How many knee push-ups
equal one push-up?

The measured loads

How much of your weight each push-up lifts

Ebben and colleagues put 23 recreationally fit adults (14 men, 9 women) on a force plate and measured the peak force through their hands in six versions of the push-up. The figures below are that force as a share of each person’s body weight.

Source: Ebben WP et al., “Kinetic analysis of several variations of push-ups”, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2011. An earlier, smaller study landed close by: Gouvali and Boudolos measured 66.4% for a normal push-up and 52.9% on the knees, in eight men (Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2005). Two labs, a similar gap.

The tempting maths

Why you can’t turn that into a rep count

Divide 64 by 49 and you get about 1.3, which makes it tempting to say 13 knee push-ups are worth 10 full ones. That is exactly the number not to trust, for three reasons.

Load isn’t endurance. How many reps you manage depends on how long you can keep going, not only on how heavy each one is. A rep that is a quarter lighter does not buy you a fixed number of extra reps, and nobody has measured what it does buy.

The load moves during the rep. Suprak, Dawes and Stephenson (2011) found more of your weight sits on your hands at the bottom of a push-up than at the top — and that the change is bigger in the knee version. So a knee push-up that stops short of the bottom is lighter again, by an amount that depends on how short.

These are averages from small groups. Your arms, your torso and where your knees sit all shift the numbers. Treat the table as a ranking of what’s harder, not a formula.

Questions people ask

Knee, incline or wall?

How many knee push-ups equal one full push-up?

No study converts one into the other, so any exact ratio is a guess. What has been measured is the load. On a force plate, a knee push-up put about 49% of body weight through the hands and a full push-up about 64% (Ebben and colleagues, 2011, 23 recreationally fit adults); an earlier study found 52.9% and 66.4% (Gouvali and Boudolos, 2005, 8 men). So each knee push-up is roughly a quarter lighter. That is a difference in load, not a number of reps.

Are knee push-ups easier than incline push-ups?

It depends on the height. In the same force-plate study, push-ups with the hands on a 30 cm (12 inch) box loaded about 55% of body weight, which is heavier than a knee push-up at 49%. With the hands on a 60 cm (24 inch) box the load fell to about 41%, lighter than a knee push-up.

How hard is a wall push-up compared with a knee push-up?

Neither study measured a wall push-up, so there is no figure to give. A wall push-up is more upright than the steepest incline that was measured, where the load was already down to about 41% of body weight, so it should be lighter still — but that is a direction, not a measurement.

Does Beastie count knee push-ups?

No. Beastie’s camera counts full push-ups only: chest lowered to depth, hips in a straight line from shoulders to ankles, elbows locked out at the top. The published push-up norms do use knee push-ups for women’s scores, and those are on the push-up test page.

Beastie is a general fitness product, not medical advice. Check with a professional before starting a new exercise routine, and stop if something hurts.