-Rep Max Calculator estimates the heaviest single lift from a working set, and the Bench Press Standards Calculator and Squat & Deadlift Standards Calculator compare loaded lifts with bodyweight ratios, which is the strength counterpart to a push-up count. To turn a weak spot from these tests into a weekly plan of sets and sessions, use the Workout Planner.