Old Forum How many push ups are equal to pull ups?

[Iron_Man_02181987]

I know this is a difficult question to answer but just how many push ups equals a pull up? Any thoughts?

Pavel your thoughts?

 

[RussellPeele]

maybe you wish to rephrase the question to something like, "is there a pushup to pullup ratio one should be able to perform? eg if you can do 10 pullups should you be able to do 40 pushups (or vice versa?"

to answer the question i just posed: the U.S. air force seemed to think  4:1 was appropriate.

my answer would be: it depends.

 

[Jason Ginsberg]

May as well ask: how many apples are equal to an orange?

If Russell has correctly understood what you're asking, then I'd agree; it depends.  Honestly, I never really care about the ratio in any of the people I train; there are more important things.

 

[Iron_Man_02181987]

Thank you all for your responses. I ask this because I am also trying to focus on avoiding muscle imbalances in the body.

 

[Iron_Man_02181987]

While normally other guys were focuses on their chest I went the other way or in this case the other side of the body by focusing and developing the back muscles hence why I feel in love with Pull ups and Chin ups.

 

[RussellPeele]

In that case, here you go:

http://www.strongfirst.com/blog/a-word-on-rows/

 

[Pavel]

Nick, I am not aware of any correlations.  An observation.  A person who is good at pullups usually smokes pushups.  The opposite is not necessarily true.

 

[Iron_Man_02181987]

That makes sense to myself as well Pavel because as we can all agree Pull ups and Chin ups are a better measure of your upper body strength.

 

[TedFirst]

My teacher (and a couple of millions more I believe) used to tell me that there are no stupid questions, but one might at least wonder how you found your way to here. I hope the rest of the questions on this forum is of higher standard.

Power to your brain!

 

[Mike E]

In my twenties my ratio of push-ups to pull-ups was about 4:1 (120 to 30), now, at 64, about 2:1 (35 to 19).  I plan on improving that over time.  I had a long period in my middle years of being a workaholic and neglecting my fitness.  Dragging myself back over the last five years or so.  Push-ups feel easy for the first 10-15 then start to drag.  Pull-ups I just seem be be able to crank them out.  Perhaps because I can add weight to the pull-ups easily for practice.

 

[Iron_Man_02181987]

@ Tedfirst just what is that suppose to mean?