The test behind these tables is the 1-minute sit-up from Y’s Way to Physical Fitness (Golding, Myers and Sinning, 1986): on your back, knees bent to about 90 degrees, feet free rather than anchored, hands sliding up the thighs to touch the knees, back returning flat between reps. Your score is the number of clean sit-ups completed in 60 seconds.
The median man aged 18-29 completes 37 sit-ups in the minute and the median woman the same age completes 31. Every number on this page is cohorted: you are read against your own sex and age band, never against a blended all-adults average.
The source publishes ordered ratings rather than percentiles, and the bodies that once ran sit-up tests have since retired them, so this curve is weaker than the push-up tables and says so below.
| Age | Beginner (10th) | Novice (25th) | Intermediate (50th) | Advanced (75th) | Elite (90th) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18-29 | 25 reps | 30 reps | 37 reps | 45 reps | 50 reps |
| 30-39 | 20 reps | 25 reps | 32 reps | 40 reps | 45 reps |
| 40-49 | 16 reps | 20 reps | 27 reps | 35 reps | 40 reps |
| 50-59 | 12 reps | 15 reps | 22 reps | 30 reps | 35 reps |
| 60-69 | 9 reps | 12 reps | 19 reps | 26 reps | 31 reps |
Men are read against the published 1-minute sit-up ratings for their own age band.
| Age | Beginner (10th) | Novice (25th) | Intermediate (50th) | Advanced (75th) | Elite (90th) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18-29 | 17 reps | 23 reps | 31 reps | 38 reps | 44 reps |
| 30-39 | 11 reps | 17 reps | 25 reps | 33 reps | 38 reps |
| 40-49 | 7 reps | 12 reps | 19 reps | 27 reps | 32 reps |
| 50-59 | 5 reps | 8 reps | 15 reps | 22 reps | 27 reps |
| 60-69 | 3 reps | 6 reps | 12 reps | 20 reps | 25 reps |
Women are read against the published 1-minute sit-up ratings for their own age band.
An older and weaker source than the CSEP tables behind our push-up numbers, disclosed as such. The source publishes seven ordered ratings, not percentiles. We assume the bottom of Poor is the 10th percentile, Below average the 30th, Average the 45th, Above average the 55th, Good the 70th and Excellent the 90th, then draw a curve through those points. That mapping is our assumption, not theirs. The source's age bands (18-25 up to 65+) differ from ours (18-29 up to 60-69), so its values are interpolated across age and read at the midpoint of each of our bands. That remap is our construction. Note the bodies that publish fitness standards have retired sit-up testing (CSEP dropped curl-ups, and the US Army and Marine Corps both replaced sit-ups and crunches with the plank), so this curve cites what WAS published, not a current institutional standard.
Y's Way to Physical Fitness (Golding, Myers and Sinning), 3rd edition, 1-minute sit-up test (1986)
Sit-ups, both sexes. An older and weaker source than the CSEP tables behind our push-up numbers, disclosed as such. The source publishes seven ordered ratings, not percentiles. We assume the bottom of Poor is the 10th percentile, Below average the 30th, Average the 45th, Above average the 55th, Good the 70th and Excellent the 90th, then draw a curve through those points. That mapping is our assumption, not theirs. The source's age bands (18-25 up to 65+) differ from ours (18-29 up to 60-69), so its values are interpolated across age and read at the midpoint of each of our bands. That remap is our construction. Note the bodies that publish fitness standards have retired sit-up testing (CSEP dropped curl-ups, and the US Army and Marine Corps both replaced sit-ups and crunches with the plank), so this curve cites what WAS published, not a current institutional standard.
Next rung up: Full push-ups.
The 75th percentile is the honest bar for "good": 45 sit-ups in 60 seconds for men aged 18-29 and 38 for women the same age. The 90th percentile (50 and 44 for those cohorts) is the top 10%. Older bands scale down, which is why the tables are split by age.
Because nothing newer exists to cite: the bodies that publish fitness standards have retired sit-up testing (CSEP dropped curl-ups, and the US Army and Marine Corps both replaced sit-ups and crunches with the plank). These tables cite the 1-minute sit-up ratings in Y’s Way to Physical Fitness (Golding, 1986), the last broadly published protocol, and our percentile mapping of its ratings is an assumption we state under the tables.
No. The protocol these tables were written for is a full sit-up with the feet free: knees bent to about 90 degrees, hands sliding up the thighs to touch the knees, back returning flat between reps. On the camera test, straightening the legs mid-set is a no-count (logged as legs drifted), and a crunch that never reaches the knees does not count either.