Expert reveals the exact amount of push-ups you should be able to do according to your age

Forget expensive gym memberships, personal trainers, or lengthy medical tests - there's a brutally honest way to find out exactly how fit you are right now, and all it requires is a bit of floor space and a willingness to feel slightly humbled.

The humble push-up has long been considered one of the best no-equipment fitness benchmarks around, and for good reason.

Drop down, grind out as many as you can in one go, and the number you hit tells you more about your muscular strength and cardiovascular health than most people realise.

But there is a catch: they all have to be done consecutively with proper form, rest and the count resets.

The Mayo Clinic lists the push-up as one of its recommended tools to measure muscular strength and endurance, and fitness experts have broken down exactly how many you should be hitting depending on your age and sex. If the number feels daunting, that's kind of the point.

You can do a push-up just about anywhere (Getty Stock Image)

How to do a push-up properly

Before you start repping out and claiming a score, the form has to be right or it doesn't count. Lie flat on the floor, toes tucked under, hands placed slightly wider than your shoulders.

Push straight up, keeping your back flat and parallel to the ground until your arms are fully extended. Lower yourself back down and repeat. No sagging hips, no half-reps.

Beginners can start from the knees to build strength, but the age-based targets below are for full push-ups only.

How many push-ups should you be able to do by age?

For women, fitness experts Freddie Chatt and Adam Clarke, speaking to Women's Health, broke it down like this:

• 15 to 19 years old – 18 to 24 push-ups
• 20 to 29 years old – 15 to 20 push-ups
• 30 to 39 years old – 13 to 19 push-ups
• 40 to 49 years old – 11 to 14 push-ups
• 50 to 59 years old – 7 to 10 push-ups
• 60 to 69 years old – 5 to 11 push-ups
• 70 to 79 years old – 3 to 8 push-ups (kneeling included)
• 80 and over – 2 to 5 push-ups (kneeling included)

These push-up counts are targets that reflect good muscular and cardiovascular fitness (Getty Stock Image)

For men, the Mayo Clinic's own analysis sets the bar as follows:

• Age 25 – 28 push-ups
• Age 35 – 21 push-ups
• Age 45 – 16 push-ups
• Age 55 – 12 push-ups
• Age 65 – 10 push-ups

So a healthy, reasonably fit 25-year-old man should be knocking out close to 28 in one go, while a woman the same age should be hitting around 20.

Those numbers drop pretty sharply with every decade, which is either reassuring or mildly terrifying depending on where you land.

You should be able to complete the correlating number to your age (Getty Stock Images)

What to do if you can't hit the number

The Mayo Clinic is pretty straightforward about it: if you're below the target for your age, treat it as the goal. "If your push-up count is below the target number, use the target as a goal to work toward. Counts above the targets mean better fitness."

The push-up is also useful beyond just the one-off test.

Research has increasingly positioned the push-up as a meaningful predictor of overall health and longevity, meaning it's not just a vanity metric, it's a genuine indicator of how your body is ageing.

Regular training creates a feedback loop where improving your numbers directly translates to better overall fitness, and before long you might find yourself hitting the kind of counts that would make your younger self jealous.

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