Push-ups are harder for women primarily because of a significant gap in upper body muscle mass. Women carry about 40% less muscle in their upper body compared to men, which is a much larger difference than the 33% gap in the lower body. This means the chest, shoulders, and triceps that power a push-up are working at a substantial disadvantage from the start.
But muscle mass is only part of the story. Biomechanics, body composition, and hormonal differences all stack on top of each other to make this one exercise disproportionately challenging.
The Upper Body Muscle Gap
Sex differences in muscle aren’t spread evenly across the body. A large study of 468 men and women published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that the gap is notably wider above the waist. Women had 40% less upper body muscle mass than men, compared to 33% less in the lower body. This is why many women can squat or deadlift impressively relative to their size but struggle with push-ups, pull-ups, and overhead pressing.
Push-ups demand a lot from three muscle groups: the chest, the front of the shoulders, and the triceps. These are exactly the areas where women have the least muscle relative to men. It’s not a matter of effort or training history. It’s a baseline difference in how muscle is distributed across the body.
How Much Weight You’re Actually Lifting
A standard push-up requires you to move about 64% of your body weight through each rep. That’s a surprisingly large load, and it helps explain why push-ups feel so much harder than they look. In a knee push-up, that number drops to about 49%, a reduction of roughly 18%.
This matters because women are essentially performing a moderately heavy upper body press with the part of their body that has the least relative strength. A 140-pound woman doing a standard push-up is pressing about 90 pounds per rep using muscles that are significantly smaller and produce less force than those of a comparably sized man. The exercise doesn’t scale to body composition the way something like a squat does, where women’s relatively stronger lower bodies can compensate.
Biomechanics Work Against You
Body geometry plays a role too. Women tend to carry more of their mass in the hips and lower body, shifting the center of gravity lower. In a push-up position, this changes the leverage demands on the upper body and core. Your body acts as a rigid plank balanced on two pivot points (toes and hands), and the distribution of weight along that plank affects how hard your muscles have to work to keep you stable and move you through the rep.
The core demand is often underestimated. A push-up isn’t just an arm exercise. Your abdominals, glutes, and quads all have to fire continuously to maintain a straight line from head to heels. With a lower center of mass and proportionally wider hips, women’s core muscles work at a slightly different mechanical angle, which can make maintaining that rigid plank position more fatiguing over multiple reps.
Hormones Set the Starting Line
Testosterone is often cited as the reason men build upper body muscle more easily, and there’s truth to that, though the mechanism is more nuanced than most people realize. Recent research from 2024 found that in premenopausal women, natural testosterone levels weren’t actually associated with muscle mass, strength, or how well muscles responded to training. The typical muscle-building signaling pathway that testosterone activates in men didn’t respond the same way in female muscle cells.
Only at doses far above what a woman’s body naturally produces did testosterone increase muscle cell size in lab conditions, and even then it worked through a different biochemical route than expected. What this means practically is that women’s muscles can absolutely grow and get stronger with training, but the hormonal environment doesn’t give them the same head start in the upper body that men get. Building push-up strength takes more targeted, consistent work.
What “Good” Looks Like
Fitness benchmarks reflect these biological realities. According to Mayo Clinic standards, a good push-up count for a 25-year-old woman is 20 reps, compared to 28 for a man of the same age. By age 45, the target drops to 14 for women and 16 for men. At 65, both sexes converge at about 10 reps.
These numbers are useful because they give you a realistic goal. If you’re a woman who can currently do 5 push-ups, you’re not failing. You’re working within normal ranges and have a clear, achievable target to build toward. The gap between men and women also narrows with age, which suggests that consistent training can close some of the distance that biology creates.
Why Incline Push-Ups Beat Knee Push-Ups
If you’re working toward your first full push-up or trying to increase your reps, the progression method you choose matters a lot. Knee push-ups are the most common modification, but they have a significant drawback: they change the movement pattern. When you drop to your knees, you shorten the lever arm and reduce the load by about 18%, but you also remove the need for your glutes, quads, and deep core muscles to stabilize your body. You’re training a different movement, not an easier version of the same one.
Incline push-ups, where you place your hands on a bench, counter, or wall and perform the push-up from your toes, keep the full-body mechanics intact. Your core has to engage the same way it will in a floor push-up. Your glutes and quads still fire to maintain a straight line. You’re simply reducing the percentage of body weight you’re pressing by changing the angle. As you get stronger, you lower the surface gradually: wall, counter, bench, low step, floor.
This approach transfers directly to the full push-up because your body has practiced the exact coordination pattern it needs. Many trainers who specialize in women’s strength training report that core strength, not upper body strength, is the real bottleneck for most women attempting their first full push-up. Incline push-ups build both simultaneously. Knee push-ups largely skip the core component, which is why women sometimes get stuck doing knee push-ups for months without being able to transition to the full version.
It’s Physics, Not a Limitation
Push-ups are harder for women because of a specific combination of factors: less upper body muscle mass, a body weight distribution that creates tougher leverage, and a hormonal environment that builds upper body strength more slowly. None of these are fixed ceilings. Women who train consistently can and do build impressive push-up numbers. The path just requires understanding why the exercise feels so difficult in the first place and choosing progressions that work with your body’s mechanics rather than around them.
Starting with incline push-ups at whatever angle lets you do 8 to 12 clean reps, then lowering the surface every week or two as you get stronger, is the most efficient route. Most women who follow this approach can reach a full floor push-up within a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on their starting point.